History and Theory 60, no. 4 (December 2021), 141-158 © Wesleyan University 2021 ISSN: 0018-2656 DOI: 10.1111/hith.12241 PREFIGURATIVE HUMANITIES EWA DOMAŃSKA 1 ABSTRACT In this article, I propose that a future-oriented project of prefigurative humanities will provide a much-needed framework for fostering alternative ways of approaching the past beyond history. I consider whether such future-oriented humanities, which are guided by the idea of critical hope and epistemic justice (understood as the inclusion of knowledges created in “epistemic peripheries”), might provide critical tools for imagining different scenarios of the future, as manifested in realistic and responsible utopias. The prototypes of such utopias might be found in art, film, literature, and his- tory as well as in real, everyday life. Following Ruth Levitas’s approach to utopia and Ariella Azoulay’s project of potential history, I also consider how utopia might function not only as a goal but as a method to revive more positive thinking about the future. Keywords: future, critical hope, epistemic justice, virtue epistemology, minor knowledges, potential histories, prefigurative humanities, realistic utopias This article serves as a provocation and a call for intellectual mobilization in the field of historical theory, which, as my research on new tendencies and emerging fields in the humanities and the social sciences has shown, is behind develop- ments in discussions in archaeology and anthropology on theoretical issues. As such, history has adapted less successfully to current changes and challenges in 1. This text contains ideas originally presented in two conference papers—“Sprawiedliwość epistemiczna w humanistyce zaangażowanej” [Epistemic Justice in the Engaged Humanities] (Nowa humanistyka: zajmowanie pozycji, negocjowanie autonomii [New Humanities: Adopting Positions, Negotiating Autonomy], Jagiellonian University, Kraków, 27–29 June 2016) and “Knowledge of the Past in the Search for Epistemic Justice” (2nd INTH Network Conference, Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil, 23–26 August 2016)—as well as in a plenary speech, “Prefigurative Humanities” (15th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Imperial College London, 5–7 July 2017). I would like to express my gratitude for comments, criticism, remarks, and suggestions offered by Guilherme Bianchi, María Inés La Greca, Fiona Jenkins, Victoria Carvalho Junqueira, Ulrich Timme Kragh, María Inés Mudrovcic, Elías José Palti, Mariela Solana, Verónica Tozzi, and Hayden White as well as by anonymous reviewers. My sincere appreciation to Elizabeth A. Boyle for intensive editing work. Fragments of this article appeared in “Sprawiedliwość epistemiczna w humanistyce zaangażowanej” [Epistemic Justice in the Engaged Humanities], Teksty Drugie 1 (2017), 41-59, and “Prefigurative Art and Micro-Utopias,” Public History Weekly, 13 April 2017, https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/5-2017-14/prefigurative-art-micro-utopias/. The transla- tion of this article was enabled by financial support from the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.