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 relationship 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 coherence 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 discussion, 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 virtual 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 sections 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 History with Recent Theories of Temporal Acceleration: Speed, Politics, and the Cultural Imagination of fin de siècle Britain;” May 2010: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Koselleck, Arendt, and the Anthropology of Historical Experiences”; October 2006: Eelco Runia, “Spots of Time,” Michael Bentley, “Past and ‘Presence’: Revisiting Historical Ontology,” and Ewa Domanska, “The Material Presence of the Past”; October 2007: Forum edited by Rama Mantena on Textures of Time: Sheldon Pollock, “Pretextures of Time,” Christopher Chekuri, “Writing Politics Back into History,” Rama Mantena, “The Question of History in Precolonial India,” and Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shul- man, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “A Pragmatic Response.” In addition, the reader can click on the “Find more content like this article” link at the bottom of each article to explore the many voices and issues published on the new metaphysics of time within the pages of History and Theory and beyond. 4 ethan kleinberg guage and rhetoric most often associated with the work of Michel Foucault but also of Hayden White, into his theory of multiple temporalities. Jordheim does so by providing an analysis of the ways that at the core, “Koselleck’s work is an attempt to replace the idea of linear, homogeneous time with a more complex, heterogeneous, and multi-layered notion of temporality” by means of “three dichotomies: between natural and historical, extralinguistic and linguistic, and diachronic and synchronic time” (Jordheim, 151). While Jordheim and Zammito both hold onto Koselleck’s historical imperative to reconceptualize time, as well as the privileged position of the historian in this endeavor, Jordheim argues that for Koselleck, time must be seen as both historical and metahistorical, and the emphasis on language and representation indicative of the work of figures like Foucault and White must be conserved. In this he diverges from the view of Zam- mito and the theorists of “Presence” as well. In the second section, on “Presence,” we have included three articles that I believe pose both the most comprehensive articulation of the “presence” paradigm: Eelco Runia’s 2006 foundational article “Presence” and also pieces by Ber- ber Bevernage (May 2008) and Anita Kasabova (October 2008) that demonstrate the way that movement is developing and changing. In “Presence,” Runia makes clear that his goal is to move away from the “representationalism, inaugurated by Hayden White’s Metahistory of 1973” that to his mind has lost its “vigor and lacks explanatory power when faced with recent phenomena such as memory, lieux de mémoire, remembrance, and trauma” (Runia, 1). Instead, Runia looks to the category of “metonymy” to articulate the way that historical reality “travels with historiography not as a paying passenger but as a stowaway. As a stowaway, as what is absently and unintentionally present on the plane of time . . .” (Runia, 1). Two aspects of Runia’s presentation of the way we relate to the past when placed in conversation with Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities are particularly striking. The first is that for Runia and the theorists of “presence,” no transcendent mechanism is at work, so that on their view the past is literally and materially present in the here and now. How exactly the past manifests itself along the “plane of time” is, however, difficult to discern. The second aspect that divides the “presence” paradigm from any derived from Koselleck is that for Runia, the role and the place of the historian is minimized; one might even argue that for Runia the historian (especially the theoretically inclined historian) is in fact an obstacle who alienates us from the presence of the past: from “‘being in touch’—either literally or figuratively—with people, things, events, and feelings that made you into the person you are” (Runia, 5). In his contribution, Berber Bevernage seizes on the work of Runia and others to apply “presence” to the category of “historical injustice.” Bevernage points out that “traditionally, the relationship between history and justice is dominated by the idea that the past is distant or absent (and with that, unalterable)” (Bevernage, 150), and that this has limited the historian’s ability to contribute to the quest for justice. This, Bevernage argues, is a fault that can be rectified by recourse to the “presence” paradigm and a “reconsideration of the (ontological) status of the past” that “can radically alter the relation between historians and ‘their’ past” (Bevernage, 151). It is worth noting that Bevernage is critical of Runia and introduction: the New Metaphysics of time 5 instead looks to the work of Ewa Domanska to rethink the dichotomous classifi- cation of “presence” and “absence”; this then leads him to incorporate the work of Jacques Derrida and a strategy of deconstruction into his use of “presence.”3 “Presence,” on this reading, is a means to achieve the Derridean deconstruction of metaphysical time. Here, not unlike in the work of Jordheim in relation to Zammito, we see that Bevernage’s use of “presence” seeks to rehabilitate and incorporate a discursive or linguistic strategy in the light of the critique proffered by Runia and the other theorists of “presence.” Like Bevernage, Kasabova seeks to refine and rethink “presence”: “I think Runia makes a good point but he does not argue for it or explain how it is possible. . . . I would like to adumbrate those conditions necessary for the re-identi- fication by means of which later generations are able to conceive of themselves as agents of unimaginable events that occurred at an antecedent time” (Kasabova, 332). But to do so Kasabova rejects Runia’s “endurantist presentism . . . , namely, that the past is present here and now.” She instead reformulates her understanding of how “presence” might work, utilizing a semantic approach to the past wherein “the tie between the past and present actions and events is the semantic ground–consequence relation: a past event is the antecedent grounding a present situation, explaining why it is the case” (Kasabova, 331). For Kasabova, this is a perdurantist account of event and actions as persisting occurrences, “that is, with different temporal parts or phases that can be accounted for by a tensed theory of time” (Kasabova, 333). While Kasabova conserves what one might call the historical mission of the “presence” paradigm, she rejects wholesale one of its key assertions, “the strong brand of realism” that claims “the past is present here and now” (Kasabova, 335). Thus Kasabova argues that Runia’s category of metonymy itself indicates his indebtedness to “linguistic exposition that operates semanti- cally and not physically” (Kasabova, 335). Here we reach an impasse between the work of Kasabova and Runia over the material presence of the past in the present (one not encountered by Bevernage). For Kasabova, our understanding of the past requires a chronesthesia that enables us to comprehend the way the past is accessible via language. One wonders whether she has returned to the grounds of Hayden White, though the rhetorical figures she marshals are synecdoche and anaphor. Here, “by means of synecdoche, the past can be partially present” (Kasabova, 349). What’s more, one can see continuity with Runia in that Kas- abova’s approach de-emphasizes the role of the professional historian and instead privileges other genres of nonfiction such as written recollections and memoirs. In the final section, “Reconceptualizing the Past,” we look to the work of two historical theorists, Noël Bonneuil and Paul Roth, who likewise believe the time has come to rethink our understanding of temporality as it pertains to historical theory. Bonneuil’s article, “The Mathematics of Time in History” from 2010, diagnoses all of the variants previously discussed as indicative of a desire for “connectedness” and “continuity,” which Bonneuil suggests “runs like a red

3. Ewa Domanska, “The Material Presence of the Past,” History and Theory 45, no. 3 (2006), 337-348; Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (New York: Routledge, 1994), and “Ousia and Gramme” in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 6 ethan kleinberg thread through the last fifty years of History and Theory” (Bonneuil, 28). All succumb—whether White, Koselleck, or the thinkers of “presence”—to a desire to make the past manageable. “Philosophers of history have not failed to associate connectedness and continuity: they perceive their metaphorical function as contributing to a story’s coherence and as providing a convenient expression of what is cause and effect. . . . Arguably, however, continuity is merely a facade, for the past could be ‘clearly discontinuous,’ like an avalanche—reflected in writing, by the multiple embedded statements in stories and stories in stories—or like an ineluctable succession of shifts along genealogical lines” (Bonneuil, 30). Given this line of thought, one might associate Bonneuil’s claims with those of Koselleck regarding nonsynchronicity and noncontemporaneity (Ungleichzeit- keiten) or of multiple temporalities, but Bonneuil’s ultimate aim is quite different. This is because to Bonneuil’s mind “most of our familiar concepts such as trajectory, equilibrium, optimum, probability, and sensitivity to initial conditions are taken from mathematics and physics” and thus he asks how well adapted they are “to dealing with the time of actors whose actions are intermingled with uncertainty?” (Bonneuil, 28). Bonneuil instead suggests reorganizing our view of historical time along the principles of “maintenance, acquisition, and victory” (Bonneuil, 29) in order to offer an alternative concept of dynamics that does not lend itself to one particular future or reflect a single past. This is a topology of time comprised of what Bonneuil calls “viability kernels, capture basins, and victory domains” (Bonneuil, 29, 42). The upshot of Bonneuil’s argument is that we reconceptualize historical time, and thus the practice of doing history, in a way that takes “uncertainty as a found- ing principle of the time of human beings” so as to “lead us away from the traditional mathematics of one-to-one associations and its principles of picking one solution-story complying with some preconceived scenario (a way of thinking that continues to be common in the soft sciences, for better or worse)” (Bonneuil, 43). To be sure, a world of capture basins and viability domains that presents multiple historical arcs and trajectories is one quite different from the dominant narrative strains of historical writing; the benefit that Bonneuil cites, “doing without the conjectures about one scenario that happened—something required in a narrativist approach—is to rely on facts rather than imagination” is certainly not one to which adherents of the work of White or Koselleck would acquiesce. On this view, historical writing would look very different. In our final essay, “The Pasts,” Paul Roth likewise seeks to offer a recon- figuration of the “possibility space of positions regarding the metaphysics and epistemology associated with historical knowledge” (Roth, 313). Here, we see a convergence between Bonneuil and Roth that distinguishes them from the two other groupings, for just as Bonneuil argues: “in history, as in mathematics, connectedness results from mental construction. The story in history plays the role of a trajectory in mathematics” (Bonneuil, 34); Roth asserts that “pasts are made and not found.” Roth frames his argument in terms of the “debate within analytic philosophy post-Danto” that “takes the metaphysical options regarding the reality of the past to be realism and antirealism” (Roth, 314). Roth’s position is that both realism and antirealism assume that there is only one past and that it is either introduction: the New Metaphysics of time 7 accessible or not. Roth’s alternative is to develop an “irrealist” account of history based in part on the work of Leon Goldstein and Ian Hacking. “On an irrealist view, historical claims ought to be treated as subject to the same conditions and caveats that apply to any other theory of empirical or scientific knowledge.” Because pasts are made and not found, “irrealism denies to realism the very intel- ligibility of any imagined view from nowhere, that is a determinately configured past subsisting sub specie aeternitatis.” The result is that a “plurality of pasts exists because constituting a past always depends to some degree on socially mediated negotiations of a fit between descriptions and experience” (Roth, 313). One can see how Roth’s critique of realism and antirealism is applicable to the work of Runia, Bevernage, and Kasabova as well, and while Roth’s emphasis on multiple pasts seems to coincide with Koselleck’s, they differ about the past’s ontological properties. Thus whereas Koselleck and theorists of “presence” posit that the past is an object of sorts to be discovered or at least that intrudes on our present in various ways, Roth claims there is no “past” in this sense. Instead, Roth contends that the past, or pasts, is a composite constructed in the present though comprised of details acquired from the past. This claim puts Roth in proximity to Bonneuil in that they both contend that we must move away from “one to one” scenarios predicated on a preconceived notion of what happened in the past. But here the similarity ends, because for Roth “an eventful historical past exists only as a result of human theorizing. History becomes an artifact of a disciplined imagination” (Roth, 319; his italics), whereas Bonneuil demotes the role and place of the imagination in the historical disciplines in his reorganization of our concept of historical time. To round out the issue we have included three review essays on recent publications that address the issue of temporality. Charles Bambach on David Cousins Hoy, The Time of Our Lives: A Critical History of Temporality; Nitzan Lebovic on Tyrus Miller’s edited volume, Given World and Time: Temporalities in Con- text; and Brian Fay on Espen Hammer’s Philosophy and Temporality: From Kant to Critical Theory. Each of these provides a substantive interrogation and survey of the current fascination with time. What’s more, Fay’s review essay points to what he considers to be some fundamental problems with Hammer’s assumptions about the nature of time that are also apt in regard to the other pieces and authors in this issue. The pieces compiled here are intended to speak to one another and build upon one another in a way that will provide the interested reader with a map to what we consider to be some of the most important issues currently facing theorists and philosophers of history. Our hope is that by bringing these essays together we can encourage discussion and debate among parties who might not otherwise be aware of their overlapping interests and assertions. Most important, however, we are adopting this new format to highlight and expose this developing trend that might otherwise be obscured over time, the very category it seeks to investigate.

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