(Un)knotting time: imagining past futures in early Victorian street ballads

What is a memory of the future? Is it a myth, a fiction of a severed arm, a post-human debate or a broken time machine? In an increasingly insecure future-world there is an urgency to consider and debate these questions. Memories of the Future : On Countervision addresses these concerns by speculating on the connections between memory and futurity in fields such as counter-histories, women's studies, science fiction, art and design, technology, philosophy and politics. Structured by three topics--'The Basis of Memories', 'The Re-conditioning of Time' and 'The Mechanical Future'--this book reveals how these subjects regenerate at the intersections of vision, counter-cultural production and the former present. The volume links the re-imaginings of memory into the present with topics such as the fever dream allegory of the adolescent social experience, soft technologies of future dress, reinventions of monetary exchange, rekindled subjectivities of school days, and technics and human progression. These countervisions argue against the homogenising status quo of the present in order to challenge the customs, traditions and conventions of the past and propositions of the future.