Savelieva I. M., Poletayev A. V. History and Time: In Search of the Lost.

 Savelieva I. M., Poletayev A. V. History and Time: In Search of the Lost.
Istoriya i vremya: v poiskah utrachennogo. M.: Yazyki russkoi kul'tury, 1997, 800 s.

Major preoccupation of the book is how historical inquiry (in the broadest possible sense) might fruitfully be conducted with special reference to the problem of time as a category of historical discourse. Though the time is a topic of almost universal concern, little research explicitly focuses on how the historians use and misuse it. Only a number of historians approached particular aspects of the problem (F. Braudel, M. de Certeau, R. Koselleck, S. Kracauer, D. Lowenthal).

The book comprises three broad themes.

1) Structuration of historical time. Differentiation of past from the present and positioning of the present between past and future leads to various approaches to segmentation of history, from selection of historical events and chronological systems to concepts of historical periods and epochs (including the problem of transition) and schemes of cycles and stages.

2) Temporal consciousness. History of time includes a wide circle of topics – from clocks and calendars to discipline and allocation of time. Special attention is paid to historical consciousness and its relation to other types of time perception and symbolization – everyday, family and sacral.

3)   Representation of history. Managing with the past as the Other, historians create numerous complex time forms: present in the past, past in the present, future in the past, etc., which reflect the influence of the past on the present and vice versa. The book analyses modes of access to the past historians utilize, traditional as well as novel (anachronisms, counter-factual and experimental models, dechronologization and deconstruction).

Note. The title of the book connotes the novel by M Proust “A la recherche du temps perdu”. In English translation it was titled “Remembrance of Things Past”.


  Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bulgarian edition (Sofia: Stigmati, 2006)