Against periodization: Koselleck's theory of multiple temporalities

History and Theory

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 151-171

  Jordheim, Helge ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OSLO   (Norway)

Author keywords

Conceptual history; Historical time; Layers of time; Modernity; Periodization; Reinhart Koselleck; Temporality

Indexed keywords

EID: 84860746995     PISSN: 00182656     EISSN: 14682303     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00619.x     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. Reinhart Koselleck, "Über die Theoriebedürftigkeit der Geschichtswissenschaft" [1972], in Koselleck, Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), 302.
2. Cf., for example, "Moderne Sozialgeschichte und historische Zeiten" [1982], in Zeitschichten, 324: "If we historians want to develop a real theory, different from the social sciences in general, it must obviously be a theory that makes it possible to account for the transformation of temporal experiences."
3. Koselleck, "On the Need for Theory in the Discipline of History," in Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, transl. Todd Samuel Presner et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 4.
4. One important exception is Gabriel Motzkin; see, for example, "On Koselleck's Intuition of Time in History," in The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies in Begriffsgeschichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1996), 41-46;
5. "Über den Begriff der geschichtlichen (Dis-)Kontinuität: Reinhart Kosellecks Konstruktion der 'Sattelzeit,'" in Begriffene Geschichte: Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. Hans Joas and Peter Vogt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 339-358.
6. See also the recent article by Alexandre Escudier, " 'Temporalization' and Political Modernity: A Tentative Systematization of the Work of Reinhart Koselleck," in Political Concepts and Time: New Approaches to Conceptual History, ed. Javier Fernández Sebastián (Santander: Cantabria University Press & McGraw-Hill, 2011), 131-178.
7. Among the recent contributions, see Jörn Leonhard, "Erfahrungsgeschichten der Moderne: Von der komparativen Semantik zur Temporalisierung europäischer Sattelzeiten," in Joas and Vogt, eds., Begriffene Geschichte, 423-448;
8. and Michael Makropolous, "Historische Semantik und Positivität der Kontingenz: Modernitätstheoretische Perspektive bei Reinhart Koselleck," in Joas and Vogt, eds., Begriffene Geschichte, 481-413.
9. Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).
10. Koselleck, "Vergangene Zukunft der Frühen Neuzeit" [1968], in Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik historischer Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 19.
11. Koselleck, "Einleitung," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politischsozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), I, xv.
12. Koselleck, "'Erfahrungsraum' und 'Erwartungshorizont'-zwei historische Kategorien" [1975], in Vergangene Zukunft, 366.
13. The obsessiveness of this interest in the future is brought out in polemical fashion in Koselleck's first book Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, which was first published in 1959 and was translated into English in 1988
14. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (New York and London: Berg, 1988).
15. Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 87.
16. Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (London and New York: Verso, 1995), 13-14.
17. Lynn Hunt, Measuring Time, Making History (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), 75-76.
18. Koselleck, "Einleitung," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, I, xv.
19. J. G. A. Pocock, "Concepts and Discourses: A Difference in Culture? Comment on a Paper by Melvin Richter," in Lehmann and Richter, eds., The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts, 58.
20. Reinhart Koselleck, "A Response to Comments on the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe," The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts, in ibid., 69.
21. Already in the introduction to the first volume of the lexicon, Koselleck refers to the Sattelzeitidea as a "heuristic anticipation" (xv). For a more comprehensive discussion of the Sattelzeit in light of the theory of multiple temporalities, see Helge Jordheim, "'Unzählbar viele Zeiten': Die Sattelzeit im Spiegel der Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen," in Joas and Vogt, eds., Begriffene Geschichte, 449-480.
22. Koselleck, "Wiederholungstrukturen in Sprache und Geschichte" [2006], in Koselleck, Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte: Aufsätze und Vorträge aus vier Jahrzehnten, ed. Carsten Dutt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010), 98-99.
23. See also "Was sich wiederholt," in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (July 21, 2005), 6.
24. Zammito has stressed this in "Koselleck's Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Practice of History," in History and Theory 43 (2004), 126.
25. Koselleck, Introduction to Zeitschichten, 9.
26. Zammito, "Koselleck's Philosophy," 133.
27. For a more sustained discussion of Koselleck and the linguistic turn, see Helge Jordheim, "Thinking in Convergences: Koselleck on Language, History and Time," Ideas in History 2, no. 3 (2007), 65-90
28. and Jordheim, "Does Conceptual History Really Need a Theory of Historical Times?" Contributions to the History of Concepts 6, no. 2 (2011), 21-41.
29. Koselleck, "Vergangene Zukunft der frühen Neuzeit," 18.
30. Martin Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975), 33.
31. Fernand Braudel, "Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue dureé," Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilizations 4 (1958), 725-753.
32. Foucault, L'archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 216.
33. Koselleck, "Einleitung," xiv.
34. Koselleck, "Über die Theoriebedürftigkeit," 307.
35. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17th ed. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), 22.
36. Koselleck, "Über die Theoriebedürftigkeit der Geschichtswissenschaft," 304.
37. Koselleck, "Geschichte, Geschichten und formale Zeitstrukturen, " in Zeitschichten, 137-142.
38. For a discussion of these examples, see Jordheim, "Unzählbar viele Zeiten," 460-461.
39. Koselleck, "Sprachwandel und Ereignisgeschichte," 34f.
40. Koselleck, "Historik und Hermeneutik," 111f.
41. Koselleck, "Hinweise auf die temporalen Strukturen begriffsgeschichtlichen Wandels" [2002], in Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 88.
42. Koselleck, "Sozialgeschichte und Begriffsgeschichte," 126.
43. Ibid., vi; Koselleck, "Hinweise auf die temporalen Strukturen begriffsgeschichtlichen Wandels," 92, 95.
44. Koselleck, "Hinweise auf die temporalen Strukturen begriffsgeschichtlichen Wandels," 92.
45. Koselleck, "Transformation der Totenmale im 20. Jahrhundert," in Transit: Europäische Revue 22 (Winter 2001/2002), 59-86;
46. Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999);
47. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001);
48. And Andreas Huyssen, Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
49. Koselleck never engages with the French structuralists, and only rarely refers to Saussure; his interest in the structuralist tradition is limited to the works of linguist Eugenio Coseriu and his work Synchronie, Diachronie und Geschichte: Das Problem des Sprachwandels (Munich: W. Fink, 1974).
50. For a discussion of the relationship between Koselleck and Coseriu, see Jordheim, "Thinking in Convergences," 76-78.
51. Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, 116ff.
52. Koselleck, "Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte," 125.
53. Cf., for example, Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics. Vol. I: Regarding Method (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
54. For a comparison of Koselleck and Skinner, see Kari Palonen, "Rhetorical and Temporal Perspectives on Conceptual Change," in Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 3 (1999), 41-59.
55. Cf. Dietrich Busse, Historische Semantik: Analyse eines Programms (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987).
56. Quentin Skinner, "Language and Social Change," in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 119-132.
57. Koselleck, "Vorwort," in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe VII (1992), vi.
58. Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, Hans Maier, Christian Meier, and Hans Leo Reimann, "Demokratie," in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe I (1972), 847ff.
59. see also Helge Jordheim, "Die 'Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen' als Konvergenzpunkt von Zeitlichkeit und Sprachlichkeit: Zu einem Topos aus dem Werk Reinhart Kosellecks," in Divinatio: Studia Culturalogica series 22 (2005), 77-90;