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The Chinese scholar-official Lin Zexu played a crucial role in the First Opium War in the 19th century. Since 1978, the myth surrounding the historical figure is used to legitimise current rulers' political power, to celebrate dominant values, and to promote a certain associated way of life.By analysing Chinese media representations of the myth of Lin Zexu, Angelo Maria Cimino identifies the social and cultural significance of a mediated historical knowledge. He examines cultural products such as feature films, digital images, documentaries, cartoons, and songs, analyses their discursive practices and the responses they spawn, and explains how multiple agents within the Chinese media continuously generate and re-affirm the myth's cultural network.

Building blocks are practical materials for playing, learning and working at kindergartens, schools, universities and companies. How did building blocks, which were primarily established as toys for children, come to be practical materials used in professional and educational settings?This study explores the historical implications of particular sets of building blocks in the interdisciplinary consolidation and transformation of techniques, materials, discourses and subjects. By mapping the genealogy of building blocks from Fröbel's »gifts« to their current systematization as interlocked blocks, this study proposes that building blocks should be understood not exclusively as concrete objects, but as the materiality of a combinatorial program, which delineates a modular system characterized by a code of composition, a context-neutrality and a semantic component.

This volume offers innovative ways to think about speculation at a time when anticipation of catastrophe in an apocalyptic mode is the order of the day and shapes public discourse on a global scale. It maps an interdisciplinary field of investigation: the chapters interrogate hegemonic ways of shaping the present through investments in the future, while also looking at speculative practices that reveal transformative potential. The twelve contributions explore concrete instances of envisioning the open unknown and affirmative speculative potentials in history, literature, comics, computer games, mold research, ecosystem science and artistic practice.