CHRONOCENOSIS: HOW TO IMAGINE THE MULTIPLICITY OF TEMPORALITIES WITHOUT LOSING THE EMPHASIS ON POWER AND CONFLICTS

The twentieth century witnessed the historicization of the categories of time and space. Instead of functioning as a universal category, moving from the past to the present and from the present to the future, time has multiplied into temporalities, and historians have looked for adequate metaphors to describe this multiplicity, its many ways of moving forward and backward, its acceleration and decelerations, its entanglements, and its conflicts and struggles for hegemony. The editors of Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History offer a thought-provoking concept by translating biocenosis, the coexistence of different species in the same environment, to time studies and thus using the term “chronocenosis” to refer to different temporalities sharing the same embattled space. The volume covers a large variety of case studies—ranging from early modern Chinese historical novels to attempts to bring together social and biological time in the discussion of the Anthropocene—and draws together disciplines that are not usually discussed in studies of temporalities, disciplines ranging from law to the history of science.     

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.     

HOW TO REINVENT THE FUTURE?

This review essay discusses the historical Zeitdiagnosen in recent scholarly literature, focusing in particular on Jérôme Baschet's Défaire la tyrannie du présent: Temporalités émergentes et futurs inédits (2018). Baschet's book constitutes an original contribution to ongoing debates about our temporal condition in at least three aspects. First, although relying partly on earlier theoretical literature (principally the works of François Hartog), it more significantly draws on the author's long-term engagement with the Zapatista movement. Second, it does not confine itself merely to diagnosing our temporal situation (presentism) but proposes strategies for exiting it. And finally, Baschet's theory of temporality is one part of his far more extensive enterprise of “exiting capitalism,” a project aimed at reconceptualizing the existing foundations of Western civilization. Although previous authors have defined our contemporary regime of temporality by focusing on the present and the disappearance of the future, Baschet claims that it is more accurate to speak about a burgeoning of futures—of completely new modalities of the future that differ significantly from modernist notions of it.     

RESISTING MODERN TEMPORALITIES: TOWARD A CRITICAL HISTORY OF BREAKS IN TIME

This is an exceptionally sophisticated and wide‐ranging book on historical time, the construction of the past, present, and future, and the problem of periodization. Its major thesis is that temporal divisions of history are produced by social actors, including historians, who break up time from their distinct temporal positions. The book inquires about the theoretical underpinning and historical constitution of temporal breaks: the premises sustaining notions of pastness, presentness, and futurity; the relations constructed by these notions between historiography and other fields of knowledge; the specific articulation of shifting and mutually competing temporalities both within and beyond European history; and the political implications of temporal divisions. Throughout the book the breaking up of time is studied as a fundamental political operation. To engage with temporal breaks, the authors contend, is to engage with the historian's contemporary, to negotiate borders that act upon the present, including the border that safeguards the presumed autonomy of the time of history‐writing. Focusing especially on the temporality of European modernity, the book invites reflection on the politics of time as articulated through categories of historical totalization imposed on modernity's others. But it also suggests that this imposition gave rise to acts of resistance indicating how historical time defies the analytical categories through which social actors seek to organize and control it. This dialectic of imposition and defiance is made evident through the comparative study of temporal concepts that replace one another, compete with one another in certain historical settings without any of them constituting a final historical representation. It is also traced in the continuing significance of suppressed or “failed” temporalities, which are nonetheless still capable of challenging and qualifying our insights into historical time. The book's key contribution lies precisely in the attempt to intensify this challenge by translating the contradictory constitution of modern temporality into a language of self‐critique.     

Islamism and Iran’s Islamic Period Museum

The Islamic Period Museum of Iran was established, almost 16 years after the Islamic Revolution, as an addition to the previous National Museum building – the Iran Bastan, or Ancient Iran Museum – in 1996. By examining the components of state Islamism, the space of the museum and key exhibits, this paper reveals the analogous relationship between the museum and state ideology. That relationship suggests that the museum embodies fundamental ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in Iranian state Islamism. Those ambiguities and inconsistencies are only concealed, in the museum as in the ideology, by employing traditionalist rhetoric with regard to religion and identity.     

The heritage ‘NGO’: a case study on the role of grass roots heritage societies in Iran and their perception of cultural heritage

This paper examines the activities of a group of heritage enthusiasts in Iran. Grass roots heritage activism is a relatively recent phenomenon that appeared in Iran since the late 1990s. They are increasingly operating collectively as cultural or heritage NGOs. They have diverse socio-economic origins and political views. However, as this paper argues, they share a common ground in their activities; one that maintains an ambivalent and critical relationship with the state and official definitions of heritage and identity. Referring to interview and other data collected during fieldwork in Iran, this paper traces and analyses the contours of that common ground and argues that there is a nascent heritage movement in the country. The impact and contribution of these emerging and self-reflective heritage movements to Iranian identity, which is reflected in their embracing of diversity and the notion of historical continuity, reveal the dynamism and complexity of the cultural and political landscape of contemporary Iranian society. They also reveal the importance of generating further scholarship in the field of Iranian cultural heritage. In conceptualising the characteristics of a nascent heritage movement in Iran, the paper makes a new contribution to the approach of existing scholarship in the broader field of heritage studies.     

The tyranny of transnational discourse: ‘authenticity’ and Irish diasporic identity in Ireland and England

Through the prism of current state discourses in Ireland on engagement with the Irish diaspora, this article examines the empirical merit of the related concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Drawing on recent research on how Irish identity is articulated and negotiated by Irish people in England, this study suggests a worked distinction between the concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Two separate discourses of authenticity are compared and contrasted: they rest on a conceptualisation of Irish identity as transnational and diasporic, respectively. I argue that knowledge of contemporary Ireland is constructed as sufficiently important that claims on diasporic Irishness are constrained by the discourse of authentic Irishness as transnational. I discuss how this affects the identity claims of second‐generation Irish people, the relationship between conceptualisations of Irishness as diasporic within Ireland and ‘lived’ diasporic Irish identities, and implications for state discourses of diaspora engagement.     

“WHAT HAS POSTERITY EVER DONE FOR ME?”: FUTURE GENERATIONS,INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE,AND THE CHRONOPOLITICS OF DISTANT FUTURES

“Future generations” play a key role in current political debates. In the context of the climate crisis especially, political controversies are often framed as moral problems of “intergenerational justice.” This article aims to historicize the use of the concept of “future generations” in modern political discourse and to uncover its long—and often ambivalent—history. Its main argument is that talking about “future generations” was part of an attempt to integrate (distant) futures into the political discourse of the time. The first part of the article outlines a theoretical perspective on the relationship between generations and temporalities. The second part focuses on how anticipating “future generations” became an important part of the history of utopian thinking and political planning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the realm of demographic and economic discussions. The third part analyzes the emergence of “future ethics” and “intergenerational justice” as important political discourses in the 1970s. This part refers both to the academic debates about “future generations” and to the way political decision-makers used the concept to legitimize their policies. The article argues that the concept of “future generations” should not be taken as an ethical principle that transcended the political debates of the present. Rather, it was itself the result of intense political controversies.     

The safe spaces ‘in-between’ – plays,performance and identity among young ‘second generation’ Somalis in London

ABSTRACT

The article elaborates on how young UK-born self-identifying Somalis use performance to create ‘liminal’ spaces that allow them to explore and express the often contradictory registers of self and belonging through play and the carnivalesque. The plays they write, practise and perform transform community places into ‘safe spaces’ that open and invite dialogue on the intergenerational conflicts they experience around identity and expected behaviour. Far from being fictions, in making visible the liminality in the daily lives, these young people communicate ‘the reality behind the role playing mask’ [Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre – The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ, 155]. This research is based on 6 months ethnographic research with the Mustaqbal youth group based in London. It contributes to rethinking ‘safe space’ by illuminating how young people use the ‘stage’ to express elements of their lives they are otherwise unable to voice.     

3. RADICALIZING TEMPORAL DIFFERENCE: ANTHROPOLOGY,POSTCOLONIAL THEORY,AND LITERARY TIME

This article is an attempt to address on a theoretical level an antinomy in postcolonial approaches to the question of temporal difference. Current scholarship tends both to denounce the way in which the others of the Western self are placed notionally in another time than the West and not only analytically affirm but indeed valorize multiple temporalities. I elaborate on the two problematic temporal frameworks—linear developmentalism and cultural relativism—that belong to a colonial legacy and generate the antinomy in question, and then proceed to discuss possible alternatives provided by a Koselleck‐inspired approach to historical time as inherently plural. I thereby make two central claims: (1) postcolonial conceptions of multiple temporalities typically, if tacitly, associate time with culture, and hence risk reproducing the aporias of cultural relativism; (2) postcolonial metahistorical critique is commonly premised on a simplified and even monolithic understanding of Western modernity as an ideology of “linear progress.” Ultimately, I suggest that the solution lies in radicalizing, not discarding, the notion of multiple temporalities. Drawing on the Brazilian classic Os sertões as my key example, I also maintain that literary writing exhibits a unique “heterochronic” (in analogy with “heteroglossic”) potential, enabling a more refined understanding of temporal difference.     

遗产认同:概念、内涵与研究路径

本文从遗产产生、发展及其遗产本质属性特征的视角提出了遗产认同的概念,并从“遗产身份”和“遗产认同”两个角度解释了遗产认同的内涵,即前者强调遗产的客观属性,后者强调主体对遗产的认知。在此基础上,根据遗产与认同的四种交叉关系,作者提出了遗产认同相应的研究路径,即从时间视角的遗产化过程分析每个阶段的遗产认同;以尺度的视角从表征层面的空间身份和文化身份特征理解遗产认同;从非表征层面的遗产实践分析相关者如何通过具体行动表征和重构自己的身份认同。遗产认同概念的提出与研究不仅可能丰富新文化地理学的景观研究理论,也为遗产旅游地治理提供理论借鉴,未来还需对遗产认同与遗产保护利用关系做进一步探讨。     

女国民的兴起:近代中国女性主体身份与文学实践

The construction of “citizen-state” relations in the intellectual world of modern China and the establishment of individual citizenship in political discourse have opened up a political and discourse sphere for modern women to strive for new identities, wherein some intellectually advanced women have managed to establish their individual identity as “female citizen” by carrying the debate on the relationship between women and the state with regard to their rights and responsibilities, and on the relationship between gender role and citizenship. Though the idea of “female citizen” was not provided with a political theory of practical significance, the subject identity of women, however, was repeatedly spoken about and strengthened in brand-new literary practices, resulting in a dynamic discourse of “female citizen”; in the meantime, disagreements concerning the concepts of “female rights,” “civil rights,” and “natural rights” have all helped create significant tension inside the related discourse sphere. Translated by Feng Mei from Nankai Xuebao 南开学报 (Journal of Nankai University), 2008, (4): 40–47     

Tehran’s subway: gender,mobility, and the adaptation of the ‘proper’ Muslim woman

Tehran’s subway, the most affordable means of public transportation in the city, offers a useful context to study the relationship between women’s spatial mobility, the construction of self, and social production of space. This study focuses on Line 1 of Tehran’s subway that connects Tehran’s Bala Shahr (Northern Tehran) and Paeen Shahr (Southern Tehran) neighborhoods. This study draws upon 46 semi-structured interviews with women who were using subway Line 1 in the fall and winter of 2012. The average hour-long interviews examine how women’s emotional states as well as their perceptions of self and space vary as they traverse the city on Line 1. Representing a cultural as well as a spatial transect through the city, the perceptions of women on subway’s Line 1 convey the repudiation of the state’s attempt to promote a singular Muslim female identity. The findings suggest that similar to women’s perception of space, their gendered identities are constantly changing through the enhanced mobility that is facilitated by Tehran’s subway system. In contrast to what is presumed in the West, with a simple change in their hijab style or make-up, Iranian women innovatively negotiate contrasting spaces.     

基于旅游数字足迹的西安旅游流网络结构研究

Web2.0时代,游客通过互联网获取信息、购买产品,而且还会分享游记、照片。这些游客留在网络上的游记、照片和其它痕迹都含有时空信息,称为\"数字足迹\"。本文以西安为例,利用游记和照片获取旅游数字足迹,采用数据挖掘方式提取时空信息,并结合社会网络分析法,试图总结西安国内散客旅游流时间及网络结构特征。结果表明,数字足迹研究的时间规律和其它调研结论基本一致;旅游节点间分布不均衡;旅游网络密度低、结构分层明显。本文基于旅游数字足迹的研究,具有很强的可推广价值,可为等旅游管理研究提供新思路。