Being contemporaneous in the West, or how to create boundaries

MUDROVCIC, MARÍA INÉS

Estocolmo

Conferencia; 3rd Conference of the International Network for Theory of History; 2018

International Network for Theory of History

Being contemporaneous in the West, or how to create boundariesMaría Inés MudrovcicUniversidad Nacional del Comahue-CONICETArgentinaIn this paper, I will try to show that contemporaneity is a way of being ?in? the present and that the ?in? or place of contemporaneity is the ?West?. In the wake of Casey and Ethington, I will argue that being contemporaneous ?in? the West is an event that ?makes place?.Contemporaneity and the West are two sides of the same coin creating boundaries that separate those who are ?non-contemporaneous? and belong to the ?Rest?. These ?non-contemporaneous? people are ?strangers? as Simmel described in 1908, i.e., they, who are far, are actually near. relation to them is a non-relation, because the boundaries established by the relation between the event (contemporaneity) and the place (the West) are founded on a normative basis. The very event that ?made place? when Western people experienced it as contemporaneous at the end of nineteenth century created the boundaries between Westerners and the ?others?. I embrace the idea that boundaries established by contemporaneity-the West cannot easily be overcome because they are normative laden. Therefore, when the norm changes, the boundaries change between contemporaneity-the West and the ?others? (at one time, the ?strangers? were on the other side of the Iron Curtain; today, they seem to belong to the Muslim World, etc.). I believe that addressing contemporaneity and the problem of denying coevalness from this point of view -an event making place- will help us to understand some of the challenges posited by some ?types? of global migration and some land reclamation movements of ?original people? (like the ?Mapuches? in Argentina and Chile).