ABSTRACT
Anticipation is a burgeoning aspect of futures studies that seeks to use an attitude to the future to drive present creative actions. As such, it is both resolutely practical and philosophically speculative. We bring this sense of anticipation to considering the future by bringing it into collision with the concept of the contemporary. Using philosophical examination of the contemporary by Giorgio Agamben – itself informed by Friedrich Nietzsche’s development of the concept of the untimely – this article will argue that an anticipatory stance in relation to the future maps the characteristics of the contemporary: situated both inside and outside the present, courageously creating a present.
