Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary research group at CAS provided a unique opportunity to address and explore the research themes and objectives of After Discourse and its “mother project” Object Matters (funded by the Norwegian Research Council). Through individual and cooperative research, daily exchange, seminars, and workshops, we managed to scrutinize all the objectives and thematics outlined in our application. Thus, as an overall judgment this was a very successful undertaking!

Researchers bringing their own research to CAS to be merged with the particular objectives of this project, created very interesting synergies and new ways of approaching and articulating the After Discourse thematics.

It is important to emphasize that the full outcome and results of the stay at CAS cannot be conceived at the present moment. Research initiatives were started, new questions posed, publication and other disseminations started or planned, and what become of all this is yet to be seen. A number of outside scholars visited CAS for seminars, lectures and workshop, and the contacts established also with them offer new possibilities for research and collaboration. Thus, the larger network that emerged through the initiatives of our active group is indeed an important achievement.

While our approach to things and materiality is importantly theoretical we also worked from the premise that a new awareness and inclusion of things in social and cultural research must be grounded in the tactile experiences that emerge from direct engagements with them. The way we successfully managed to keep the “mundane material” a constant focus of attention, as explored through our main themes of memory, affects and ethics, was indeed a major achievement, and one well visible in our published and forthcoming articles and books. Another important achievement that is directly related to this is the rethinking of the concept of heritage. While for long being subjected to a social and cultural reductionism, where the question of use-value is predominant, the After Discourse group has approached heritage from different ethical and affective perspectives, and also questioned the dominant trope of preservation. Moreover, by working from a more inclusive understanding of heritage that also involves waste, pollution and the unwanted, we have explored the material “unruliness” of this present past, and the way it triggers involuntary memories.