| Abstract | The study presented below has been an effort in examining the interdependence between time and memory practices, and in particular in studying how memory is related to the generation of pasts, presents and futures. Drawing on a one-year ethnographical research project in a secondary vocational school for students from sociocultural minorities in Germany, I examine how material-semiotic orderings determine how students' development and everyday action is remembered and forgotten, and at the same time what kind of futures are made possible for the students. On the ground of a relational-materialist approach, I analyze symmetrically the interaction between students and reports, files or questionnaires, and other actants. My analysis challenges the modern model of the arrow of time by suggesting that memory includes uncertainty, and that it is impossible to predict how pasts, presents and futures relate to each other.
|
