Reinventing “History”?

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

⁸The “Anthro-History” doctoral programme at the University of Michigan is also an important host to such initiatives. See https://www.lsa.umich.edu/idpah, accessed 3 July 2015.

[1] ¹See also “Imprints of Dreaming”, Special Issue of History and Anthropology, 21(3), 2010. This review essay necessarily omits reference to many excellent monographs on the anthropology of history.

[2] In an analysis of the role of chance finds of potsherds and historiographical narratives in the emergence of dominant modes of historical consciousness in rural France, and their syncretism with “nonhistoricist”, affective modes, I use posthumanist analysis to analyse the role of nonhuman agency in local relations with the past (Hodges 2013, 491–97). See also, for example, Bryant's (2014) exploration of the affective agency of material artefacts, and her concept of “temporal dynamism”.

[3] In a related argument with recursive aims, Henig (forthcoming) examines how Muslims in Central Bosnia engage with the violent past, through acts of prayer, to make “history”.

[4] See Knight's (2015, 3–11) notion of “cultural proximity”, which addresses the nonlinear qualities of affective relations with the past at moments of crisis, itself inspired by the “poetic metaphysics” of time of Michel Serres. The work of Deleuze (2004) is a complementary and philosophically robust source for “nonhistoricist” models of time and history (see Hodges 2008, 410–15, 2010, passim).

[5] Strathern's (1988) heuristic use of “commodity economies” seems the most evident.

[6] See http://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/events/uc/historical_experience/, accessed 3 July 2015. Shyrock (1997) constitutes an important precedent to such an endeavour.

[7] In addition, see articles in this Special Issue, and “Routes and Traces: Anthropology, Photography and the Archive”, Special Issue of History and Anthropology, 21(4), 2010.