Just a matter of time: reviewing temporality in Australian historiography

ABSTRACT

Time is a foundational concept in historical studies. The past is located ‘in time’, of course, such that time guides and bounds ‘what happened’ to a ‘when’. There have also been increasing theorisations that understand ‘time’ itself as temporally and culturally bound. As well as historicising, then, time itself must be historicised. Using Australian historiography as a case study, this paper explores the changing concept of ‘time’ over time. It sets out a provisional timeline of Australian history’s understanding and deployment of historical time, contributing a much-needed historicisation of time to a growing field of historical theory. In charting a history of time in Australian historiography, it demonstrates the historicity of ‘time’. This paper shows how the concept of time not only reflects, but in turn shapes and defines, historical practice and research.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian history
• historiography
• historicity
• historical time

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It became the Royal Australian Historical Society in 1918.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [FTFT140100081].

Notes on contributors

Anna Clark

Anna Clark is a historian at the Australian Centre for Public History based at the University of Technology Sydney. She is the author of Making Australian History (Penguin, 2022) and has written extensively on history education, historiography and historical consciousness, including: Teaching the Nation: Politics and Pedagogy in Australian History (2006), History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom (2008), Private Lives, Public History (2016), and the History Wars (2003) with Stuart Macintyre (2003).