Miri Rozmarin

On the Role of the ‘Future’ in Critical Life

Untitled, 2025 from The Blue Room #TheRefusalToSayGoodbye, by Jennifer Abessira

This essay argues that a notion of ‘future’ is crucial as a temporal mode for critique, when viewed as an aspect of critical life. The point of departure of this argument is that critical theory is committed to social transformation and as such we should consider the notion of political subjectivity it yields, and, more specifically, the ‘lived temporalities’ it generates. In the first part of the essay, I analyze the temporalities that originate from the association of critique with negativity and its effects as part of political lives. I then argue that a notion of a ‘future’ can contribute to the re-orientation of political subjectivity and expand the affective resources for political engagements with reality. The second part of the essay considers feminist, postcolonial, and queer critiques of the notion of ‘future’, and aims to offer an account of a future that responds to these concerns.

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Dr. Miri Rozmarin is a senior lecturer in the Gender Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University. She is also a senior research fellow, and the head of the research lab “Contemporary feminist political subjectivity” at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Her areas of specialization are feminist philosophy, critical theory, post-liberal social philosophy and post-liberal ethics. Her research interests include vulnerability, political subjectivity and post-Oedipal kinships.