3. BEYOND REPRESENTATION: PICTORIAL TEMPORALITY AND THE RELATIONAL TIME OF THE EVENT

Pictures are often connected with the mediation of the event but, paradoxically, not with temporality as such. Although there are several existing approaches that focus on the interplay between the event and its literary representation, the relation between pictorial time and the temporal constitution of the event remains unexplored. The field of image theory has offered insights into the multiple dimensions of the picture's temporality. It has shown that the picture's temporality concerns not only the depicted event but also the picture's immanent modes of producing different temporalities within one pictorial plane. The picture thus not only makes visible but also generates multilayered times of the event. This article brings together insights from image theory and from theories of historical times to demonstrate the relationship between the times of the event and the inner logic of the picture. In order to identify the various qualities of the picture that structure the times of the event, this article uses the case study of Reinhart Koselleck's practical and theoretical work with pictures. This article reads Koselleck's approaches to pictures alongside new insights concerning the relationality of time to the event and the picture. By exploring the picture's agency with regards to the politics of time, this article lays bare the picture's potential to structure the times of the event.     

HARTOG,KOSELLECK, AND RICOEUR: HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE CRISIS OF THE PRESENT

I enquire here into whether historical anthropology may serve to orient the critique of modes of temporalization under the conditions specific to what François Hartog designates as the contemporary regime of historicity. To this end, I bring Hartog into conversation with Paul Ricoeur: both arrive at a diagnosis of the crisis of the present on the basis of a parallel interiorization of the metahistorical categories of Reinhart Koselleck. Sharing a common interlocutor, the diagnoses at which they arrive are nevertheless quite different in nature, a result of the way in which these categories are inflected alternatively toward the anthropological perspective of fundamental temporalization and the semantic perspective of articulation at the level of “orders of time.” I suggest that the crisis of the present eludes the grasp of both and, with a view to gaining a more secure critical purchase over this crisis, propose a framework for bringing them into conversation.     

THE TIME OF POLITICS,THE POLITICS OF TIME,AND POLITICIZED TIME: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRONOPOLITICS

Time is so deeply interwoven with all aspects of politics that its centrality to the political is frequently overlooked. For one, politics has its own times and rhythms. Secondly, time can be an object and an instrument of politics. Thirdly, temporal attributes are used not only to differentiate basic political principles but also to legitimize or delegitimize politics. Finally, politics aims at realizing futures in the present or preventing them from materializing. Consequently, the relationship between politics and time encompasses a broad spectrum of phenomena and processes that cry out for historicization. In our introduction to this History and Theory theme issue on chronopolitics, we argue that the concept of chronopolitics makes it possible to do this and, in the process, to move the operation of rethinking historical temporalities from the periphery toward the center of historiographical attention as well as to engage in a dialogue with scholars from a wide range of disciplines. To this end, we propose a broad concept of chronopolitics by discussing existing definitions, by distinguishing between three central dimensions of chronopolitics (the time of politics, the politics of time, and politicized time), and by systematizing possible approaches to studying chronopolitics.     

HISTORIA MAGISTRA VITAE,INTERRUPTING: THUCYDIDES AND THE AGONISTIC TEMPORALITY OF ANTIQUITY AND MODERNITY

In this essay I discuss Koselleck's thesis on the dissolution of historia magistra vitae in modernity with a view to exploring how the modern historiographical engagement with Thucydides entails qualifications of this argument. Focusing on Barthold Georg Niebuhr's contextualization of Thucydides in a new temporality of “ancient and modern history,” I examine how modernity is caught between conflicting notions of its own prehistory, and that this conflict suggests that the forward‐leaping qualities of Neuzeit were co‐articulated with other temporal notions, and particularly an idea of historical exemplarity associated with historia magistra vitae. This plurality of times highlights an agonistic temporality linking antiquity and modernity: a model of conflicting times inscribed in a dialogue through which modern historiography interrupted the “useful” history of antiquity, while simultaneously being itself interrupted by it. By following this dialogue, I seek to test two interrelated hypotheses: a) that modernity produced a multitemporal scheme in which the ideas of differential time and the future were intertwined with a notion of historia magistra vitae as meaningful and sense‐bearing time; and b) that contradictions in this scheme arising from the modern confrontation with Thucydides's poetics challenges the opposition between historia magistra vitae and modern historical sense and configures a temporality that is self‐agonistic in the sense that it confronts historical actors before and beyond the terms through which they may be able to give it meaning. Formulated as a poetics of the possible, this notion is approached as a corrective alternative to the modern consideration of the future as distanced from the space of experience, but nonetheless as grounded in actuality and therefore largely mastered by human knowledge and action.     

7. SPACES,PLACES, AND THE HISTORIANS: A COMMENT FROM A GERMAN PERSPECTIVE

This article discusses from a specifically German point of view the “spatial turn” in history and the approaches of this forum. Many recent interventions have suggested that “space” (as opposed to “time”) was for many years a marginalized category in the German historiographical debate because of the ideological contamination of the category “space” by the Nazis. In the context of the vivid, lively “provincial” or “regional” history practiced in Germany, however, “space” has always played an important role. The debates around the spatial turn nevertheless provide the opportunity for deliberate reconceptualization. This comment proposes a relational understanding of “space” as the core of the new approach and identifies some central elements and terms for it: the differentiation of “spaces,”“places,” and “locations”; movement in space; the division of space in the form of boundaries; finally, the ordering and classification of space in the form of written or visual representations.     

CONNECTING THE NEW POLITICAL HISTORY WITH RECENT THEORIES OF TEMPORAL ACCELERATION: SPEED,POLITICS, AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION OF FIN DE SIÈCLE BRITAIN

The political impact of “social acceleration” has recently attracted much attention in sociology and political theory. The concept, however, has remained entirely unexplored in the discipline of history. Although numerous British historians have noted the prominent position of acceleration in the late‐Victorian and Edwardian imagination, these observations have never expanded beyond the realm of rhetorical flourish. The present paper attempts to build a two‐way interdisciplinary bridge between British political history and the theories of social acceleration that have been posited in the social sciences, arguing that both British political historians and acceleration theorists have much to gain from further dialogue.     

THE SECTILIA PANELS OF FARAGOLA (ASCOLI SATRIANO,SOUTHERN ITALY): A MULTI‐ANALYTICAL STUDY OF THE GREEN,MARBLED (GREEN AND YELLOW), BLUE AND BLACKISH GLASS SLABS

Analyses at the Cu–K, Fe–K and Mn–K edge were performed to study the green, marbled (green and yellow), blue and blackish (deep greyish olive green) glass slabs decorating three sectilia panels from the archaeological site of Faragola. Results indicate that all slabs were made by mixing siliceous sand with natron, sometimes probably mixed with small percentages of plant ash. Cu²⁺ and Pb antimonates should be responsible for the opaque green colours. The dark green and yellow portions of the marbled slabs are respectively comparable to the slabs comprising only one of these colours. Cu²⁺ together with Ca antimonates probably produced light blue slabs, whereas cobalt was used to produce dark blue slabs. We consider it possible that the abundance ratio of Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ and the complex Fe³⁺S^2? would have an effect on the blackish slabs. The contribution of Mn cannot be ascertained even if it could have played a role in darkening glass colour. The comparison between the chemical composition of Faragola samples and several glass reference groups provided no conclusive evidence of provenance; whereas, the presence of a secondary local workshop can be hypothesized.     

WHITE,FRIEDLÄNDER, “… AND THE REST IS HISTORY”: A PAX HISTORIANA

Close analysis of the ostensive disagreement between Saul Friedländer and Hayden White on the necessarily literary character of Holocaust historiography shows instead of conflict two compatible and even mutually supportive emphases in that project: the assumption in modernist and disruptive narratives as elsewhere of a “corpus of facts,” together with the role of figurative discourse in conveying relevant features of events that linear chronological or causal narratives alone do not convey.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF PLASTERS AND MORTARS AS A TOOL IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDIES: THE CASE OF LARDIRAGO CASTLE IN PAVIA,NORTHERN ITALY*

Plasters and mortars from Lardirago Castle (Pavia, northern Italy) have been characterized by means of petrographical and chemical analyses in order to achieve technical and historical evidence of material production. The study focused on the oldest nucleus of the structure, where hidden plastered masonry has been discovered recently. Textural and compositional data of the binder and the aggregate fractions were collected by means of optical microscopy and electron microscopy coupled with microanalysis. These data permit the identification of building materials with similar technical and compositional characteristics, which can be related to different building phases.