ABSTRACT
Against the backdrop of the growing footprint of the future in contemporary lifeworlds (caught in the midst of rapid ecological and technological transformations), the chapter asks the question of whether the past still matters. It contends that the past matters inasmuch as contemporary societies do, in fact, make the past matter by relating pasts to presents and anticipated futures in societal practices and discourses ranging from the persistence of colonial practices to the burden of nuclear waste. In exploring the ways in which the past is made to matter, the chapter conceptualizes a variety of pasts, such as the unfolding past, the recurring past, the present past, the associated past, the inherited past, the ahistorical past, and the cultivated past.
