Mourning the Future[1]
by Günther Anders (1961)
Translated by Manuela Kölke and Christopher John Müller
Abstract: This is the first English translation of “Die beweinte Zukunft,” a retelling of the story of Noah and the flood, written in 1961 by the German[2] / Austrian-Jewish philosopher, anti-nuclear activist, poet and literary author Günther Anders (1902-1992). The German original was first published in 1962 in the journal Alternative: Zeitschrift für Literatur und Diskussion in a slightly longer version, which also carried a subtitle that translates to “from the Molussian Apocrypha, translated by Günther Anders.” This link to Molussia, a fictious land of Anders’s invention that is frequently evoked in his writings, was dropped upon the text’s republication in the shorter version included in the volume Gegen den Tod. Stimmen deutscher Schriftsteller gegen die Atombombe (1964).[3] It was this publication that placed the story into the context of the anti-nuclear movement, a connection further strengthened when Anders selected “Die beweinte Zukunft” as the opening text in his 1971 collection Endzeit und Zeitenende: Gedanken über die atomare Situation. It was via this volume, which was republished in eight editions under the title Die atomare Drohung: Radikale Überlegungen zum atomaren Zeitalter, that the text found a wide readership. Today, this remarkable short parable is finding renewed interest in the context of discussions of the Anthropocene, the climate crisis and ongoing destruction of the ecosphere.[4]
Keywords: Noah, apocalypse blindness, apathy, prophylactic apocalypticism, nuclear threat, anti-nuclear movement, activism, mourning work, future oriented affect, temporality, end times.
Notes:
[1] Editor’s Note: The Journal of Continental Philosophy would like to thank C.H. Beck Munich for the permission to publish Günther Anders’s “Die beweinte Zukunft,” in this special issue. We acknowledge that C. H. Beck holds copyright to the original German text as it appears in Endzeit und Zeitenende: Gedanken über die atomare Situation, München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1972, 1-10. We thank equally the translators for their work in bringing this work to an English audience.
[2] In 1938, Günther Anders was officially expatriated by Nazi Germany, and he never reclaimed his German citizenship. For a full biography see https://www.guenther-anders-gesellschaft.org/vita-english (Last accessed: 16 March 2024)
[3] Late in life, in 1987, Anders recorded a powerful reading of “Die beweinte Zukunft (1961)” which is available at: https://vimeo.com/37359723. (Last accessed: 16 March 2024)
[4] Translators’ note: The source text for this translation is the revised and shortened version of the text that is included in Die atomare Drohung (“Die beweinte Zukunft,” Die atomare Drohung: Radikale Überlegungen zum atomaren Zeitalter. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2003, pp. 1-10).[…]
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The English translation was commissioned by Journal of Continental Philosophy (cooperation with Western Sydney University). The complete version is published here: Anders, Günther, Manuela Kölke (trans.) and Christopher John Müller (trans.). 2024. “Mourning the Future.” In Journal of Continental Philosophy vol 5: 1-2, ISSN 2688-3554 (print), ISSN 2688-3562 (online), https://www.pdcnet.org/…/jcp_2024_0005_0001_0169_0177, https://doi.org/10.5840/jcp2024517
