Review Author(s): Ulrich Plass Review by: Ulrich Plass Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Winter, 2006), pp. 140-141 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27675909 Accessed: 04-11-2015 23:21 UTC
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140
German
Book
Quarterly
winter
Reviews
2006
Reinhard. Futures Past. On theSemantics ofHistorical Time. Trans. Keith Koselleck, Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.317 pp. $24.50 paperback.
Keith Tribe's translation of Reinhart Koselleck's 1979 classic Vergangene Zukunft is a welcome addition to the excellent recent edition of Koselleck's The Practice ofConceptual History (Stanford 2002). Futures Past is a "revised and corrected translation" of an earlier edition published by theMIT Press in 1985. In his introduction, the translator notes are almost
amore accessible and less literal stylistic, entirely seeking a few errors in the in the process translation have been rendering original n. new a identified Whether this translation (vii, 2). presents stylistic to debate. at times, is Koselleck's deliberate and is, open improvement style plodding, use of the frequent constructions and the passive voice?necessitated impersonal by its matter create an additional obstacle for a readable None translation. subject English in in Tribe succeeds Koselleck's theless, precise rendering style admirably phrasings. a cursory a While of the new translation with the older one reveals comparison good no one cannot it shows number of changes, However, improvements. significant help across a errors. Punctuation are often but stumble of typographical marks large number "the revisions
that
of the original; and corrected"
even
missing;
entire
are
quotations
not
as
formatted
such
(for
instance,
142).
p.
Mangled sentences like "Corresponding to thiswe might one could [sic] seek interpreta tion.... (220)" prove that the goal of providing a correctededition has been pitifully missed. in connection
Composed
with
Koselleck's
to
contributions
the ground-breaking
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, the essays in Futures Past serve a dual purpose: on the one hand, they provide studies of specific documents of reflective historical inquiry such as von
Lorenz elaborate
Stein's essay on Koselleck's
traces the liantly tion or "Neuzeit." structure
in the
on
the Prussian of
project
semantic
on
constitution;
"conceptual of modern
history."
the other hand, they further For example, Koselleck bril of movement such as revolu
concepts an advanced interest theoretical share, as the title suggests, time. Tribe's the felicitous "futures reflects phrase past"
genealogy
All
essays of historical
plural form contained in the German subtitle: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. The splitting up of natural or chronological time into a diversity of distinct historical tempo ralities (geschichtlicheZeiten) signals the beginning of the modern reign of history. as a form of is that we must seek to understand point modernity temporal an ever that implies relation of past and future, of experience and changing on can of and Such transformative the relations be detected memory expectation, hope. come to of and levels historical concepts. onomasiological semasiological Every attempt a an inevitable to terms with determines of a future, but the past experience projection
Koselleck's
experience
relation "new
between
the
two
is never
a "former
temporality,"
stable.
future,"
The
leads
modern
to "an increase
of experience in the weight
the
present of the future
as a in
[one's] range of experience" (3).This shift in historical perspective allows Koselleck an elegant superimposition of the categories of facticity and possibility, captured in the phrase
"futures
past."
present a monolithic situations
historical
to
accessible concentration
Despite
this Heideggerian
philosophy in which
analysis.
One
camp
inmates.
resonance,
a tension between productive instance is Koselleck's remarkable These
Koselleck's
essays
do not
of history. He focuses on linguistically articulated
dreams
cross
the
past and account
threshold
of
future
becomes
of dreams
"literal"
historical
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by
REVIEWS: German Studies across theDisciplines
the recounting a disclose touching
Instead witnessing. dreams. camp They
of
terror
of
image
141
are the camps, these dreams "utopian of home the electric fence [...]. beyond
The pure facticity of the camp is blanked out, and the past transferred intowishes for the future." (214) This example exceeds all others in the book, since it presents an extreme form of temporality inwhich the future can only be rendered?beyond all hope?as tial element
a "future
past:" of modern
it is the only
the
temporality, and pair of experience the limit of his approach:
structuring also marks
in the book inwhich the essen example has been and Koselleck's eradicated, no this example Thus, expectation longer applies. "Such salvational dreams [...] resist any further historical
future,
sociohistorical examination" (215).More than 35 years after the original publication of this work, the acuity remain undiminished.
Ulrich
and
of Koselleck's
range
and
analyses
reflections
theoretical
Plass
Wesleyan University
Charles E. Prophets, Paupers, orProfessionals? A Social History ofEvery McClelland, inModern Germany, 1850-Present. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003. Visual Artists day 238 pp. $52.95 paperback.
To write
a social history of visual artists in Germany
from 1850 to the present in
to this chal is a daunting task. In responding pages slightly a concise to this in introduction McClelland has succeeded producing lenge, Charles of his is to cover the complete indicated broad topic. His artists, range emphasis by goal on the notion is that the artist. for its significance His of the "everyday" argument in the industries of advertising and such as those working "masses of everyday artists, on the celebrities...." than individual have a greater (15). Although impact public design, more
McClelland
that
two-hundred
speaks of everyday artists, this is not a history of the day-to-day
lives of
social of professionalization, education, questions chiefly at all with artists' but deals scarcely and organizations, the art market, status, incomes, and other social networks, actual working and living conditions, marriage, family, common to social the study with further circumscribes themes history. McClelland
artists.
another wide
He
is concerned
concept?the of spectrum
amateur educated
with
Interest and
Community associations
a it, includes artists: professional art historians, critics,
as he defines
of Art" ?which, with
full-time
affiliated
people of art, curators, and part-time dealers, artists, professors he refers to the latter as "the organized and Kunstvereine; consumers,
face of the
local Interest Community ofArt" (129). On another major theme, McClelland declares that "noprofession is sowrapped inmyth as the artists" (167) and throughout the book, especially geniuses,
in chapter visionaries,
six,
he
prophets,
examines outsiders,
critically political
the
"myths" and
radicals,
of
artists
starving
as heroes, Bohemians.
McClelland's approach to the social history of artists is shaped largely by the that informed his earlier studies of the professions inGermany. The first methodology is to define who is an artist (chapter two), which he addresses from therefore question numerous
perspectives?education tion participation, peer recognition?but,
and
training, organizational in the end an unavoidable
membership, subjectivity
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exhibi under
