Anachronism and the limits of history

Abstract

Despite the central place occupied by the concept of anachronism in the modern historical consciousness, it rarely becomes an object of historical and cultural research. This is because a historian who decides to tackle this topic inevitably has to go beyond the limits of his discipline and learn to see it from the outside. In this paper, an attempt is made to propose theoretical grounds that could facilitate such refection. The author believes that the revolution in the theory of history, which has gained the label the “linguistic turn”, as well as the concept of “politics of time”, frst developed in theoretical anthropology, may suitably serve in that capacity. On the basis of works by some contemporary intellectual historians the author tries to demonstrate the advantages that a research position built into the perspective of the “linguistic turn” and “politics of time” can provide for understanding the historiographic culture of the early modern period.