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Zusatztext History is in trouble, or even in crisis. At present, this is almost a truism. What sets Zoltan Boldizsar Simon's book apart from other publications making the same claim, in the footsteps of Francois Hartog, Aleida Assmann and others, is that he actually knows why. His theory of unprecedented changes presents a radical - indeed unprecedented - attack on history as developmental process and narrative form, penned by one of the most original new voices in the theory of history. Informationen zum Autor Zoltán Boldizsár Simon is Research Fellow at Bielefeld University. He has been assistant professor at Leiden University and Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Zoltán’s recent work explores the challenges posed by technology and the Anthropocene to the human condition and modern historical thinking. He has published in journals ranging from History and Theory to The Anthropocene Review , and he is the author of History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the 21st Century (Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Epochal Event: Transformations in the Entangled Human, Technological, and Natural Words (2020). Klappentext Our understanding of ourselves and the world as historical has drastically changed since the postwar period, yet this emerging historical sensibility has not been appropriately explained in a coherent theory of history. In this book, Zoltán Simon argues that instead of seeing the past, the present and the future together on a temporal continuum as history, we now expect unprecedented change to happen in the future (in visions of the future of technology, ecology and nuclear warfare) and we look at the past by assuming that such changes have already happened. This radical theory of history challenges narrative conceptualizations of history which assume a past potential of humanity unfolding over time to reach future fulfillment and seeks new ways of conceptualizing the altered socio-cultural concerns Western societies are currently facing. By creating a novel set of concepts to make sense of our altered historical condition regarding both history understood as the course of human affairs and historical writing, History in Times of Unprecedented Change offers a highly original and engaging take on the state of history and historical theory in the present and beyond. Vorwort An innovative conceptualization of history as unprecedented change resulting from technology and the Anthropocene in the 21st century and beyond. Zusammenfassung Our understanding of ourselves and the world as historical has drastically changed since the postwar period, yet this emerging historical sensibility has not been appropriately explained in a coherent theory of history. In this book, Zoltán Simon argues that instead of seeing the past, the present and the future together on a temporal continuum as history, we now expect unprecedented change to happen in the future (in visions of the future of technology, ecology and nuclear warfare) and we look at the past by assuming that such changes have already happened. This radical theory of history challenges narrative conceptualizations of history which assume a past potential of humanity unfolding over time to reach future fulfillment and seeks new ways of conceptualizing the altered socio-cultural concerns Western societies are currently facing. By creating a novel set of concepts to make sense of our altered historical condition regarding both history understood as the course of human affairs and historical writing, History in Times of Unprecedented Change offers a highly original and engaging take on the state of history and historical theory in the present and beyond. Inhaltsverzeichnis AcknowledgementsPreface: On NoveltyLiving in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Prologue Part I - On Historical Change 1. A Quasi-Substantive Philosophy ...
