Negotiating presentism: toward a renewed understanding of historical change

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article gives a critical examination considering the descriptive potential, explanatory limitations, and recent productive problematization of presentism. For several decades, notions of presentist temporality have occupied the forefront of debates about the nature of historical time, challenging the modern dynamic future-oriented temporal imaginary and theorizing the reign of an overwhelming present that assimilates the past and the future within its expanding scope. According particular attention to distinct interpretations from the work of François Hartog, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, and Hartmut Rosa, the article considers the rise of memory culture and suspension of future-oriented momentum as crucial characteristics of the presentist perspective. Referencing recent interventions by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Helge Jordheim, however, the paper argues that momentous changes across technological and ecological domains necessitate conceptual innovation capable of exceeding presentism’s static temporal economy.