Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene

This article suggests that new potential areas of collaboration between historians and literary scholars have emerged around a nascent but galloping interest in two fields of scholarship, the Anthropocene and the longue durée. Building on the tradition of the Annales school, and in particular the co...

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Main Author: Stephen W. Sawyer
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Association Française d'Etudes Américaines 2016-01-01
Series:Transatlantica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7344
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author Stephen W. Sawyer
author_facet Stephen W. Sawyer
author_sort Stephen W. Sawyer
collection DOAJ
description This article suggests that new potential areas of collaboration between historians and literary scholars have emerged around a nascent but galloping interest in two fields of scholarship, the Anthropocene and the longue durée. Building on the tradition of the Annales school, and in particular the contributions of Fernand Braudel, this article argues that while there is a growing consensus about the necessity of trans-national and trans-temporal history, the critical implications of this enterprise for thinking historical and literary narrative have remained highly unsatisfying. Any return to the longue durée necessitates a deep reconsideration of the social scientific foundations of the longue durée in its previous manifestations, especially its conception of the nature-culture relationship, and an acknowledgement of the limitations of these earlier formulations for thinking about longer time scales and beyond national boundaries today. Following recent work in anthropology that has attempted to break down the nature-culture barrier, this article suggests that the Anthropocene has generated a new arrangement of temporal scales and therefore a poignant rearticulation of the long and short durée as well as the agency that drives action within these two realms.
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spelling doaj-art-2d792625ca8b4054adad98a4b9e026c52025-01-30T10:44:22ZengAssociation Française d'Etudes AméricainesTransatlantica1765-27662016-01-01110.4000/transatlantica.7344Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the AnthropoceneStephen W. SawyerThis article suggests that new potential areas of collaboration between historians and literary scholars have emerged around a nascent but galloping interest in two fields of scholarship, the Anthropocene and the longue durée. Building on the tradition of the Annales school, and in particular the contributions of Fernand Braudel, this article argues that while there is a growing consensus about the necessity of trans-national and trans-temporal history, the critical implications of this enterprise for thinking historical and literary narrative have remained highly unsatisfying. Any return to the longue durée necessitates a deep reconsideration of the social scientific foundations of the longue durée in its previous manifestations, especially its conception of the nature-culture relationship, and an acknowledgement of the limitations of these earlier formulations for thinking about longer time scales and beyond national boundaries today. Following recent work in anthropology that has attempted to break down the nature-culture barrier, this article suggests that the Anthropocene has generated a new arrangement of temporal scales and therefore a poignant rearticulation of the long and short durée as well as the agency that drives action within these two realms.https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7344narrativedeep timeAnthropoceneAnnales schoollongue duréetrans-temporal history
spellingShingle Stephen W. Sawyer
Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
Transatlantica
narrative
deep time
Anthropocene
Annales school
longue durée
trans-temporal history
title Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
title_full Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
title_fullStr Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
title_full_unstemmed Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
title_short Time after Time: Narratives of the Longue Durée in the Anthropocene
title_sort time after time narratives of the longue duree in the anthropocene
topic narrative
deep time
Anthropocene
Annales school
longue durée
trans-temporal history
url https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7344
work_keys_str_mv AT stephenwsawyer timeaftertimenarrativesofthelonguedureeintheanthropocene