Video is now available from our New Book Salon celebrating the recent English translation of François Hartog’s Chronos: The West Confronts Time (University of California Press, 2022). On November 9, 2022, Hartog was joined in conversation by Nitzan Lebovic, Sarah Nooter, and 3CT fellow Bill Brown. 3CT fellow Dipesh Chakrabarty moderated the discussion.
In Chronos, leading French historian François Hartog considers the genealogy of Western temporalities, examines their divisions into epochs, and pinpoints the crucial turning points in our relationship to time. Hartog emphasizes the deep uncertainties the world now faces as we reckon with the arrival and significance of the Anthropocene age. Humanity has become capable of altering the climate, triggering in mere life spans changes that once took place across geological epochs. In this threatening new age, which has challenged all existing temporal constructions, what will become of the old ways of understanding time? Intertwining reflections on intellectual history and historiography with critiques of contemporary presentism and apocalypticism, Chronos brings depth and erudition to debates over the nature of the era we are living through and offers keen insight into the experience of historical time.
