The governance of possible futures and the regime of modern historicity: Critical theory and the modality of possibility

Abstract

The inaugural project of German Critical theory was to break away from the cult of facts in order to investigate the real possibilities of the present. Part of sociology has also made the possible and the relationship to the possible its central object. Such a task has met with a considerable effort on the part of government agencies to pre-empt the legitimate definition of what is possible. The social sciences were mobilised to this end. We offer a schematic account of these efforts in order to situate the extent to which the definition of possible futures is an issue of struggle in which Critical theory and sociology have a role to play. The article examines the question of the future through its close link to the category of the possible, at two levels that are often treated separately: at the level of the problem of ‘governmentality’ and its close link to the question of forecasting and probability; and at the level of the ‘regimes of historicity’ from which to consider the possible with a view to collectively reappropriating the determination of the future.