Spectral Futures
Fabulations of Worlds to Come
Will be published approx. on 22. January 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-350-42112-7 (ISBN)
Description
What colour is the future - or rather, what colors are the futures? Broad and enlightening in its coverage, this collection explores the notion that there is not just one visualization of the future, but many, stretching across and beyond shades of utopian brightness and dystopian darks. Visiting futures that belong to the realm of ghosts, it calls for a hauntology that deals not only with spectres of the past but also the of future, offering a fascinating engagement with both colonial history and hyper-accelerated societies.
Guided by a diversity of colours, contributors speculate on non-anthropogenic futurities, theorising on the richness of an essentially complex and disordered material universe. The volume's critical approaches range from speculative realism, oceanic biology, and philosophy and politics, to posthumanism and queer theory. What all these offerings have in common is a strong focus on materiality, the in|human, and the innovative possibilities that are brought into light by this 'fabulated spectrum'. They combine the potentialities of philosophy, art, and science, in that they all forge a relation to chaos, or, an undeterminable 'new.' Powerful and thought-provoking, this book illuminates different possibilities of gazing upon futures in nuanced and novel ways.
Guided by a diversity of colours, contributors speculate on non-anthropogenic futurities, theorising on the richness of an essentially complex and disordered material universe. The volume's critical approaches range from speculative realism, oceanic biology, and philosophy and politics, to posthumanism and queer theory. What all these offerings have in common is a strong focus on materiality, the in|human, and the innovative possibilities that are brought into light by this 'fabulated spectrum'. They combine the potentialities of philosophy, art, and science, in that they all forge a relation to chaos, or, an undeterminable 'new.' Powerful and thought-provoking, this book illuminates different possibilities of gazing upon futures in nuanced and novel ways.
Reviews / Votes
A wonderful volume that brings the colour of philosophy to life and the philosophy of colour to bear on the most pressing issues of our times. * Brad Evans, Professor of Political Violence & Aesthetics, Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence, University of Bath, UK * Spectral Futures begins with a neatly ordered wavelength scale, only to populate it with fantastic and phantasmic entities that glimmer, flicker and waver at the edge of visibility. A brilliant fusion of theory and fabulation that thinks in color and hums with possibility. * Tomas Dvorak, Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography, FAMU, Prague *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
10 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-42112-7 (9781350421127)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
12/2025
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€94.49
Available for download
E-Book
12/2025
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€94.49
Available for download
Person
Bernd Herzogenrath is Professor of American Literature and Culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster (Rodopi, 1999) and An American Body/Politic: A Deleuzian Approach (UPNE, 2010). His other publications include the collections media | matter (Bloomsbury, 2015), Sonic Thinking (Bloomsbury, 2017), Film as Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), and Practical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is a main editor of the media-philosophical book series thinking | media with Bloomsbury.
Content
01. Introduction: Spectral Futures, Bernd Herzogenrath
02. wavelength: 0.001 nm | color: gamma rays | The Spectral Affectivity of Glaciers, Julita Skotarska
03. wavelength: 100-400 nm | color: Ultraviolet | Wild Light: Radiant Skin and the Domestication of Ultraviolet Futures, Lisa Yin Han
04. wavelength: 380-750 nm | color: Rainbow | Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Claire Colebrook
05. wavelength: 400 nm-700 nm+ | color: White | White ? Rot, Amanda Boetzkes
06. wavelength: 420-700 nm | color: sodium-silver | Blank Screens and Spectral Skies: Hong Kong as a Postcolonial Locus of Transnational Asian Futures, Dawn Chan
07. wavelength: 450 nm low latency (you know, for high speed trading) | color: CME Blue (i.e. the blue that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange uses) | A Brief and Speculative History of Making the Weather an Option, Orit Halpern
08. wavelength: 451-488 nm | color: cobalt blue | Afterimage, Mitchell Akiyama
09. wavelength: 490 nm | color: supra-blue minor | Meshes of Light and Death, by Oceanic Bacteria, Jeremie Brugidou
10. wavelength: 492 nm | color: Infragreen | An Infragreen & Bipolar Tale of the Future, Thierry Bardini
11. wavelength: 530 nm | color: Pure Gold | Hyper-Vanguard: The Future of a Thousand Sects, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
12. wavelength: 555 nm | color: chartreuse green | Pale Green Dot, Abelardo Gil-Fournier
13. wavelength: 580 mn | color: Yellow| Specters of Solar Futurity: Yellow-Black-Yellow, Asia Bazdyrieva, Adrian Ivakhiv, & Svitlana Matviyenko
14. wavelength: 590 nm | color: Amber | Memory of a Stone, Fabien Clouette
15. wavelength: 605.34 nm | color: vermillion | Vermillion Times: Memoranda from the Future, Christine Reeh-Peters & Isabel Machado
16. wavelength: 680 nm | color: Flesh red | Excoriating Red: A Note on Russian Futurity, Andrey Logutov
17. wavelength: none, multiple | color: gray | Dead or Alive? Gray Futures, Franziska Strack
18. wavelength: 0 nm - 400 nm - = 700 nm | color: Blackless | Blackless: The Present-absence of Blackness in an African Tomorrow, Babson Ajibade
19. wavelength: 595 nm | color: Black Hole Black | Black Hole Black (Disco Ball Lightning), Alison Sperling
20. wavelength: 6000 degreesA nm | color: transparent | The Color of Breath, the Color of Air, Bernd Herzogenrath
21. wavelength: n/a | color: Luminous Darkness | Exploring the metaphysics of Afrofuturism through Howard Thurman's Luminous Darkness, Reynaldo Anderson's & Christina Hudson
22. wavelength: n/a | color: Iridescence | The future Iridesces, Bronislaw Szerszynski
23. wavelength (Khaki) - 575.4 nm 8 wavelength (Dark Gray) - nil | Soliloquies of a Lone Diner and the Specters of Thomas Sankara, Kuti Ezebiro
02. wavelength: 0.001 nm | color: gamma rays | The Spectral Affectivity of Glaciers, Julita Skotarska
03. wavelength: 100-400 nm | color: Ultraviolet | Wild Light: Radiant Skin and the Domestication of Ultraviolet Futures, Lisa Yin Han
04. wavelength: 380-750 nm | color: Rainbow | Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Claire Colebrook
05. wavelength: 400 nm-700 nm+ | color: White | White ? Rot, Amanda Boetzkes
06. wavelength: 420-700 nm | color: sodium-silver | Blank Screens and Spectral Skies: Hong Kong as a Postcolonial Locus of Transnational Asian Futures, Dawn Chan
07. wavelength: 450 nm low latency (you know, for high speed trading) | color: CME Blue (i.e. the blue that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange uses) | A Brief and Speculative History of Making the Weather an Option, Orit Halpern
08. wavelength: 451-488 nm | color: cobalt blue | Afterimage, Mitchell Akiyama
09. wavelength: 490 nm | color: supra-blue minor | Meshes of Light and Death, by Oceanic Bacteria, Jeremie Brugidou
10. wavelength: 492 nm | color: Infragreen | An Infragreen & Bipolar Tale of the Future, Thierry Bardini
11. wavelength: 530 nm | color: Pure Gold | Hyper-Vanguard: The Future of a Thousand Sects, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
12. wavelength: 555 nm | color: chartreuse green | Pale Green Dot, Abelardo Gil-Fournier
13. wavelength: 580 mn | color: Yellow| Specters of Solar Futurity: Yellow-Black-Yellow, Asia Bazdyrieva, Adrian Ivakhiv, & Svitlana Matviyenko
14. wavelength: 590 nm | color: Amber | Memory of a Stone, Fabien Clouette
15. wavelength: 605.34 nm | color: vermillion | Vermillion Times: Memoranda from the Future, Christine Reeh-Peters & Isabel Machado
16. wavelength: 680 nm | color: Flesh red | Excoriating Red: A Note on Russian Futurity, Andrey Logutov
17. wavelength: none, multiple | color: gray | Dead or Alive? Gray Futures, Franziska Strack
18. wavelength: 0 nm - 400 nm - = 700 nm | color: Blackless | Blackless: The Present-absence of Blackness in an African Tomorrow, Babson Ajibade
19. wavelength: 595 nm | color: Black Hole Black | Black Hole Black (Disco Ball Lightning), Alison Sperling
20. wavelength: 6000 degreesA nm | color: transparent | The Color of Breath, the Color of Air, Bernd Herzogenrath
21. wavelength: n/a | color: Luminous Darkness | Exploring the metaphysics of Afrofuturism through Howard Thurman's Luminous Darkness, Reynaldo Anderson's & Christina Hudson
22. wavelength: n/a | color: Iridescence | The future Iridesces, Bronislaw Szerszynski
23. wavelength (Khaki) - 575.4 nm 8 wavelength (Dark Gray) - nil | Soliloquies of a Lone Diner and the Specters of Thomas Sankara, Kuti Ezebiro