What Will They Say About Us?

A phone in a drawer. A hospital wristband. A photograph of newly planted trees. What might these ordinary things tell future generations about the lives we led? In What Will They Say About Us?, Theresa van der Walt invites us into an imagined future archive, where a researcher pieces together our civilisation from what remains. Each discovery opens a question about the world we are making: what held our attention, whose work went unseen, who had the power to decide and who lived with the consequences? Moving between imagined scenes, documented history and everyday experience, the book explores technology, consumption, childhood, land, care and the promises we make to those who come next. It follows the work that continues after a hopeful beginning: tending the trees, repairing the machine, caring for someone after they leave hospital and ensuring that a warning reaches someone able to act. With warmth and a clear sense of our unequal freedoms and responsibilities, van der Walt asks what each of us can reasonably change and what requires institutions to act. She invites us to look more closely at the lives around us and the conditions we are leaving behind. For anyone wondering how to live responsibly in an uncertain world, this is a thoughtful exploration of care, inheritance and the possibility of leaving something worth receiving. The archive is still open. We are still making the evidence.