The politics of time, the politics of history. Who are my contemporaries?

MUDROVCIC, MARÍA INÉS

Rethinking History. The Journal of Theory and practice

Taylor & francis

Lugar: London; Año: 2019 vol. 23 p. 456 - 473

1470-1154

In this article, I address the notion of "politics of time" from a heuristic perspective, that is, as a tool ? a "simple" instrument ? that helps to understand the way in which certain linguistic acts in the present (de)construct the articulations between past and future. The notion of "politics of time" serves to question how we set the boundaries of our present and create a temporal otherness that is alien to mere chronological simultaneity. First, I aim to show how in the nineteenth century contemporaneity began to be understood as ?sharing the present?. By the current century and in Europe, the original meaning derived from the Latin term cum tempore ? ?coexisting in the same time? ? changed. I focus mainly on the writings of Taine (1828-1893) and Tocqueville (1856). Second, I aim to show the presuppositions that underlie the experience of the present as contemporary. I discuss how universal time is ?spatialized? in the adoption of a single global meridian. I argue that the introduction of the norm into this universal time frame allows for distinction between a quantitative way (?distant?) and a qualitative way (backwards or ?lag behind?) of being in time. The norm conflates time and space and is a necessary condition for the creation of the contemporary as a reference time that discriminates synchronically and diachronically. I then explore some of the consequences that resulted from Western culture?s conception of the present as contemporary.KEYWORDS Politics of time; contemporaneity; present; temporal distance; temporal otherness.SCOPUS; ERIHPLUS