7/24/2019 Plass - Review of R. Koselleck Future Past

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ReviewAuthor(s): Ulrich PlassReview by: Ulrich PlassSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Winter, 2006), pp. 140-141Published by: on behalf of theWiley American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27675909Accessed: 04-11-2015 23:21 UTC

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7/24/2019 Plass - Review of R. Koselleck Future Past

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140

German

Quarterly

Book Reviews

winter 2006

Koselleck, Reinhard. Futures Past. On theSemantics

of

Historical Time. Trans. Keith

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

that the

revisions

are

almost

entirely

stylistic,

seeking

a

more

accessible and less literal

rendering

of the

original;

in

the

process

a

few

errors

in

the

original

translation have been

identified and corrected

(vii,

n.

2).

Whether

this

new

translation

presents

a

stylistic

improvement

is

open

to

debate. Koselleck's deliberate

style

is,

at

times,

plodding,

and

the

frequent

use

of

impersonal

constructions

and the

passive

voice?necessitated

by

its

subject

matter

-

create

an

additional obstacle for

a

readable

English

translation.

None

theless,

Tribe succeeds

in

rendering

Koselleck's

style

in

admirably

precise

phrasings.

While

a

cursory

comparison

of the

new

translation with the older

one

reveals

a

good

number of

changes,

it

shows

no

significant

improvements.

However,

one

cannot

help

but stumble

across a

large

number of

typographical

errors.

Punctuation marks

are

often

missing;

even

entire

quotations

are

not

formatted

as

such

(for instance,

p.

142).

Mangled

sentences

like

Corresponding

to

this

we

might

one

could

[sic]

seek

interpreta

tion....

(220) prove

that

the

goal

of

providing

a

corrected edition has been

pitifully

missed.

Composed

in

connection

with Koselleck's

contributions

to

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

Lorenz

von

Stein's

essay

on

the Prussian

constitution;

on

the other

hand,

they

further

elaborate

on

Koselleck's

project

of

conceptual history.

For

example,

Koselleck bril

liantly

traces

the

semantic

genealogy

of modern

concepts

of

movement

such

as

revolu

tion

or

Neuzeit. All

essays share,

as

the title

suggests,

an

advanced theoretical

interest

in

the

structure

of

historical

time.

Tribe's felicitous

phrase

futures

past

reflects

the

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

(geschichtliche

Zeiten)

signals

the

beginning

of the

modern

reign

of

history.

Koselleck's

point

is

that

we

must

seek

to

understand

modernity

as a

form of

temporal

experience

that

implies

an ever

changing

relation of

past

and

future,

of

experience

and

expectation,

of

memory

and

hope.

Such transformative

relations

can

be detected

on

the

onomasiological

and

semasiological

levels

of

historical

concepts.

Every

attempt

to

come

to

terms

with

a

past

experience

determines

an

inevitable

projection

of

a

future,

but the

relation between the

two

is

never

stable.

The

modern

experience

of

the

present

as

a

new

temporality,

a

former

future,

leads

to

an

increase in

the

weight

of the future

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. Despite this Heideggerian resonance, Koselleck's essays do not

present

a

monolithic

philosophy

of

history.

He focuses

on

linguistically

articulated

historical

situations

in

which

a

productive

tension

between

past

and future becomes

accessible

to

analysis.

One remarkable

instance is

Koselleck's

account

of dreams

by

concentration

camp

inmates. These dreams

cross

the

threshold

of literal historical

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REVIEWS: German Studies

across

the

Disciplines

141

witnessing.

Instead of

recounting

the

terror

of the

camps,

these dreams

are

utopian

camp

dreams.

They

disclose

a

touching

image

of home

beyond

the electric fence

[...].

The

pure

facticity

of the

camp

is

blanked

out,

and the

past

transferred

into

wishes

for

the future.

(214)

This

example

exceeds

all others

in

the

book,

since it

presents

an

extreme

form of

temporality

in

which

the future

can

only

be

rendered?beyond

all

hope?as

a

future

past:

it is

the

only

historical

example

in

the book

in

which

the

essen

tial

element

of modern

temporality,

the

future,

has been

eradicated,

and Koselleck's

structuring pair

of

experience

and

expectation

no

longer applies.

Thus,

this

example

also marks the

limit of his

approach:

Such salvational dreams

[...]

resist

any

further

sociohistorical examination

(215).

More

than 35

years

after

the

original publication

of

this work, the acuity and range of Koselleck's analyses and theoretical reflections

remain

undiminished.

Ulrich Plass

Wesleyan

University

McClelland,

Charles

E.

Prophets,

Paupers,

or

Professionals?

A

Social

History

of

Every

day

Visual Artists

in

Modern

Germany,

1850-Present.

Oxford: Peter

Lang,

2003.

238

pp.

$52.95

paperback.

To

write

a

social

history

of

visual

artists

in

Germany

from 1850

to

the

present

in

slightly

more

that two-hundred

pages

is

a

daunting

task.

In

responding

to

this

chal

lenge,

Charles

McClelland has succeeded

in

producing

a

concise

introduction

to

this

broad

topic.

His

goal

is

to

cover

the

complete

range

of

artists,

indicated

by

his

emphasis

on

the

notion

of the

everyday

artist.

His

argument

for

its

significance

is

that the

masses of

everyday

artists,

such

as

those

working

in

the

industries

of

advertising

and

design,

have

a

greater

impact

on

the

public

than individual

celebrities....

(15).

Although

McClelland

speaks

of

everyday

artists,

this

is

not

a

history

of

the

day-to-day

lives

of

artists. He

is

concerned

chiefly

with

questions

of

professionalization,

education,

social

status,

the

art

market, incomes,

and

organizations,

but deals

scarcely

at

all

with artists'

actual

working

and

living

conditions,

marriage, family,

social

networks,

and other

themes

common

to

social

history.

McClelland

further circumscribes

the

study

with

another

concept?the

Interest

Community

of

Art

?which,

as

he

defines

it,

includes

a

wide

spectrum

of

people

and associations

affiliated

with full-time

professional

artists:

amateur

and

part-time

artists,

professors

of

art, curators,

dealers,

critics,

art

historians,

educated

consumers,

and

Kunstvereine;

he refers

to

the latter

as

the

organized

face

of the

local Interest

Community

of Art

(129).

On another

major

theme,

McClelland

declares

that no

profession

is

so

wrapped

in

myth

as

the artists

(167)

and

throughout

the

book,

especially

in

chapter

six,

he

examines

critically

the

myths

of artists

as

heroes,

geniuses,

visionaries,

prophets,

outsiders,

political

radicals,

and

starving

Bohemians.

McClelland's

approach

to the social

history

of artists is shaped

largely

by the

methodology

that

informed

his earlier

studies of the

professions

in

Germany.

The

first

question

therefore

is

to

define

who

is

an

artist

(chapter

two),

which he addresses

from

numerous

perspectives?education

and

training,

organizational

membership,

exhibi

tion

participation,

peer

recognition?but,

in

the end

an

unavoidable

subjectivity

under

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