Diskursanalyse og spørsmålet om historisk endring

Is discourse analysis only capable of understanding a history which stands still, which, in other words, appears as âfrozenâ? Does the set of theories and methods usually referred to as âdiscourse analysisâ, so instrumental in the rise of the new cultural studies at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, lead to what Heidegger has called eine Stillegung der Geschichte ? By means of re-reading some of the founding texts of discourse analysis in the structuralist/post-structuralist tradition, Saussureâs Cours and Foucaultâs Lâarchéologie du savoir, this article investigates both how the concept of langue tends to turn history into a synchronic and fixed network and at the same time how â in response to this problem â both authors in question envision the possibility of an alternative model for understanding the relationship between language and history, which is able to combine the systemic and the processual, the structural and the dynamic, the synchronic and the diachronic. The rudiments of this alternative model can be traced in the concepts and metaphors referring to discourse as something with a âthicknessâ, something multi-layered, in which there are different temporalities at work. These different temporalities, these âlayers of timeâ, according to a term by Koselleck, can never be reduced to the synchronicity of a system or â for that matter â of a rupture. They unfold their own temporal structures, which have to be analyzed separately

‘What about the coffee break?’ Designing virtual conference spaces for conviviality

Geography, like many other disciplines, is reckoning with the carbon intensity of its practices and rethinking how activities such as annual meetings are held. The Climate Action Task Force of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), for example, was set up in 2019 and seeks to transform the annual conference in light of environmental justice concerns. Mirroring shifts in geographic practice across the globe, these efforts point to a need to understand how new opportunities for knowledge production, such as online events, can operate effectively. In this paper, we offer suggestions for best practice in virtual spaces arising from our Material Life of Time conference held in March 2021, a two-day global event that ran synchronously across 15 time zones. Given concerns about lack of opportunities for informal exchanges at virtual conferences, or the ‘coffee break problem’, we designed the event to focus particularly on opportunities for conviviality. This was accomplished through a focus on three key design issues: the spatial, the temporal, and the social. We review previous work on the benefits and drawbacks of synchronous and asynchronous online conference methods and the kinds of geographic communities they might support. We then describe our design approach and reflect on its effectiveness via a variety of feedback materials. We show that our design enabled high delegate satisfaction, a sense of conviviality, and strong connections with new colleagues. However, we also discuss the problems with attendance levels and external commitments that hampered shared time together. We thus call for collective efforts to support the ‘event time’ of online meetings, rather than expectations to fit them around everyday tasks. Even so, our results suggest that synchronous online events need not result in geographical exclusions linked to time-zone differences, and we outline further recommendations for reworking the spacetimes of the conference

Synchronizing the World: Synchronism as Historiographical Practice, Then and Now

The final version of this research has been published in History of the Present. © 2017 University of Illinois Pres

Blant spioner og diktere - opplysning og konspirasjon i Tyskland på 1700-tallet

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Historiemedvetande, tidsregimer och synkronisering

© 2016 Makadam Förla

Welten in Übersetzung : oder Plädoyer für ein Lexikon des Plurals

Die Begriffsgeschichte ist vom Singular besessen. Pluralformen kommen nur unsystematisch und am Rande vor. Darin gleichen die mehrbändigen Lexika, Gumbrechts "Pyramiden des Geistes", den allgemeinen Wörterbüchern, in denen der Plural gemeinhin nur abgekürzt und kodiert zwischen Klammern vorkommt: "(-en, ‑en)". Der Obergrundbegriff ist für Koselleck bezeichnenderweise der "Kollektivsingular", ein Wort, das die Fähigkeit verloren hat, einen Plural zu bilden. Begriffe wie 'Geschichte' und 'Fortschritt' sind im Plural vorgekommen und haben damit verschiedene Prozesse und Zeitverläufe beschreiben können. Aber im Laufe des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts haben eine Verengung und eine Vereinheitlichung stattgefunden, die zur Verdrängung der Pluralbildungen führten. Plötzlich haben sie nicht mehr die Kraft, distributive Pluralformen in die Welt zu bringen, 'Geschichten' und 'Fortschritte', die eine mehrzeitige Welt voraussetzen. Nunmehr treten sie nur im Singular, mit kollektivem Subjekt auf. 'Fortschritt' heißt jetzt immer Fortschritt der Menschheit. Ein für alle Mal grenzt die Begriffsgeschichte Parallelwelten, Multiversen, die Realität der Quantenphysik aus der Semantik der Begriffe aus, im selben Moment, als sie zu "unseren Begriffen", so Koselleck, werden. Um dieser Tendenz entgegenzuwirken, sollte über ein Lexikon des Plurals, der Pluralbildungen nachgedacht werden, ein Lexikon "Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe 'pluralis'", oder "Geschichtliche Grundpluralbildungen"

Blant spioner og diktere: Opplysning og konspirasjon i Tyskland på 1700-tallet

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In the Layer Cake of Time.Thoughts on a Stratigraphic Model of Intellectual History

In this essay, I set off from a presumption that many of the theoretical and methodological debates which have been dominating the field of what we – loosely and without large claims to epistemological or sociological precision – could call “intellectual history” are really debates about how to deal with time in history. Time should here be understood both in a chronological sense, referring to the succession of years, decades, even centuries, as well as to precise historical dates, which are evoked in the study of human thought and language, and in a phenomenological sense, as the organization of temporal experiences according to specific patterns and figures, such as periodizations, narratives of progress or decline, growth and extinction, as well as speeds and rhythms, continuities and breaks

TIDENS HENGSLER: Historieteoretiske refleksjoner om synkronisering og skalering fra Beda til i dag

Denne artikkelen diskuterer hva som gir sammenheng til fenomenet vi vanligvis omtaler som “tid”, eller, hvis vi ønsker å presisere ytterligere, «historisk tid». For å tilpasse en velkjent formulering fra Shakespeare utgjør artikkelen en undersøkelse av tidens «hengsler». Ifølge sin spesifikke eksistensmodus er tiden ikke en, men mange. Å bringe disse mangfoldige tidene sammen i et felles rammeverk for historieforskning og historisk narrativ krever arbeid. Artikkelen undersøker to aspekter ved dette arbeidet, oppsummert i begrepene «synkronisering» og «skalering». Det første opererer horisontalt, tilpasser og knytter sammen forskjellige varigheter, rytmer og hastigheter, til en felles tid, syn-chronos; den andre opererer vertikalt, produserer ikke en felles tid, men likevel en felles orden, en skala av tider, knyttet til liv og livsytringer, som i seg selv er skalerbare, etter størrelse, mengde, kompleksitet osv. Artikkelen undersøker hvordan disse to prinsippene for å organisere og stabilisere tiden som forståelsesramme, men også som motor og dynamisk prinsipp for historiens gang, kommer til anvendelse hos den engelske munken, teologen og historikeren Beda, kalt den ærverdige, som levde i overgangen mellom 600- og 700-tallet e. Kr, og den tyske teologen og filosofen Johann Gottfried Herder som levde fra annen halvdel av 1700- og ut på 1800-tallet