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Introduction: the New Metaphysics of Time Over the Last Several Years History and Theory, Virtual Issue 1 (August 2012) © Wesleyan University 2012 ISSN: 1468-2303 INTRODUCTION: THE NEW METAPHYSICS OF TIME ETHAN KLEINBERG Over the last several years, the editors of History and Theory have tracked a growing trend evident not only in the articles published in our pages but also in manuscripts submitted to the journal as well as articles published in other venues. In the broadest strokes, this trend can be described as a response to the perceived limitations of a discourse predicated on language, rhetoric, and the question of representation. Whether one subscribes to the idea that historians and theorists of history took a “linguistic turn” in the 1980s,1 an increasing number of articles and monographs have taken issue with the general influence of French “post- structuralism” or “postmodernism,” with constructivism, and specifically with the work of Hayden White. These works seek to address the perceived faults of an overemphasis on the issues of “language” and representation that has obscured or misdirected the goal of actually addressing the past by perpetually worrying over how we might go about that task. Combined with the growing interest in material culture, the ways of science, and the nature of the body, it is hard to doubt the return to the real. But what strikes us as most interesting about this trend is the way that some of these theorists have sought to move beyond the emphasis on language and representation not by returning to a crude variant of objectivism or empiricism but by re-examining our relationship to the past and the past’s very nature and by attempting to construct a new metaphysics of time. This reconsideration of time within historical theory and historical experience poses fundamental and exciting questions that beg for response. In this, our first, virtual issue, we have gathered together a series of articles and review essays from the last eight years that announce and engage the new metaphysics of time. These works all share a common starting point as well as overlapping concerns but, perhaps more important, they articulate some radical divergences in terms of their suppositions and assertions about the status of the past as well as our rela- tionship to it. In short, while in all cases the topic is “time,” the presentation of how time works in relation to the project of history is a contested subject. Ironically, time is also on the editorial mind these days. The editors of History and Theory have long been aware of the ways that digital publishing might change 1. See the American Historical Review Forum on “ Historiographic ‘Turns’ in Critical Perspec- tive,” and Judith Surkis, “When Was the Linguistic Turn: A Genealogy” in particular. American Historical Review 117, no. 3 (June 2012), 698-813. 2 ETHAN KLEINBERG the timing and organization of publication and have been keen to take advantage of the temporal dexterity online publishing affords without sacrificing the coher- ence and thematic inflection that we see as the most important benefit of more traditional editorial practices. In this virtual issue we think we have been able to bring together the best of both worlds. What I mean by this is that in the past, once the editors of History and Theory identified a trend in the field, we would then attempt to foster discussion and production along these lines via a forum or theme issue. This would require soliciting articles and reviews that would then come to form a volume approximately a year, or perhaps two, after the initial idea. For some topics or themes this is still most certainly the best option. But what about when a series of articles form a substantive intellectual discus- sion, but do so over a sufficient number of years such that the discussion itself is diluted and obscured by the elapsed time between publications? Here, the benefits of digital publishing are apparent, as we are easily able to compress the elapsed time between these articles and place them in conversation and debate with one another. The editorial function here is to highlight an already existing group of themes and a vibrant discussion, in order to press readers to take notice of important developments and surprising interconnections. This is digital editing aware of itself and poised to make readers take notice of something important that they might not have initially noticed. To be sure, all of the articles included in this virtual issue are already accessible (or will soon be) with the use of the simplest internet search engine, as are myriad other articles on related topics. But the very nature of this massive availability, this practically infinite internet archive, makes the role and place of the academic editor perhaps more important than ever. To return to the issue of time, despite the immediacy of access to an almost endless number of articles, or actually because of it, the proliferation of possible trajectories can make it impossible to sift through those possibilities in a reasonable amount of time. It is certainly the case that competent scholars are judicious and careful researchers who can parse out the material they deem most useful for their work and scholarship, but it is the task of the academic journal to search for larger trends and developments and present them to the field as a whole. To this end we did not want to launch a vir- tual issue akin to a History and Theory’s “greatest hits” or amalgamate a group- ing of articles around an obvious thematic keyword. To our minds, these are each endeavors that our readers can achieve on their own. Instead, once we identified a forming trend around a coherent theme, in this case the new metaphysics of time, characterized by sharp disagreement in definition and application, we knew we needed to make this known to our readers. In what follows we have grouped the articles into three sections, each dealing with a distinct trend in the new metaphysics of time followed by a set of three review essays on recent books that likewise address the topic. The first section is on “Koselleck and Multiple Temporalities”; the second addresses “Presence”; and the third is on “Reconceptualizing the Past.” As you will see, the three sec- tions speak to one another both directly and indirectly, and the debate over the INTRODUCTION: THE NEW METAPHYSICS OF TIME 3 nature of time can be seen in shades of gray within each section and more sharply between them.2 The issue opens with what I consider to be the fastest growing trend in the theory of history, the influence of Reinhart Koselleck. While Koselleck has been a fixture in some areas of the theory and philosophy of history, his work began to have greater purchase with a more general audience after the publication of John Zammito’s review essay on Koselleck’s Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik, which appeared in the February 2004 issue of History and Theory. This piece is striking both for the clarity with which Zammito articulates Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities but also because of the way it sets up Koselleck as a counter to theorists of language and rhetoric such as Hayden White. “Despite recourse to artifices of language and theory in the construction of histories, despite the way that history adheres to forms of language and rhetoric, it is not exhausted by them. History cannot be indiscernible from fiction” (Zammito, 132). Here, one can see a convergence between Koselleck and theorists of “Presence” where they each seek to dismiss “radical anxiety about historical truth or the suborning of the disciplin- ary integrity by the claims of rhetoric (Hayden White) or textual hermeneutics (Gadamer)” (Zammito, 132). But this is where the convergence ends, for unlike the theorists of “Presence,” Zammito makes clear the ways that Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities is predicated on a transcendent mechanism that is decid- edly absent from the “Presence” model. What’s more, because on this reading the past flows “in and through the present at varying velocities,” it is explicitly the historian’s burden to “drill down to reach back” (Zammito, 133). This then reveals what Zammito considers to be the “flip-side of these ongoing pasts in the present, the ontic absence of the past in itself, and the consequence that history is cast nec- essarily upon the artifices of its theorization to retrieve what the past meant” (134). This too presents a sharp divergence from the theorists of “Presence” (though it coincides with some aspects of Paul Roth’s article in the third section) because it announces the importance of the theoretically sophisticated historian in untangling the multiple temporalities of the past as they flow into our present. In 2012, Helge Jordheim sought to build on Zammito’s article but in a sort of Aufhebung; he argues that Koselleck actually incorporates the emphasis on lan- 2. It is worth noting that the articles here were selected because of the way they point to distinct differences that are made brighter and clearer by putting them in conversation with one another. This being said, they are all part of the larger trend of the new metaphysics of time that is equally exciting because it is not so neatly or obviously bound. To explore some of the varieties of this trend, one can look to articles published in History and Theory such as: December 2011: Hans Kellner, “Beyond the Horizon: Chronoschisms and Historical Distance”; October 2011: Branko Mitroviç, “Attribution of Concepts and Problems with Anachronism,” and Ryan Anthony Vieira, “Connecting the New Political
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