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This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of 'religion' and 'belief', it offers an innovative rethinking of the history of secularisation that will appeal to students, scholars, and everyone interested in secularity, Victorian culture, the history of technology, and the temporalities of modernity.
List of contents
1 Introduction: Secularities, Technologies, and Modern.- Temporalities.- Challenging Secularization.- First Challenge: The Material Turn.- Second Challenge: The Temporal Turn.- Confusing Times.- Rethinking Secularization.- Overview of the Book.- Bibliography.- 2 Secular Time: Origin Story and Operationalization.- Origins of the Saeculum.- Immutable Mobiles.- Victorian Networks.- Bibliography.- 3 Railways: Tracks, Trains, and Travellers.- Moving Bodies.- Local Time.- Branching Out.- Temporal Trauma.- The Transport Machine.- Tracks.- Trains.- Travellers.- Temporal Coordination.- Conclusion.- Bibliography.- 4 News: The Pursuit of Immediacy.- Temporality and Form.- A Printed Public Sphere.- Emerging Publics.- Environmental Resistance.- Expanding Networks.- Mobilization.- Insulation.- Printing.- Journalism Skills.- Conclusion.- Bibliography.- 5 Banknotes: The Money of Civilization.- Performing the Economy.- Gold Standard.- The State.- Policing the Standard.- The Bank of England.- A Networkof Notes.- A Combination of the Arts.- As Good as Gold.- Conclusion.- Bibliography.- 6 Conclusion: A New Approach to Secularization.- Bibliography.- Index.
About the author
Stefan Fisher-Høyrem (PhD) is a historian and Senior Academic Librarian at the University of Agder, Norway.
Report
Rethinking Secular Time in Victorian England offers a novel interpretation of the history of temporality in Victorian England. Fisher Høyrem s achievement in this book is to encourage historians of Victorian culture to think more carefully about the ways in which the nineteenth-century experience of time . Rethinking Secular Time invites historians to think again about how to best approach a subject so fundamental, yet so perplexing, as the history of temporality. (Joshua Bennett, Victorian Studies, Vol. 66 (3), 2024)
