“Environmental history, theory of history, and concepts of time”
Dr. Theodoros Pelekanidis (Free University Berlin)
Time for historians is like Indiana Jones for archaeologists: it is the adventurous “Other” of a usually unadventurous disciplinary routine. Academic historiography as formed in the 19th century did not let itself deal with matters of time: the essential linearity of every narration meant that time was a given for historians. And it remained so despite the revolutionary understanding of time that emerged in the 20th century as a result of developments in physics. The rise in the last decades of theory and philosophy of history, however, brought again to the fore the concept of time as a vital element of historical thinking.
While philosophical and theoretical questions on historiography have long been considered of secondary relevance by traditional historiography, they have had a significant impact on the discipline’s developments related to its understanding of time. Dealing with the genocide and trauma, for example, made historians question the underlying linearity of historical narration and seek new narrative tools to approach events that defied the sense of objectivity, as can be seen in works of Holocaust historians such as D. LaCapra, S. Friedländer, W. Kansteiner, and others. More recently, the emergence of environmental history and its special association with the dangers of climate change have highlighted the need to consider deep or even big history as a vital prerequisite that could help historians understand historical developments on a larger scale.
In this presentation, I examine how theoretical concerns on historiography and historical thinking from the time of H. White until today have had practical implications in the understanding of and writing about the past. It is part of a general project that deals with how discourses on history from the Holocaust to the Anthropocene slowly but surely shift the historians’ interests to different topics and new methodologies. Time is of particular interest in this endeavor both because of its manifest significance as a stable factor between the present and the past and because of its importance as a flexible tool that historians and theorists can use to steer between different perspectives of history.
Theodor Pelekanidis is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Global History at the Free University in Berlin. His main interests include theory of history, global intellectual history and history of ideas, and environmental history. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2021. The doctoral dissertation studied the implications of the postmodern theory in historiography, with a special focus on the Holocaust and genocide. It was published as How to write about the Holocaust: The Postmodern Theory of History in Praxis (Routledge 2022).
Practical information
When? December 2, 2022, 12.30 pm – 2.00 pm BST
Where?
- Join us offline:
Vergaderzaal Malpertuis at the UFO (third floor, when you come out of the elevator turn right), Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Ghent. If you wish to join us offline, please send us an e-mail at tapas@Ugent.be so that we can reserve you a seat.
- Join us online:
Topic: Lectures and reading groups TAPAS
Time: This is a recurring meeting Meet anytime
Join Zoom Meeting
https://ugent-be.zoom.us/j/93105520251?pwd=L2pYSkdneG9IN09BY3RPMG1vRWRNdz09
Meeting ID: 931 0552 0251
Passcode: 3n769r14