A Discussion of Kojin Karatani's History and Repetition

Speaker(s): Kick-off by Jason Beckmann

In a nutshell, the work of historian and philosopher Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2003) is a sustained effort to revise and rethink the foundations of some of the most decisive historical-conceptual innovations of modernity, such as the notion that human lives unfold within a single process extended over time, a time imbued with a specific quality, historical time, in contradistinction to natural and religious chronologies, and local histories, all of which now would be understood under the light of the former. Among Koselleck’s various contributions is the development of the notion of stratified time as an alternative to linear time and the switching back-and-forth between diachrony and synchrony. Because Koselleck’s reflections suggest various ways to rethink our relationship not only with history, but also with the past, the present and the future, it only makes sense to read him together in a group interested in the various meanings of The Contemporary.