Future Trading Zones for the Study of Culture: An Interview with Peter L. Galison

Abstract

Jens Kugele: Thank you very much, Peter, for agreeing to this interview. I truly appreciate this opportunity to continue our conversations on possible futures of the study of culture and to include your perspective as a scholar and filmmaker in this dialogical form. In addition to your academic work as a physicist and historian of science, you have also been involved in the production of several documentary films. In your and Robb Moss’s documentary Containment (2015), for instance, you raise questions about possible futures when you shed light on governments’ practices in their efforts to (safely) contain overwhelming amounts of radioactive sludge for the next ten thousand years. Your film addresses the question of how we can communicate with future generations and, indeed, future cultures about these containment attempts. In your view, how can we in the academic study of culture make sure that we foster communication with future generations and with future cultures? What kind of questions, topics, and concerns are of central importance in this context? What kind of (new) genres, formats, and media might be helpful or even necessary in your view?