TY - JOUR TI - Against Periodization: Koselleck's Theory of Multiple Temporalities AU - Jordheim, Helge T2 - History and Theory AB - In this essay I intend to flesh out and discuss what I consider to be the groundbreaking contribution by the German historian and theorist of history Reinhart Koselleck to postwar historiography: his theory of historical times. I begin by discussing the view, so prominent in the Anglophone context, that Koselleck's idea of the plurality of historical times can be grasped only in terms of a plurality of historical periods in chronological succession, and hence, that Koselleck's theory of historical times is in reality a theory of periodization. Against this interpretation, to be found in works by Kathleen Davis, Peter Osborne, and Lynn Hunt, among others, I will argue that not only is Koselleck's theory of historical times, or, with a more phenomenlogical turn of phrase, his theory of multiple temporalities, not a theory of periodization, it is, furthermore, a theory developed to defy periodization. Hence, at the core of Koselleck's work is the attempt to replace the idea of linear, homogeneous time with a more complex, heterogeneous, and multilayered notion of temporality. In this essay I will demonstrate how this shift is achieved by means of three dichotomies: between natural and historical, extralinguistic and intralinguistic, and diachronic and synchronic time. DA - 2012/// PY - 2012 DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00619.x DP - Wiley Online Library VL - 51 IS - 2 SP - 151 EP - 171 LA - English SN - 1468-2303 ST - AGAINST PERIODIZATION UR - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2012.00619.x/abstract Y2 - 2012/08/03/10:06:24 KW - Reinhart Koselleck KW - conceptual history ER -