Berber Bevernage

Tales of pastness and contemporaneity: on the politics of time in history and anthropology*

Abstract In this article I address the political use of discourses, symbols and logics of time in historiography and anthropology. For a major part of the article, I focus on the anthropologist Johannes Fabian whose writings offer a strong criticism of the politics of time and also have great relevance for historians and philosophers of history. Fabian criticizes anthropology for treating the Other as if living in another time, and he proposes to counter these ‘politics of time’ by stressing the contemporaneity of humanity and the coevalness of anthropologists and their research objects. I follow Fabian’s analysis of the political (ab)use of spatiotemporal ‘distancing’ but argue that this (ab)use cannot successfully be addressed by stressing the notions of coevalness and contemporaneity. Rather, I radically embrace the idea of non-coevalness and non-contemporaneity. I argue that allochronism results not necessarily from a ‘denial of coevalness’ but, rather, from a specific notion of historical contemporaneity. Drawing on arguments by Jacques Derrida I claim that parts of Fabian’s thinking are dependent on a problematic ‘metaphysics of presence.’ Drawing on the work of Louis Althusser and Peter Osborne I argue for a more emancipatory analysis of the politics of time.

History from the grave? Politics of time in Spanish mass grave exhumations

During the last decade, a Spanish memory movement has exhumed a great number of mass graves from the Civil War (1936–1939) and Francoist repression (1939–1975). This exhumation campaign is often interpreted in psychopathological terms as a natural reaction to a traumatic past, and as proving that this past should be healed by a therapeutic memory that fosters closure—a vision that we call “trauma-therapy-closure (TTC) time.” Although this vision is in line with an internationally widespread “transitional justice” discourse, it should be critically analyzed. We argue that the Spanish situation does not prove the naturalness and universal applicability of trauma-therapy-closure time. Although we do identify aspects of this trauma-therapy-closure vision in an influential exhumation group, this vision is contested by local actors and sections within the memory movement that engage in alternative politics of time. Therefore, we demonstrate how the case of Spain reveals how trauma-therapy-closure time, rather than being natural or universal, is actively disseminated on a local level.

The making of the Congo question: truth-telling, denial and 'colonial science' in King Leopold's commission of inquiry on the rubber atrocities in the Congo Free State (1904-1905)

During the first years of the twentieth century Belgian King Leopold II and his bloody colonial regime in Congo became the subject of what is sometimes considered the first modern international human rights campaign.1 Large numbers of scholarly and popularizing works have been written about the influential ‘name and shame’-campaign in which prominent figures such as Edmund D. Morel, Roger Casement, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Anatole France and others protested against the Congo atrocities and which played an important role in Leopold’s political demise and the enforced transformation in 1908 of his quasi privately-run Congo Free State into a formal Belgian colony. A far lessknown aspect of this historical episode, however, is the role and impact of the commission of inquiry that Leopold, under international political pressure, set up in 1904 in order to look into the atrocities attributed to his own colonial rule. The limited attention paid to the Congo Commission in recent academic literature stands in sharp contrast with the enormous amount of media coverage this commission received at the beginning of the twentieth century, not only in Belgium, but also in the UK, France, Germany, the USA and elsewhere. When the commission was created this was widely perceived as a major political event and its report provoked heated national and international debates. The limited recent scholarly interest is also remarkable because the relatively few commentators who did discuss the Congo Commission throughout the twentieth century until today, have generally ascribed it great significance and used its findings to support strongly diverging and even contradictory arguments. Some have described the commission’s report as a true indictment against Leopold and as a defining moment of truth after which denial of the Congo atrocities was no longer possible.2 This interpretation is found throughout the

State-Sponsored History After 1945: An Introduction

In this introductory chapter, the editors present state-sponsored history as a broad analytical concept that can integrate existing strands of different literature dealing with the construction of history and public memory as well as contribute to the study of the modern state. It explains how the Handbook deals with the memorializing state (the processes) and the memorialized state (the product or outcome). In the first part we sketch state-sponsored history before 1945, mentioning amongst others the emergence of national heritage, new types of institutes and networks of professionals, commemorations and textbooks. The heart of the chapter is dedicated to the development of state-sponsored history after 1945. First this part deals with the increasing pressure on national sovereignty ‘from above’ (new international norms and regulations) and ‘from below’ (stronger communitarian demands for recognition). Second it deals with new types of states after 1945, including post-colonial states, the welfare state and the therapeutic state. Thirdly it deals with the new (participatory) knowledge economies. It puts forward the conclusion that despite the fact the modern state has lost some of its powers in several domains, its influence in the construction of history and public memory has increased and, despite the sometimes ambiguous outcomes, has become stronger after 1945.

A Great Divide? Metahistorische reflectie in België tegen de achtergrond van het Nederlandse succesverhaal, 1900-heden

This article focuses on the history of meta-historical reflection in Belgium and makes a comparison with the Netherlands. Meta-historical reflection is defined broadly as including the traditions of so-called substantive philosophy of history and critical philosophy of history as well as more general reflections on the social relevance of history. The article starts with a bibliometric analysis which is used as a first indicator for the changing success of meta historical reflection in the Low Countries. A more qualitatively-oriented analysis of the theme follows. It is stressed that a relatively large interest in meta-history existed in Belgium starting from the early 1960s until the second half of the 1970s. This interest was shared by historians as well as philosophers (of science). The third part of the article raises and (partly) answers the question of why this interest in meta-historical reflection declined again during the 1980s. It also asks why meta-historical reflection, in contrast to the situation in the Netherlands, has until today hardly been professionalized and institutionalized in Belgium.