Bloomsbury Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism

Is time out of joint? For the past two centuries, the dominant Western time regime has been future-oriented and based on the linear, progressive and homogeneous concept of time. Over the last few decades, there has been a shift towards a new, present-oriented regime or 'presentism', made up of multiple and percolating temporalities. Rethinking Historical Time engages with this change of paradigm, providing a timely overview of cutting-edge interdisciplinary approaches to this new temporal condition. Marek Tamm and Laurent Olivier have brought together an international team of scholars working in history, anthropology, archaeology, geography, philosophy, literature and visual studies to rethink the epistemological consequences of presentism for the study of past and to discuss critically the traditional assumptions that underpin research on historical time. Beginning with an analysis of presentism, the contributors move on to explore in historical and critical terms the idea of multiple temporalities, before presenting a series of case studies on the variability of different forms of time in contemporary material culture. List of Figures List of Contributors Introduction: Rethinking Historical Time, Marek Tamm (Tallinn University, Estonia) and Laurent Olivier (French National Museum of Archaeology, France) Part I: Presentism and New Temporalities 1. Out of Time? Some Critical Reflections on François Hartog's Presentism, Chris Lorenz (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands) 2. Return to Chronology, Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, Norway) 3. Coming to Terms with the Present: Exploring the Chrononormativity of Historical Time, Victoria Fareld (Stockholm University, Sweden) 4. The Transformation of Historical Time: Processual and Evental Temporalities, Zoltán Boldizsár Simon (Bielefeld University, Germany) Part II: Multiple Temporalities 5. Revolutionary Presence: Historicism and the Temporal Politics of the Moment, Hans Ruin (Södertörn University, Sweden) 6. Time Outside History: Politics and Ontology in Franz Rosenzweig's and Mircea Eliade s Reimagined Temporalities, Liisi Keedus (Tallinn University, Estonia) 7. Pictorial Times and the Times of History: On Seeing Images and Experiencing Time, Johannes Grave (Bielefeld University, Germany) 8. Time as History in Twentieth-Century Photography, Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin, Ireland) Part III: Material Temporalities 9. Heritage and the Untimely, Torgeir Rinke Bangstad (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Norway) 10. 'Let's Get Rid of That Old Stuff!' Family Heritage Objects in France at the Age of Presentism, Jean-Pierre Legendre (French Ministry of Culture, France) and Laurence Ollivier (French Ministry of Culture, France) 11. Death and Archaeology in the Present, Tense, Shannon Lee Dawdy (University of Chicago, USA) 12. Rewilding Time in the Vale do Côa, Caitlin DeSilvey (University of Exeter, UK) Conclusion: A Creed That Has Lost its Believers? Reconfiguring the Concepts of Time and History, Aleida Assmann (University of Constance, Germany) Index