Power and Time

Dan Edelstein is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and (by courtesy) professor of history at Stanford University. He is the author of The Terror of Natural Right, The Enlightenment, and On the Spirit of Rights, all published by the University of Chicago Press. Stefanos Geroulanos is professor of history at New York University. He is the author of Transparency in Postwar France and coauthor of The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, published by the University of Chicago Press. Natasha Wheatley is assistant professor of history at Princeton University.

“As the editors argue, the temporal landscape of history is always replete with conflict and conflict potential. And, as the essays amply demonstrate, this provides rich pickings for the attentive historian. ‘Chronocenosis’ not only attunes us to the complex temporal frequencies of power conflicts but also enables us to locate new conflicts that may otherwise lie hidden from the historian's eye. . . . There are seemingly few domains of historical research that could not benefit from this approach. The dazzling diversity of these essays is testament to this. . . . A genuinely productive foundation on which to expand the historical study of time in a very practical–and global–sense. . . . The book’s subject matter is expansive, its temporal registers vast. [It] is difficult to imagine a historian who could not benefit in some way from consulting it.”

• Chronocenosis: An Introduction to Power and TimeDan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha WheatleyPART I Temporal Pluralities in Conflict1 Legal Pluralism as Temporal Pluralism: Historical Rights, Legal Vitalism, and Non-Synchronous SovereigntyNatasha Wheatley2 The Invention of the Muslim Golden Age: Universal History, the Arabs, Science, and IslamMarwa Elshakry3 Rise and Fall of the Sattelzeit: The Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and the Temporality of Totalitarianism and GenocideAnson Rabinbach4 A Technofossil of the Anthropocene: Sliding Up and Down Temporal Scales with PlasticAndrea WestermannPART II Loops, Layers, Assemblages5 Long Divided Must Unite, Long United Must Divide: Dynasty, Histories, and the Orders of Time in ChinaZvi Ben-Dor Benite6 The Temporal Assemblage of the Nazi New Man: The “Empty” Present, the Incipient Ruin, and the Apocalyptic Time of LebensraumStefanos Geroulanos7 Prehistory and Posthistory: Apes, Caves, Bombs, and Time in Georges BatailleMaria StavrinakiPART III The Splintered Present8 Brain-Time Experiments: Acute Acceleration, Intensified Synchronization, and the Belatedness of the Modern SubjectHenning Schmidgen9 Cryopower and the Temporality of Frozen Indigenous Blood SamplesEmma Kowal and Joanna Radin10 “Now Is the Time for Helter Skelter”: Terror, Temporality, and the Manson FamilyClaudia VerhoevenPART IV Speed(s)11 Legal Panics, Fast and Slow: Slavery and the Constitution of EmpireLauren Benton and Lisa Ford12 Time and the Economics of the Business Cycle in Modern CapitalismJamie Martin13 History and Temporal Sovereignty in the Thought of Jawaharlal NehruSunil PurushothamPART V “Already Here . . . Just Not Evenly Distributed”: Heterochronies of the Future14 Future Perfect: Political and Emotional Economies of Revolutionary TimeDan Edelstein15 The Future in the US Supreme CourtKristen Loveland16 Commemorating the End of History: Timelessness and Power in Contemporary RussiaKevin M. F. PlattAcknowledgmentsContributorsIndex of Temporal Terms