History Without Chronology

History without Chronology Stefan Tanaka Copyright © 2019 by Stefan Tanaka Lever Press (leverpress.org) is a publisher of pathbreaking scholarship. Supported by a consortium of liberal arts institutions focused on, and renowned for, excellence in both research and teaching, our press is grounded on three essential commitments: to be a digitally native press, to be a peer- reviewed, open access press that charges no fees to either authors or their institutions, and to be a press aligned with the ethos and mission of liberal arts colleges. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. The complete manuscript of this work was subjected to a partly closed (“single blind”) review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines at https://www.leverpress.org/peerreview DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11418981 Print ISBN: 978- 1- 64315- 003- 1 Open access ISBN: 978- 1- 64315- 004- 8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938043 Published in the United States of America by Lever Press, in partnership with Amherst College Press and Michigan Publishing Manufactured in the United States of America Contents Acknowledgments v Member Institution Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 Digital Humanities 6 Occlusions and Inversions 13 Beginning: Histories without Chronology 17 Chapter One: Time Has a History 21 Nonmodern Times 24 “Absolute, True, and Mathematical Time” 31 Clock Time 33 Classing of Time and Space 38 Twentieth- Century Times and Classical Time 43 Chapter Two: History Has a History 51 Discovery of the Past 55 Performativity of History 62 Occlusion of Chronology 63 Particulars 65 Gesture of Exclusion 67 Tombs of Data 70 History as Myth 76 Interlude 79 Chapter Three: Heterogeneous Pasts 85 Inversion to Times 90 Internal Times 92 Duration 94 Units of Analysis 100 Appropriation: Observers, Information, and Stories 102 Uncertainty? 111 Chapter Four: Change and History 115 Twentieth- Century Times 120 Entropy 120 Circular Causality 122 Turbulent, Crumpled, Tattered Times 126 Layers of Time: Toward Turbulence 130 Crumpled Times 133 Tattered Times 139 Beginnings, Again 145 Coda 147 The Pasts They Are a- Changin’ 151 Humility 156 Works Cited 159 Notes 177 Index 195 iv Contents Acknowledgments Recently, I have been reminded that I have been working on pasts and history and time for decades. It makes me wonder to what extent my thinking has changed over the past thirty years! I think it has; yet such reminders point to repetition and hopes for improvement. But above all, it suggests that I have received the help of a large number of friends, colleagues, and institutions. These acknowledgments will no doubt overlook many— my apologies. In a sense, this manuscript has three origins. First, my recog- nition that time is an abstraction, not only something learned but something social and historical, came at an everyday moment. My then young daughter, who has a diurnal clock, came into our room on a weekend, asking if we were getting up. “Not until seven o’clock” was the answer. She returned several times in approxi- mately five minute intervals but then stopped; it was well after seven. It turned out that she became preoccupied and missed the moment when the minute hand reached twelve. She was waiting, now very patiently, for precisely seven o’clock. I learned something important that day; this turned my attention to not just pasts and history but time as an abstract concept, its connection to history, and how it orders our lives. I did not realize what I was getting into; it has been an intellectually enjoyable and stimulating yet long and meandering sojourn. Like so many historians, I figured I knew something about time. After teaching several seminars on time and space (once with Jim Fujii), I realized that I needed to concentrate on time. Back then, I believed that historians had not written much on time; perhaps that is true, but I now realize that there is a considerable literature on time throughout the recorded past. I am continuing to read, learn, and change my way of thinking. Many people and institutions have aided me as I wander through the thicket of writings. In particular, I have been guided by mentors and friends: Harry Harootunian, Luce Giard, and the late Masao Miyoshi. Harry continues to inspire, Luce in her elegant yet determined way kept me focused, and Masao showed me that I could move beyond my training in the history of modern Japan (and cajoled me forward). Each person set a tenor of inquiry, a high standard that started with my mentors Harry and Tetsuo Najita. Meetings, such as the symposium on “four modernities” at Witswaterand University organized by Dilip Menon, gave me confidence to see my work beyond Japan to Asia; the conferences of the International Network on Theory in History helped me decenter geography from my analyses. Berber Bevernage and his colleagues at Ghent have developed a wonderful occasion for ideas in history. And it was at a conference on historiography in Athens where the lecture by Antonis Liakos on modern Greek historiography helped me see the breadth of the system— in my mind, I replaced Greek with Japanese, and the isomorphism of temporal hierarchy in modern history was uncanny. The second origin occurred in a not- always- scintillating meet- ing (more than fifteen years ago) where the topic was the “death” of print publishing in the face of the internet. I commented to Michael Grossberg that we should do something to make the internet suitable for historical communication, not wait for it to change how history published. As a forward- looking editor, he responded vi ACknowledgments something like, “Good idea, Stefan; you do something.” This began my inquiry into digital media, the digital humanities, and now scholarly communication. This is the second rabbit hole— the intersection of digital media and academia. On the one hand, I embarked on a typical digital humanities track. I created a project and began to port material to the digital interface. My muse in this adventure has been Jan Reiff, who has provided sage advice as well as well as conversations that this exploration with digital media could be more. My first foray presenting research in the digital humanities was at the Confer- ence on Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts at Darting- ton. Thank you to Barry Smith and the committee for including me and to Ric Allsopp and Scott Delahunta for including my essay in Performance Research (2006). I was reminded that digital media also has a history (cliometrics) at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; thank you to Doug Howland for the opportunity. For some reason, Kenneth Price, Katherine Walter, and William Thomas invited me to the Nebraska Digital Workshop, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 2010. This was an important moment, reaffirming what I was trying to do but forcing me to consider time much more seriously than I had. Moreover, this was, and I hope is, a part of the future of the digital humanities, helping us think differently about scholarship, understanding, and dissemi- nation. Finally, I must acknowledge the collegiality and collabora- tion of Jessica Pressman, Katherine Hijar, and Maura Giles- Watson. Through SD|DH (San Diego Digital Humanities), we worked to fos- ter institutional presence (and to provide moral support/therapy) in the digital humanities locally. The third moment came amid my waywardness, reading and thinking about time and history but without clear direction. Kwai Ng, my colleague in sociology, called and asked me to present the Joseph Gusfield Lecture and suggested the surreptitious title of the last seminar I taught in the history department, “History as Media.” In the course of our discussion, I suggested “History ACknowledgments vii without Chronology.” This led to my Public Culture essay— I’m thankful to Fred Turner for encouraging me to submit my work to that fine journal. This book is an expanded (and modified) version of the inquiry I broached in that essay. This book would not have been possible without the environment of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)— both because and in spite of it. Above all, it is a place where contacts beyond disciplines are possible, though not without contention. First, when I relocated from history to the Department of Com- munication, I encountered Robert Horwitz; I send thanks to him for getting this going (my discussions started when Robert and I found ourselves in physical therapy sessions following opera- tions). I knew life would be better but had little idea how lib- erating it would become. This comment is not to be read as a criticism of my previous department; it is a worry on the ways that disciplines discipline, a tendency that often fosters risk- adverse intellectual practices. Academics all know this; I am still learning the different ways it happens. In short, I can now think about history in addition to practicing history. I am deeply grateful to all my colleagues in the department for our intellectually vibrant environment. The Laboratory for Comparative Human Devel- opment, founded and directed by Michael Cole, was a terrific environment for thinking about the processes and ideas of devel- opment and temporality. I thank Mike and the many people who visited and participated in the lab. Geof Bowker has become an important friend and confidant, which began in a class on time to first- year students that we taught outside of our home depart- ments.

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