Related Papers
'The Times They Are a-Changin'. On Time, Space and Periodization in History, in: Mario Carretero, Stefan Berger and Maria Grever (eds.), Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education, Houndmills: Palgrave 2017, 109-133.
Chris F G Lorenz
In this chapter, I will first analyze some of the recent evolutions in the study of historical time and focus on the much discussed relationship between history and modernity. In the first part, I will zoom in on Reinhart Koselleck’s influential idea that ‘exponential acceleration’ is the core of modernity and how this idea also informs the new varieties of ‘presentism’ as formulated by Francois Hartog and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht. In the second part, I will highlight the connection between the rise of modernity and the rise of history as a discipline in general and how ‘modern history’ as a period has created all other periods in particular. In the third part, the origins of the modern conception of linear time will be traced, including its ‘relativization’ in physics since Einstein and the connection of time and space. Next, the question how the rise of postmodern and postcolonial ideas have influenced historical thinking concerning time will be addressed. In the fourth and last part, I will return to the issue of periodization in history, including the interconnections between periodizing time and the construction of space and identity.
Time Out of Joint: Synchronizing Time in a Desynchronized World
Jilt Jorritsma
What does it mean to 'be of your time'? Cast adrift in a technological society that can hardly keep up with its own tempo, people increasingly experience the sensation of lagging one step behind the times in which they live. In the grip of this acceleration, it has been argued that we humans have become anachronisms in the sense that we are no longer in sync with our time. This experience, of no longer being in sync with the time in which one lives, forms the starting point of this thesis. By focusing on the synchronous discontinuities that exist within a given timeframe, this thesis holds that what is stake when the experience of time becomes problematic seem to be the conditions of a culture to achieve a coherent sense of self. It appears that we have lost the ability to unify the multiple times into a hom*ogeneous whole, leading to feelings of fragmentation and disintegration.
(ed. with Chris Lorenz) Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
2013 •
Berber Bevernage, Lynn Hunt, Claudia Verhoeven, Stefan Tanaka, Chris F G Lorenz, William Gallois, peter osborne, François HARTOG, Constantin Fasolt, Lucian Hölscher, Jonathan L Gorman
Thirteen expert historians and philosophers address basic questions on historical time and on the distinctions between past, present and future. Their contributions are organised around four themes: the relation between time and modernity; the issue of ruptures in time and the influence of catastrophic events such as revolutions and wars on temporal distinctions; the philosophical analysis of historical time and temporal distinctions; and the construction of time outside Europe through processes of colonialism, imperialism, and globalisation. Table of Contents Introduction Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz: Breaking up Time – Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future 1. Time and Modernity: Critical Approaches to Koselleck’s Legacy Aleida Assmann: Transformations of the Modern Time Regime Peter Fritzsche: The Ruins of Modernity Peter Osborne: Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time 2. Ruptures in Time: Revolutions and Wars Sanja Perovic: Year 1 and Year 61 of the French Revolution: The Revolutionary Calendar and Auguste Comte Claudia Verhoeven: Wormholes in Russian History: Events ‘Outside of Time’ François Hartog: The Modern Régime of Historicity in the Face of Two World Wars Lucian Hölscher: Mysteries of Historical Order: Ruptures, Simultaneity and the Relationship of the Past, the Present and the Future 3. Thinking about Time: Analytical Approaches Jonathan Gorman: The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions Constantin Fasolt: Breaking up Time – Escaping from Time: Self-Assertion and Knowledge of the Past 4. Time outside Europe: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalisation Lynn Hunt: Globalisation and Time Stefan Tanaka: Unification of Time and the Fragmentation of Pasts in Meiji Japan Axel Schneider: Temporal Hierarchies and Moral Leadership: China’s Engagement with Modern Views of History William Gallois: The War for Time in Early Colonial Algeria"
(co-editor Berber Bevernage), Breaking Up Time. Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
2013 •
Chris F G Lorenz
http://www.v-r.de/pdf/titel_inhalt_und_leseprobe/1009655/inhaltundleseprobe_978-3-525-31046-5.pdf
Chris F G Lorenz
In diesem Beitrag beleuchte ich die jüngsten Entwicklungen innerhalb der Forschungen zur historischen Zeit und mich dabei auf das vieldiskutierte Verhältnis von Geschichte und Moderne konzentrieren. Der erste Teil wird die einflussreiche These Reinhart Kosellecks betrachten, der zufolge der Moderne eine exponentielle Beschleunigung zugrunde liegt, und der Frage nachgehen, inwieweit dieses Konzept neuere Varianten des »Präsentismus« beeinflusst hat, wie sie beispielsweise von François Hartog und Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht formuliert worden sind. Ich erörtere zum einen, inwieweit Kosellecks Zeitauffassung und Periodisierungsvorschlag modern und eurozentrisch ist und zum anderen, weshalb Koselleck gerade in den 1970er Jahren damit begann, die historische Zeit zu problematisieren. In einem zweiten Schritt wende ich mich dem engen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Aufstieg der Moderne und jenem der Geschichte als wissenschaftlicher Disziplin zu und diskutiere, inwiefern die »Neuzeit« alle anderen historischen Epochen hervorbrachte. In einem dritten Teil gehe ich den historischen Ursprüngen des modernen Konzepts linearer Zeit nach und frage insbesondere nach dem Einfluss postmoderner und postkolonialer Kritik an der Teleologie westlicher Periodisierungen auf das historische Denken. Abschließend wende ich mich dem Verhältnis von »leerer«, chronologischer Periodisierung zu »gefüllter«, substantieller Periodisierung zu. Es wird der performative Charakter von Periodisierungen betont und erörtert, wie dieselben im Verbund mit Raumkonstrukten kollektive Identitäten schaffen.
'Blurred Lines. History, Memory and the Experience of Time', International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 2014, Vol. 2, No. 1, 43-63
Chris F G Lorenz
This article argues that fundamental controversial parts of the past – that since 1990 have been labeled as “catastrophic”, “post-traumatic”, “terroristic” and “haunting” – are overstretching the normal “historical” concept of “the past”. This is the case because historians normally presuppose that the past does “go away” – and therefore is distant and absent from the present. The presupposition that the “hot” present transforms into a “cold” past by itself, just like normal fires extinguish and “cool off” by themselves, has been constitutive for history as a discipline. This process of “cooling off” is often conceived of as the change from memory to history. The first part of this article connects the rise of history as the discipline studying “the past” to the invention of the “modern” future in the late eighteenth century and to the introduction of a linear and progressive notion of time. Next, the rise of memory as the central notion for understanding the past will be connected to the implosion of the future and of progressive linear time at the end of the twentieth century. This implosion was predominantly caused by the growing consciousness since the late 1980’s of the catastrophic character of the twentieth century. The second part argues that present definitions of the relationship between history and memory have typically remained ambiguous. This ambiguity is explained by the problematic distinction between the past and the present. Historians have been rather reluctant in recognising the fact that this fuzzy distinction represents a problem for the idea of history as a discipline as such.
Time in our Time: On Theology and Future-oriented Memory
Robert Vosloo
Programa eletiva PPGH 2017.2 Aceleração histórica, conceitos de movimento e experiências do tempo na contemporaneidade
Rodrigo Turin
Objetivo: O objetivo da disciplina é tematizar fenômenos, vocabulários e linguagens teóricas que permitam refletir acerca da experiência temporal na sociedade contemporânea, mais especificamente sobre a dinâmica da aceleração histórica e seus efeitos sociais, políticos e intelectuais. A partir de determinados eixos temáticos, serão discutidas diferentes perspectivas analíticas, entrecruzando reflexões da teoria da história, da sociologia e da antropologia, assim como serão trazidos estudos de casos específicos, vinculados a fenômenos do Brasil contemporâneo, a serem analisados conjuntamente em sala.
Afterlife of Events: Perspectives on Mnemohistory
2015 •
Marek Tamm
In the last few decades, we have witnessed a rearticulation of the traditional relationship between the categories of past, present and future in Western societies. It has enabled the historian's gaze to shift more freely than ever before so that the past no longer appears as something final and irreversible but persists in many ways in the present. The recognition of this new situation has given rise to a novel approach in historical research, called 'mnemohistory' by Jan Assmann. Mnemohistory is interested not so much in the factuality as in the actuality of the past – not in the past for its own sake, but in its later impact and reception. This volume looks at the perspectives of mnemohistory, argues for a redefinition of the notion of 'event', and proposes to conceptualize the link between 'event' and 'mnemohistory' by re-introducing the concept of 'afterlife' (Nachleben), first employed by Aby Warburg in the 1910s.
History and Theory
Time, Narrative and Fiction: The Uneasy Relationship between Ricoeur and a Heterogeneous Temporality
2015 •
Harry Jansen
ABSTRACT In Time and Narrative, Paul Ricoeur confirms the relationship between time experience and how it is epitomized in a narrative by investigating historiography and fiction. Regard-ing fiction, he explores temporality in three “novels of time 'Zeitromane']: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, and À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. Ricoeur perceives the temporalities as hom*ogeneous; however, in my view, the novels contain at least three different temporalities. Mann seeks a new temporality by ironizing a romantic time of rise and fall and Woolf configures a time we can call the simultaneity of the dissimultaneous. In his analysis of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, Ricoeur explicitly dismisses a Bergsonian approach to temporality. In my opinion, Bergson defends a heterogeneous time that is apparent in Proust’s novel.
