Regimes of Historicity

Presentism and Experiences of Time
Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-16376-7
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 530 g

Reihe: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism

François Hartog explores crucial moments of change in society's "regimes of historicity," or its ways of relating to the past, present, and future. Inspired by Hannah Arendt, Reinhart Koselleck, and Paul Ricoeur, Hartog analyzes a broad range of texts, positioning The Odyssey as a work on the threshold of historical consciousness and contrasting it with an investigation of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins's concept of "heroic history." He tracks changing perspectives on time in Chateaubriand's Historical Essay and Travels in America and sets them alongside other writings from the French Revolution. He revisits the insights of the French Annales School and situates Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory within a history of heritage and today's presentism, from which he addresses Jonas's notion of our responsibility for the future.

Our presentist present is by no means uniform or clear-cut, and it is experienced very differently depending on the position we occupy in society. We are caught up in global movement and accelerated flows, or else condemned to the life of casual workers, living from hand to mouth in a stagnant present, with no recognized past, and no real future either (since the temporality of plans and projects is inaccessible). The present is therefore experienced as emancipation or enclosure, and the perspective of the future is no longer reassuring, since it is perceived not as a promise, but as a threat. Hartog's resonant readings show us how the motor of history(-writing) has stalled and help us understand the contradictory qualities of our contemporary presentist relation to time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hartog, Francois

Hartog, François

Weitere Mitwirkende

Brown, Saskia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtsphilosophie, Philosophie der Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Presentism: Stopgap or New State?Introduction: Orders of Time and Regimes of HistoricityOrders of Time 11. Making History: Sahlins's Islands2. From Odysseus's Tears to Augustine's Meditations3. Chateaubriand, Between Old and New Regimes of HistoricityOrders of Time 24. Memory, History, and the Present5. Heritage and the PresentOur Doubly Indebted Present: The Reign of PresentismNotesIndex

Über Autor(innen)

François Hartog is a professor at the École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales and holds the Chair of Ancient and Modern Historiography. He is the author of many works, including The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History and Croire en l'histoire.

Saskia Brown is an experienced translator of French works in intellectual history, philosophy, legal theory, and art.