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History and Theory
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History and Theory 51 (May 2012), 151-171 Wesleyan University
Wesleyan 2012 ISSN:
University 0018-2656
2012 ISSN: 0018-2656
AGAINST PERIODIZATION:
KOSELLECK'S THEORY OF MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES
HELGE JORDHEIM
ABSTRACT
In this essay I intend to flesh out and discuss what I consider to be the groundbre
ing contribution by the German historian and theorist of history Reinhart Kosellec
postwar historiography: his theory of historical times. I begin by discussing the view,
prominent in the Anglophone context, that Koselleck's idea of the plurality of historic
times can be grasped only in terms of a plurality of historical periods in chronolog
succession, and hence, that Koselleck's theory of historical times is in reality a theory
periodization. Against this interpretation, to be found in works by Kathleen Davis, Pet
Osborne, and Lynn Hunt, among others, I will argue that not only is Koselleck's the
of historical times, or, with a more phenomenlogical turn of phrase, his theory of mult
temporalities, not a theory of periodization, it is, furthermore, a theory developed to d
periodization. Hence, at the core of Koselleck's work is the attempt to replace the idea
linear, homogeneous time with a more complex, heterogeneous, and multilayered notio
of temporality. In this essay I will demonstrate how this shift is achieved by mean
three dichotomies: between natural and historical, extralinguistic and intralinguistic, a
diachronic and synchronic time.
Among the most striking claims in the work of the German historian and theo
of history Reinhart Koselleck is the one raised in his essay "On the Need for T
ory in the Discipline of History" (ber die Theoriebedrftigkeit der Geschic
wissenschaft) that history can exist as a discipline only if it is capable of deve
ing what in the German original is referred to as eine Theorie der geschichtlich
Zeiten} Even though it is repeated in almost identical form in several ot
essays,2 this claim has rarely been the focus of discussion and research, at le
not in an Anglophone context. If not an explanation, at least a hint as to why t
claim has more or less been overlooked can be found in the English translation
the essay in question published in 2002 in the book The Practice of Conceptu
History, which came out in the series "Cultural Memory in the Present," with
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152 HELGE JORDHEIM
3. Koselleck, "On the Need for Theory in the Discipline of History," in Koselleck, The Practice of
Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner et al. (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2002), 4.
4. One important exception is Gabriel Motzkin; see, for example, "On Koselleck's Intuition of
Time in History," in The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies in Begriffsge
schichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute,
1996), 41-46; "ber den Begriff der geschichtlichen (Dis-)Kontinuitt: Reinhart Kosellecks Kon
struktion der 'Sattelzeit,'" in Begriffene Geschichte: Beitrge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed.
Hans Joas and Peter Vogt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 339-358. See also the recent article
by Alexandre Escudier, "'Temporalization' and Political Modernity: A Tentative Systematization of
the Work of Reinhart Koselleck," in Political Concepts and Time: New Approaches to Conceptual
History, ed. Javier Fernndez Sebastin (Santander: Cantabria University Press & McGraw-Hill,
2011), 131-178.
5. Among the recent contributions, see Jrn Leonhard, "Erfahrungsgeschichten der Moderne: Von
der komparativen Semantik zur Temporalisierung europischer Sattelzeiten," in Joas and Vogt, eds.,
Begriffene Geschichte, 423-448; and Michael Makropolous, "Historische Semantik und Positivitt
der Kontingenz: Modernittstheoretische Perspektive bei Reinhart Koselleck," in Joas and Vogt, eds.,
Begriffene Geschichte, 481-413.
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 153
the second section, I will give an initial presentation of some of the elements and
arguments that point in a radically different direction. These are brought out in
part by Zammito's philosophical reading and in part by Koselleck's own interpre
tation of Altdorfer's painting Alexander schlackt, which has become emblematic
of his theory of modernity. Finally, in the third section, I will present a structure
for systematizing and reconstructing Koselleck's theory of historical times in a
way that doesn't sever the links to his methodological innovations and empirical
work in the history of concepts. In this final part of the essay I will demonstrate
how Koselleck develops his theory of multiple temporalities by means of three
dichotomies that all serve to deconstruct the idea of one linear and homogeneous
chronological time: between natural and historical time, extralinguistic and intra
linguistic time, and synchronic and diachronic time. Together these dichotomies
present a way of resisting the impending danger of history being brought to a
standstill by methods and approaches focusing on language and texts.
In a series of essays collected in the volume Futures Past, which was publi
in English in 1985 and which introduced Koselleck to an Anglophone audie
he presents his version of the advent of modernity understood as a shift
one experience of time and history to another, from history as a homogene
unchanging space to history as an indefinite and unstoppable movement o
cess, to which every historical object, every action, every intention is subje
"What is taking place," he writes, "is a temporalization of history, leading t
special kind of acceleration that characterizes our modern world."7 To des
this process Koselleck develops a set of metahistorical or anthropologic
egories. At the threshold of modernity in the period of Western history th
has famously coined Sattelzeit,8 the relationship between "space of experie
[Erfahrungsraum]" and "horizon of expectation [Erwartungshorizont]" bec
increasingly asymmetrical and discontinuous. Thus our experiences, our hi
cal knowledge at any given point in time, no longer serve as a solid foundatio
predicting the future, or generally, for knowing what to expect.9 From this
disjunction of experience and expectation, "modernity," in terms of a histo
period spanning from the eighteenth century until today, became characteriz
a discontinuous relationship to the past in terms of experiences, tradition
origins, and correspondingly, by an almost obsessive interest in the future i
form of expectations, plans, prognoses, and utopias.10
6. Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT P
1985).
7. Koselleck, "Vergangene Zukunft der Frhen Neuzeit" [1968], in Koselleck, Vergangene
Zukunft: Zur Semantik historischer Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), 19.
8. Koselleck, "Einleitung," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch
sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1972), I, xv.
9. Koselleck,'"Erfahrungsraum' und 'Erwartungshorizont' zwei historische Kategorien" [1975],
in Vergangene Zukunft, 366.
10. The obsessiveness of this interest in the future is brought out in polemical fashion in
Koselleck's first book Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der brgerlichen Welt, which
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154 HELGE JORDHEIM
Theology. Although she is unfamiliar with Koselleck's work on the theory of his
torical times, other than what is translated in Futures Past, she accepts that it "is
undoubtedly of profound methodological importance for studies in temporality,"
but given this importance, there is "all the more reason to consider his reliance
on periodization."11 Her criticism draws its considerable force from the argument
that "his essays have made it easy for theorists to bypass the political intricacies
of periodization, and support reductive versions of temporality."12 In this context
Davis's claim that Koselleck, influenced by his personal and academic relation
ship with Schmitt, "substitutes a medieval/modern break for the absent foundation
of sovereignty"13 and thus uses periodization of European history "to sanitize its
politics,"14 is less important than her foundational argument that Koselleck's stud
ies of temporality must be understood in light of his reliance on periodization.
From a vantage point that contextualizes Futures Past in debates about moder
nity and secularization in postwar Germany, where Schmitt and other teachers of
Koselleck, such as Karl Lwith and Hans Blumenberg, played major parts, Davis
has good reasons for insisting on the primacy of periodization. But by employing
a less biographical perspective that draws on a larger part of Koselleck's work,
the relationship between theory of modernity and theory of historical times can be
framed quite differently. From this point of view periodization appears as one of
many elements in a more comprehensive theory of multiple temporalities, which
as a whole seems rather to defy periodization than to support it. Nevertheless, this
argument for an inversion of Koselleck's theoretical project doesn't belie the basic
premise of Davis's claim that there is a potential conflict between Koselleck's
studies of temporality and his consistent theoretical and empirical attempts to
understand the specific features of modernity.
was first published in 1959 and was translated into English in 1988: Critique and Crisis: Enlighten
ment and the Pathogenesis of Modem Society (New York and London: Berg, 1988). Never as suc
cessful as Futures Past, this book's role in establishing Koselleck as someone working in the tradition
from Carl Schmitt and the German historiographical discussions about the emergence of modernity
still shouldn't be underestimated, as can be seen in the work of Kathleen Davis.
11. Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization
Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 87.
12.ibid.
13. Ibid., 88.
14. Ibid., 87.
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 155
15. Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (London and New York:
Verso, 1995), 13-14.
16. Ibid., 13.
17. Lynn Hunt, Measuring Time, Making History (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008), 75-76.
18. Ibid., 76-77.
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156 HELGE JORDHEIM
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 157
23. Zammito has stressed this in "Koselleck's Philosophy of Historical Time(s) and the Prac
of History," in History and Theory 43 (2004), 126.
24. Koselleck. Introduction to Zeitschichten, 9.
25. Zammito, "Koselleck's Philosophy," 133.
26. Ibid., 125.
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158 HELGE JORDHEIM
27. For a more sustained discussion of Koselleck and the linguistic turn, see Helge Jordhei
"Thinking in Convergences: Koselleck on Language, History and Time," Ideas in History 2, no
(2007), 65-90: and Jordheim, "Does Conceptual History Really Need a Theory of Historical Time
Contributions to the History of Concepts 6, no. 2 (2011), 21-41.
28. Koselleck, "Vergangene Zukunft der frhen Neuzeit," 18.
29. Ibid., 19.
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 159
early teachers, wrote: "Any narrative of the past depicts something which lies
[was still liegt]." He continues: "this kind of historical narrative explicitly fre
history [ist eine ausdrckliche Stilllegung der Geschichte] whereas in rea
history is something that always takes place [ein Geschehen]." Any historic
approach in the truest sense of the word, Heidegger affirms, is bound to ask "
is still taking place, even though it is supposed to be in the past."30
For the painter Altdorfer, the Stilllegungto use Heidegger's very apt te
allows him to depict all the details in this theater of war, be they the differ
troop formations, the fleeing Persians, the attacking Macedonians, the lands
the rising sun and the moon, as all parts of the same historical moment, the
synchronic unity. For the historian Koselleck, however, the main chall
of analyzing this painting consists in retrieving from it history's characte
Geschehen, of something that is taking place. In other words, Koselleck's in
tion is to explore the ways that the frozen, synchronic moment of the paintin
in fact penetrated by a strong diachronic movement much in the same way
Alexander penetrates the Persian lines. Koselleck puts different elements in
painting into motion, in time and in history, spanning a period of more than
years from the battle itself in the year 333 bce to the French Revolution. Fr
the perspective of this long diachronic movementsimilar to what the Fre
historian, and one of Koselleck's most significant sources of inspiration, Fern
Braudel, referred to as la longue dure31Altdorfer's painting marks but a
instant, a moment about to disappear in the stream of history.
In his essay Koselleck analyzes this synchronic moment and its representat
in a way that makes it possible to regain its historicity. Thus, the numbers on
banners, almost invisible to the naked eye, and in the same way the name "A
ander Magnus" painted on the shields on one of the horses, unfold a diachr
temporality. Obviously, they are anachronisms, or, to use a term that appears
quently in Koselleck's work, Ungleichzeitigkeiten, instances of nonsynchron
ity, noncontemporaneity. Going into battle, banners high, no one could possi
know how many soldiers in each legion would die. Likewise, Alexander had
the time of the battle not yet received the epithet "the Great." These are elem
of a later history that are introduced into the painting as if they were con
poraneous with the events represented. In Koselleck's temporal hermeneutic
of history the analysis of these nonsynchronicities, these Ungleichzeitigke
serves to illustrate the extent to which this painting still represents a Gesche
history taking place. The painting freezes history, but Koselleck's analysis se
in motion again by pointing at the elements that are nonsynchronous, that be
in another time. These elements are not entirely separated from the time of
painting but are linked to it through a diachronic historical movement that
have been invisible to Altdorfer but is all the more visible to us. Hence, Al
fer's painting as a historical representation, as Stilllegung, is imbued with
inherent historicity that restores its character of Geschehen as part of a diachro
movement.
30. Martin Heidegger, Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1975), 33.
31. Fernand Braudel, "Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue dure," Annales: conomies, soci
ts, civilizations 4 (1958), 725-753.
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160 HELGE JORDHEIM
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 161
If one assumes that historical time remains embedded within natural time without being
entirely contained in it; or, to put it differently, that whereas chronological time may be
relevant for political decisions, historical interrelations cannot be measured with a clock;
or, to put it differently yet again, that the revolution of the stars is no longer (or not yet
again) relevant for historical time, we must find temporal categories that are adequate to
historical events and processes.37
testable inconsistencies in Koselleck's work, pointed out by Davis, are in fact part
and parcel of a theory designed to defy periodization that relies in many of its fac
ets on the paradox of this very same and highly questionable historical logic. The
particular convergence of historical and metahistorical categories in Koselleck's
work dictates that the metahistorical or pronouncedly theoretical efforts continu
ously venture beyond the limits of the historical material. An example is when
Koselleck discusses how the synchronicity of the nonsynchronous, presumably
one of the chief characteristics of the "modern" experience of history, can also
be observed in the works of Thucydides, Augustine, and Bossuet in terms of a
"condition for possible histories."40
Prior to the Sattelzeit, argues Koselleck, the process of history had been organ
ized according to natural categories such as the rise and setting of the sun and
the moon, the change of seasons, or the birth and death of members of the ruling
dynasties. In response to questions about the beginning and the end of history,
this natural chronology was extended by theological or mythological categories.
In both cases a system different from and external to history itself imposed its
divisions on the historical process. To describe the change taking place in the
eighteenth century Koselleck paraphrases Kant: "So far history has conformed to
chronology. Now it's about making chronology conform to history.'"41 Follow
ing this ambition, the program of Enlightenment historiography was to organize
historical time according to categories obtained from history itself.
On a historical as well as on a metahistorical level, the "destruction" of natu
ral, but also mythological or theological, time, in the singular, and the rise of a
theory of historical times, in the plural, are due to a notion of human experience,
Erfahrung. To put it differently, the move from "time" to "times" can take place
only through the phenomenological mediation of human experience. Obviously,
there will always be natural and chronological time: the sun will rise and set,
seasons will change, and people will grow old and die. Far from denying this fact,
Koselleck wants to draw our attention to other sets of temporal experiences, such
as "progress, decline, acceleration or delay, the not-yet and the not-anymore, the
before and the after, the too-early and the too-late, the situation and the duration"
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162 HELGE JORDHEIM
and their role in political processes and events.42 In the end, Koselleck argues in
an article from 1973, these examples can be reduced to three modes of temporal
experience. First is "the irreversibility of events," the before and the after in
historical successions. Second is "the repeatability of events," both in terms of
two presumed identical events and in terms of constellations or typologies. Las
is what he terms "the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous [die Gleichzeitigkei
der Ungleichzeitigen]," implying that historical successions may have the same
natural chronology but totally different temporal organizations, for instance in
the case of Utopian ideologies projecting their political and social ideals into th
future.43
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 163
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164 HELGEJORDHEIM
52. Ibid.
53. Koselleck, "Historik und Hermeneutik," lllf.
54. Koselleck, "Hinweise auf die temporalen Strukturen begriffsgeschichtlichen Wandels" [2002],
in Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 88.
55. Ibid., 89.
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 165
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166 HELGE JORDHEIM
the coming of a new era, the utopia of the communist society; third, it intervene
in the present by summoning the workers to the barricades and urging them to
bring down czarist rule. Moreover, Koselleck adds in one of his articles, it is not
only concepts that have their own internal temporal structures but "the same can
be said about sources [Quellen]."61 In other words, it is not only single concept
but entire texts that can be read and interpreted in terms of how they refer to o
point at the past, the present, and the future. What's more, this strategy can be
applied beyond the investigation of texts; in Koselleck's later work on mon
ments and cultures of memory, as well as in a series of influential works dealing
with the presence of the past in the present by scholars such as Aleida Assmann
Svetlana Boym, and Andreas Huyssen, the same kind of temporal structures or
layers prove to be at work in other parts of our surroundings, such as landscapes
city scapes, buildings, objects, practices, and so on.62
Koselleck's both theoretical and methodological innovation provides an effec
tive tool for challenging the logic of periodization. On the first level of tempora
ity the concepts change their meanings and uses diachronically in time, that is
natural extralinguistic time. But this diachronic movement is stopped or frozen
as soon as we choose to study a concept at a specific point in history, in a spe
cific Zustand, situation, or discourseeven though a certain sense of movemen
remains due to the temporal displacements between language and reality. On the
second level of temporality, however, the diachronic movement that appeared
to be frozen, stillgelegt to use Heidegger's term, is repeated within the concepts
themselves as an internal, that is, intralinguistic temporal structure. Hence, even
if we choose to study a particular situation or discourse there will always be con
cepts or even texts within this situation or discourse that, due to their tempora
organization, pointing at the past, the present, and the future, unveil a diachroni
movement through the synchronic moment. This then brings us to my last point
the final instance of multiple temporalities, in other words, the final tempora
dichotomy developed in Koselleck's work.
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 167
tradition becomes most explicit in his third and final step developing his theory of
multiple temporalities. The point of departure is the dichotomy of the synchronic
and diachronic introduced by Saussure in the Cours de linguistique gnrale as
a way of setting himself off from the dominant tradition of diachronic linguistics
and later turned into a theoretical dogma in the works of French structuralists and
poststructuralists such as Roland Barthes, Claude Lvi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan,
Jacques Derrida, and to a certain extent, Michel Foucault.
In his lectures, Saussure famously shifts the focus of linguistic investigation
from the diachronic, the movement of language through and in history, to the syn
chronic, the structural and systematic aspects of a single language at a particular
time. In what later scholars have described as an attack on the complete domi
nance of diachronic and historical perspectives, Saussure argued that historical
change is something that takes place on the level of parole and thus cannot be the
object of linguistic study.64 In response to structuralist and poststructuralist theory,
historical scholarship faces a rather difficult and potentially fatal choice. Namely,
give priority to language as a synchronic system in the sense of a "discourse," an
"episteme," or a "culture," and risk suppressing parole, diachronic change, and
movement entirely. Or, conversely, ignore completely the synchronic, structural
aspects of language and return to a notion of history as a linear progression in
which linguistic expressions can serve only as sources for reconstruction of his
torical events or as post festum representations. Faced with this dilemma that has
emerged from a rather dogmatic reading of Saussure, Koselleck insists on think
ing about language and history in a way that encompasses both diachronic and
synchronic temporalities. Conceptual history, he argues in an essay from 1972,
"transcends the absolute alternative of diachrony and synchrony \fiihrt ber die
strikte Alternative der Diachronie und Synchronic hinaus]."65
As part of the theoretical framework for the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe
Koselleck offers a rather practical and methodological solution for overcoming
the dichotomy of the synchronic and the diachronic in the theoretical frame
work for the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. In writing the history of a concept,
Koselleck emphasizes, one always has to start by considering the concept at a
specific time and in a specific context. To define this first step he uses the term
"synchronic analysis,"66 which seems to be taken from linguistics but which he
rather associates with traditional historical criticism, Quellenkritik. To reveal the
contents of a concept, it is necessary to analyze the situation of the speaker and
the addressee as well as the possible intentions and interests at play, the imme
diate context, and so ona familiar practice in the work of every historian and
developed to the level of theory in the works of Cambridge School-contextualists
such as Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock.67 For Koselleck, however, the "syn
chronic analysis" marks only the initial step in the work of the conceptual his
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168 HELGE JORDHEIM
72. Cf. Dietrich Busse, Historische Semantik: Analyse eines Programms (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1987).
73. Quentin Skinner, "Language and Social Change," in Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner
and His Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 119-132.
74. Koselleck, "Einleitung," xxi.
75. Koselleck, "Vorwort," in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe
VII (1992), vi..
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 169
cept through history more or less up to our own time. But we need only take
closer look at one of these articles to realize that chronology or, in other words,
the diachronic is not the only temporal perspective in play here. For instance,
we could look up the concept of "democracy" around 1780, at a point in history
when the notion of democratic government is going through major political and
ideological changes.76 On the one hand, "democracy" is still a concept within
constitutional law, in the same way as "aristocracy" and "oligarchy," going back
to Aristotle's treatise on the different forms of government and used primarily
in scholarly debates on matters of law and government. On the other hand, and
at the same time, "democracy" is emerging as a much more general politica
concept used by different members of the public sphere to express their hope
or fears for the future, independent of theoretical or philosophical debates on th
advantages or disadvantages of various constitutional principles. According to
chronological and diachronic time, this would indicate that one meaning and use
of the concept of "democracy" precedes or succeeds another, but in the relevant
article in the Geschictliche Grundbegriffe this is clearly not the only possibility
On the contrary, these two meanings continue to exist alongside each other simul
taneously and in a sense as alternatives for a certain amount of time. To be abl
to explore this historical simultaneity of different conceptual meanings, we need
an analytical tool that is more sophisticated than the traditional idea of chrono
logical succession. The questions that conceptual history raises, Koselleck writes,
"cannot be answered only diachronically,"77 they are not exhausted by "chrono
logically enumerated word meanings," but must always take into account what
Koselleck refers to as "the systematic claim of a historical concept."78 Conceptua
meanings do not only succeed each other chronologically but co-exist, overlap,
or come into conflict with one another and thus enter into a synchronic, mul
tilayered structure. Hence, the relationship between synchronic and diachronic
time becomes much more complex. On a first level, the synchronic meanings or
contents add up to a diachronic history of the concept. On a second level, how
ever, the diachronic element reappears within the concept or the text itself, as a
structural relationship between past, present, and future.
Finally, we approach what could be seen as the most interesting and complex
object of these kinds of studies, in which the Saussurean "rigid alternative"
between the synchronic and the diachronic is replaced by a much more flexible
and diverse structure. According to Koselleck the task of Begriffsgeschichte is t
study the "different layers of conceptual meanings with different chronological
origins [die Mehrschichtigkeit von chronologisch aus verschiedenen Zeiten her
rhrenden Bedeutungen eines Begriffs]," or in another recurring formula, "the
synchronicity of the nonsynchronous, contained in a concept."79 As part of a par
76. Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, Hans Maier, Christian Meier, and Hans Leo Reimann,
"Demokratie," in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe I (1972), 847ff.
77. Koselleck, "Einleitung," xxi.
78.Ibid.
79. Koselleck, "Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte," 125; see also Helge Jordheim, "Die
'Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen' als Konvergenzpunkt von Zeitlichkeit und Sprachlichkeit:
Zu einem Topos aus dem Werk Reinhart Kosellecks," in Divinatio: Studio Culturalogica series 22
(2005), 77-90; and Jordheim, '"Unzhlbar viele Zeiten'," 471ff.
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170 HELGE JORDHEIM
Contrary to what both translators and critics tend to think, Koselleck's Theorie
der geschichtlichen Zeiten, designed to give history a much needed edge on th
social sciences,81 is not a "theory of periodization." The remarks, fragments, an
more sustained theoretical reflections scattered across all of his diverse and wide
ranging essays bring out a radically different picture; taken together they amount
to a theory that challenges and even defies periodization. Koselleck developed
his theory of multiple temporalities, organized in the form of temporal layers that
have different origins and duration and move at different speeds, as an alterna
tive to the linear and empty time of periodization. Thus the fact that historical
time is not linear and homogeneous but complex and multilayered accounts for
the futility of all efforts to freeze history in order to delimit and define breaks,
discontinuities, time spans, beginnings, and endings. Indeed, it accounts for the
futility of periodization itself.
In a systematic perspective, Koselleck's lifelong work to develop a theory of
multiple temporalities begins with the "destruction" of natural time and chro
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AGAINST PERIODIZATION 171
nology, giving way to three dichotomies between natural and historical, extra
linguistic and intralinguistic, and diachronic and synchronic timeconstantly
overlapping and interfering with each other. Together they form a highly flexible
and dynamic theory of competing and conflicting temporal experiences that are
at work in all human communication and action. Periods, discontinuities, and
structures of chronological succession form part of this theory, but so do nonsyn
chronicities, structures of repetition, sudden events, and slow, long-term changes.
By necessity, historiographical efforts to identify, delimit, and define a particular
historical time span equipped with a beginning and, in some cases, an end, are
able to account for only some of these layers, whereas others move at a different
speed and have a different rhythm and will evade the attempts to reassemble and
channel them into a relatively stable and homogeneous historical period.
Finally, the point of this essay has not been to reject, let alone resolve, the
paradox that continues to haunt Koselleck's work and its readers, demanding that
they, and we, accept that a theory intended to challenge periodization is itself, at
least in its origins, dependent on this very same historiographical logic. Rather, it
has been my intention to argue that in Koselleck's work the theory and practice of
periodization are but parts of a larger theory of historical times, which, as a whole
and in the way it insists on the multiplicity of historical temporalities, represents
one of the most viable alternatives to periodization as a way of organizing histori
cal knowledge and knowledge production.
University of Oslo
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