Rethinking History

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ISSN: 1364-2529 (Print) 1470-1154 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrhi20

Tales of pastness and contemporaneity: on the

politics of time in history and anthropology

Berber Bevernage

To cite this article: Berber Bevernage (2016): Tales of pastness and contemporaneity:
on the politics of time in history and anthropology, Rethinking History, DOI:
10.1080/13642529.2016.1192257

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2016.1192257

Published online: 13 Jun 2016.

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 Rethinking History, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2016.1192257

Tales of pastness and contemporaneity: on the

politics of time in history and anthropology*
Berber Bevernage
Department of History, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

ABSTRACT
In this article I address the political use of discourses, symbols and logics of time
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in historiography and anthropology. For a major part of the article, I focus on the
anthropologist Johannes Fabian whose writings offer a strong criticism of the
politics of time and also have great relevance for historians and philosophers
of history. Fabian criticizes anthropology for treating the Other as if living in
another time, and he proposes to counter these politics of time by stressing the
contemporaneity of humanity and the coevalness of anthropologists and their
research objects. I follow Fabians analysis of the political (ab)use of spatiotemporal
distancing but argue that this (ab)use cannot successfully be addressed by
stressing the notions of coevalness and contemporaneity. Rather, I radically
embrace the idea of non-coevalness and non-contemporaneity. I argue that
allochronism results not necessarily from a denial of coevalness but, rather, from
a specific notion of historical contemporaneity. Drawing on arguments by Jacques
Derrida I claim that parts of Fabians thinking are dependent on a problematic
metaphysics of presence. Drawing on the work of Louis Althusser and Peter
Osborne I argue for a more emancipatory analysis of the politics of time.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 22 September 2015; Accepted 13 May 2016

KEYWORDS Politics of time; contemporaneity; coevalness; allochronism; Johannes Fabian

That which is past is remote, that which is remote is past: such is the tune to
which figures of allochronic discourse are dancing.1
It takes imagination and courage to picture what would happen to the West
(and to anthropology) if its temporal fortress were suddenly invaded by the
Time of its Other.2
In this article I argue that if philosophy of history wants to strengthen its
critical potential it should not restrict itself to being a philosophy about the
past and its study. Rather, philosophers of history should start reflecting more
broadly on the issue of historicity especially the historicity of the present.

CONTACT Berber Bevernage berber.bevernage@ugent.be

*This article is a profoundly reworked version of a paper that remained unpublished, but has occasionally
been cited, and was titled Against coevalness. A belated critique of Johannes Fabians project of radical
contemporaneity and a plea for a new politics of time.
2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 B. Bevernage

Although philosophers of history increasingly pay attention to the issue of

historical time, the question of the temporal structure of the present has hardly
emerged as a problem to be theorized. Of course, philosophers of history have
long been well aware that historiography can serve political causes in the pres-
ent. They have also extensively discussed the issue of presentism meaning
the projection of perspectives, conceptual frames, or moral judgments from
the present onto the past. Seldom, however, have philosophers of history asked
what the present itself is, what the unity and/or contemporaneity of the present
is, how the borders between past and present are constituted, and how exactly
one should understand its presentness in relation to the pastsness of the past
(Lorenz and Bevernage 2013).
The relative lack of reflections on the present is problematic for several rea-
sons. First, the notion of the present is always implied in historical discourse,
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if only as a conceptual contrast class for the past. At the most abstract level,
philosophers have argued that we commonly tend to see the past as an endless
series of passed presents. As Zachary Schiffman has recently argued, however,
modern historical consciousness is not based solely on the common sense idea
that sees the past as a time before the present but also on the often conflated but
actually distinct idea that the past is different from the present. The distinction
between past and present that constitutes the founding principle of history,
Schiffman (2011, 2) argues, rests on something other than mere priority in
time; it reflects an abiding awareness that different historical entities exist in
different historical contexts. Clearly this present as a historical context (that is,
this historical present), so deeply ingrained in historical reasoning, cannot be
reduced to a merely chronological category or explained as simply an instan-
taneous unit of physical time. The concept of the historical present combines
elements of chronological time with more substantive notions of time (King
2000). To put it differently, the notion of a historical present (and the related
notion of anachronism as that which is out-of-place or inapposite in a certain
historical present) can never be empty: it involves specific philosophically
informed and most often empirically underdetermined ideas about historical
contents and about the historical relations that somehow tie together these
otherwise highly heterogeneous historical contents into one historical context.
We can call this the issue of (historical) contemporaneity.
Second, historical reasoning and discourse are at work in the (chronological)
present and are often applied to people and things that are chronologically
simultaneous or co-existing. This use of historical reasoning and discourse is
thoroughly political. A notorious example of politics of time is when historical
time is presented as a measure of cultural distance, such as the one between the
so-called West and the Rest (Chakrabarty 2008, 7). The German anthropologist
Johannes Fabian ([1983] 2002) has famously criticized the widespread habit of
depicting the non-West as lagging behind, or not being fully contemporane-
ous with the West, as a process of spatiotemporal distancing. Fabian calls this
 Rethinking History 3

process allochronism or the denial of coevalness, and he argues that it leads

to the objectification of the Other that indirectly serves imperialism or (neo-)
colonial domination. Geopolitics has its ideological foundations in chronopoli-
tics, Fabian says and, as an intellectual antidote, he argues for the recognition
that all cultures and human beings living today are entirely contemporary with
each other.
A similar critique of the politics of (historical) time can be found in the work
of the Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty. The rise of the historicist concept of
a single and secular historical time that envelops other kinds of time is closely
related to colonialism and imperialism and was an important enabling factor
in the rise of Europe as a globally dominant power in the nineteenth century.
Chakrabarty, like Fabian, strongly rejects the worldview in which the non-West
is represented as culturally and institutionally lagging behind and in which
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the West posits its political and military dominance as a natural result of its
role as a bearer of universal progress and enlightenment. Yet Chakrabarty also
pleads for a recognition of genuine instances of heterotemporality in history,
which he claims exist, for example, among subaltern peoples in India. A radical
critique of the relation between modern historical reasoning and (neo)coloni-
alism or imperialism can, for Chakrabarty (2008), therefore be created only by
actively confronting the problem of the temporal heterogeneity of the now.
Chrakrabarty is certainly not alone in claiming the intellectual importance of
the idea of heterotemporality and its critical and emancipatory potential.
Despite academic historys strong disciplinary investment in the unity
of time (Jordheim 2014), some historians and philosophers of history have,
however, long shown interest in the idea of the heterogeneous character of
historical time. Ever since the rise of modern historical consciousness, there
has been a subaltern but vivid tradition of theorizing about the co-existence of
different temporal layers or the Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen. Although
these ideas are often associated with seemingly antiquated substantive philoso-
phies of history such as Johann Gottfried Herders eighteenth-century theories
regarding relative time (see Von Leyden 1963) or the rather unfashionable
Marxist theories of unequal development, several thinkers have recently been
arguing for the rehabilitation of some of these notions. While seemingly well
aware of potential political abuses, Johannes Rohbeck argues that the idea of
what he calls historical non-simultaneity might prove crucial for the creation
of new critical understandings of history:
Just as we must avoid the ideology of non-simultaneity, that is, measuring all
cultures according to the same criteria of technological progress, we must also
avoid an ideology of simultaneity, which ignores those still existing or newly
created non- simultaneities. Because these newly created non-simultaneities fre-
quently signify displacement and backwardness that is, exclusion and poverty
we must retain the critical impetus within the concept of non-simultaneity.
(Rohbeck 2005, 198)
 4 B. Bevernage

Recently, a special forum in the journal History and Theory was dedicated to
the theme of multiple temporalities. Here, the organizer of the forum, Helge
Jordheim (2014, 515), stressed that the problem of the existence of multiple
historical times is not merely of theoretical interest but has wide-ranging
political and social implications, manifest in expressions such as Europe at
different speeds, more and less developed countries, and first, second, and
third world, and the time lags of climate change.
On the basis of my own research, I have become convinced that the stress
on the non-contemporaneity of the historical present does not necessarily give
rise to abusive allochronist claims, but indeed, it can also be used as a means
of resistance or serve critical purposes. In my work on the politics of time in
contexts of transitional justice, I found ample examples of both phenomena
(Bevernage 2012). While studying the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
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(TRCs) of South Africa and Sierra Leone, I used Fabians concept of allochro-
nism to describe the way in which victims and perpetrators are sometimes
treated as remnants of a moribund past and rhetorically pushed out of the
historical present (Bevernage 2010 and 2012). Studying the Argentine Madres
de Plaza de Mayo, in contrast, I encountered a discourse that for politically stra-
tegic reasons stresses elements of non-contemporaneity in the present. Also, a
colleague and I analyzed how radical Flemish nationalists used political symbols
of non-contemporaneity to contest the time of the Belgian nation making use
of strategies as diverse as the creation of a calendar with alternative holidays,
the option for an unfashionable 1930s-style sartorial code, the use of archaic
dialects and the development of alternative rituals of mourning (Bevernage
and Aerts 2009).
We are thus confronted with two paradoxes. On the one hand, the idea of
the contemporaneity of the historical present with itself seems so self-evident
to most historians and philosophers of history that they do not even bother
to argue for it; on the other, the idea frequently seems to be questioned or
even contradicted by some academics as well as in more popular political and
socio-cultural discourse. Moreover, there seem to exist quite paradoxical assess-
ments of the political implications of the idea of the non-contemporaneity of
the present with itself. Some, like Johannes Fabian, primarily stress the danger
of allochronist spatiotemporal distancing which can be used to sustain neo-
colonial logics and claims of epistemic superiority. Others, however, stress that
a recognition of temporal heterogeneity is needed to criticize power, including
its (neo-)colonial and imperialist manifestations.
In this article, I want to address both paradoxes and propose some pos-
sible solutions by critically reflecting on the work of Johannes Fabian, Louis
Althusser and Peter Osborne. I will argue that the best way to dismantle abusive
politics of spatiotemporal distancing for example where Others are repre-
sented as lagging behind in time is by radically questioning the idea of the
contemporaneity of the historical present as a natural and undeniable given
 Rethinking History 5

while nevertheless also recognizing the reality and political potency of the idea
of the contemporary as a socio-cultural construct.
For a major part of the article, I will focus on the work Johannes Fabian and
the analysis of the politics of time in anthropological discourse that he devel-
oped in a series of influential publications in the early 1980s and 1990s, such
as Time and the Other ([1983] 2002) and Time and the Work of Anthropology
(1991). My argument is at once inspired by, and radically different from Fabians:
I am convinced by Fabians critical analysis of the political (ab)use of spatiotem-
poral distancing but not convinced by the intellectual remedies that he pre-
sents. Fabian tries to counter acts of allochronism and the denial of coevalness
through an intellectual strategy that involves a mix of epistemic, experiential,
hermeneutic and analytic arguments. His strategy focuses specifically on the
practice of ethnographic field research and the idea that this type of research,
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if it wants to yield reliable knowledge, necessarily implies a recognition of a

temporal relation of coevalness between the anthropologist, the Other and
their respective cultures or societies. Fabian mostly defines coevalness as an
experience of shared intersubjective Time between the anthropologist and
his or her object of study. His notion of coevalness also seems to imply a more
analytic or typological sort of co-temporality which he calls intersocietal con-
temporaneity or even the radical contemporaneity of mankind although he
hardly elaborates on this dimension.
My hope is to contribute to Fabians critical work. Yet, in order to do so, I
want to follow a different path to the one he followed. I claim that the politics of
spatio-temporal distancing cannot successfully be addressed by s tressing (inter-
subjective) coevalness and the related but different concept of (socio-cultural or
historical) contemporaneity. Rather, I believe that acts of a llochronism should
be countered by a radical deconstruction of all of these notions.
The outline of my argument is as follows. Fabian offers a powerful critique
of the way in which anthropological discourses engage in spatiotemporal dis-
tancing. However, the rigor in Fabians analysis of allochronism and the denial
of coevalness is strikingly lacking in his theory of coevalness and contempo-
raneity. These theories are ambiguous, and despite Fabians repeated attempts
to conceptually strengthen his view in a series of later essays, I believe they
remains the Achilles heel of his account. Except for their (apparent) ethical
attractiveness, I argue that the main reason why Fabians account of coevalness
and contemporaneity has convinced so many people (myself included for sev-
eral years) is that they are implicitly based on a set of common-sense, modern,
Western metaphysical presuppositions that, following Jacques Derrida, I call a
metaphysics of presence. As Derrida has famously argued, however, this met-
aphysics of presence is highly problematic on a philosophical level. Moreover,
there is a specific problem with the theory of coevalness as an experience of
shared interpersonal time. Besides being philosophically problematic, I argue
 6 B. Bevernage

that this specific notion of coevalness actually does not dismantle allochronism
and even tends to reinforce it.
Because allochronism in its full-blown geo-political form is ultimately based
on the claim that the Other is not fully socio-culturally contemporary, or more
precisely that the Other is not fully part of the contemporary as a socio-cultural
historical category, I argue that we need to bring philosophy of history into the
discussion. In the last pages of Time and the Other Fabian seems to recognize
this need: by referring to the work of, among others, Karl Marx and Louis
Althusser, he hints at (but never elaborates) a theory of the radical contem-
poraneity of humanity which seems to be more socio-culturally focussed and
goes in the direction of a substantive type of philosophy of history. In terms of
philosophy of history too, however, I argue, the concept of an all-encompassing
contemporaneity of the peoples and cultures living in the chronological present
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is far from self-evident.

Following Fabians lead, I focus on the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser and
his extensive discussions of the notion of socio-cultural contemporaneity. Yet,
instead of demonstrating the absurdity of a denial of the contemporaneity of the
present with itself, I argue that the work of Althusser offers, on the one hand,
a good starting point for a sophisticated theory of the non-contemporaneity
of the present while, on the other, it illustrates how it is precisely a failure to
critically deconstruct the notion of an ontologically fundamental notion of
contemporaneity that keeps us from radically breaking with allochronistic acts.
In order to further analyze the paradoxical relation between allochronism
and contemporaneity, I focus on the recent work of the British philosopher
Peter Osborne and his notion of the fiction of the contemporary. Following
Osborne, I argue that the contemporary as a historical category exists but that
it should be seen as a highly problematic fictional construction. Moreover, I
argue that this fictional construction of the contemporary paradoxically does
not contradict acts of allochronism but rather lends these acts their epistemo-
logical and political sting. In other words, I argue that, in terms of philosophy
of history too, the politics of time is best approached by taking non-contem-
poraneity as a starting point.
This deconstructive approach has the advantage that it is epistemologically
more convincing and avoids reference to essentialist ontological commitments.
Moreover, it also leads to a more, rather than less, emancipatory analysis of the
politics of time. In order to explain this, I analytically differentiate between the
denial of coevalness (and I would add the denial of socio-cultural contempo-
raneity), on the one hand, and the act of allochronism, on the other. I agree
that allochronism the production of spatiotemporal distancing-effects (most
evident in the use of terms such as primitive, backward, and so on) primarily
serves a politics of domination. Yet, counter-intuitively and admittedly pro-
vocatively, I take the denial of coevalness/contemporaneity to be a politically
 Rethinking History 7

undecided recognition of temporal difference that can have thoroughly eman-

cipatory effects and serve a politics of resistance.
While Fabian seems to use the concepts of allochronism and the denial of
coevalness as synonyms, I argue that allochronism results not necessarily from
a denial of coevalness and contemporaneity but, rather, from specific notions
of coevalness and, especially, of contemporaneity. That the West manages to
treat the Rest as backward, for example, does not primarily result from a stress
on the non-contemporaneity of that Rest but rather from an ideological pos-
iting of the contemporaneity of the West that is taken as the norm or seen as
the contemporary I call this referential contemporaneity. Only from the
perspective of such a referential contemporaneity can Others be characterized
as backward, pre-historical, belonging to the past, or, in contrast, forward,
embodying the future, and so on. Thus the so-called denial of coevalness and
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contemporaneity is a necessary but insufficient condition for allochronism. A

radical deconstruction of allochronism should therefore not proceed from a
positing of the contemporaneity of the present with itself but rather from a
radical questioning of presumed or naturalized referential contemporaneity.
Instead of denouncing the non-contemporaneity that characterizes the relations
between the West and the Rest, one should stress the internal non-contempo-
raneity that characterizes the West and the Rest themselves.

Fabians Time and the Other, the argument

A book as rich and dense as Time and the Other can only be summarized at
the cost of simplification. However, I think the general argument of the book
can be put as follows: Fabian warns that he does not write about the anthro-
pology of time but focuses on the ways in which time is used by that discipline
to construe its object of research and how this is a thoroughly political act a
politics of time. Time, he explains, much like language or money, is a carrier
of significance, a form through which we define the content of relations between
the Self and the Other ([1983] 2002, xxxix). Fabian argues that the discourse
of anthropology from its earliest paradigms to more recent ones has always
tended to treat the Other as if (s)he lived in another time a tendency Fabian
calls the denial of coevalness, or allochronism. Spatiotemporal distancing
functions as an epistemological mechanism that reinforces the scientific sta-
tus of anthropology as a practice based on the observation of objective facts.
Allochronist distancing is not always based on explicit temporal references in
fact taxonomic labels or simple adjectives, such as tribal, mythical or ritual, can
also generate a temporalizing discourse. For instance, Fabian ([1983] 2002,
152) writes, anthropologists have used the term animism [] as a means to
indicate that an opponent is no longer in the contemporary arena of debate.
However, Fabian argues that the concept of time used in anthropological
discourse (writing) is not the only one used by anthropologists: in ethnographic
 8 B. Bevernage

field-research, time figures in a way which stands in fundamental contradiction

to the former. That anthropology never turned into a totally uncritical apology
for colonialism or imperialism is due to the fact that anthropologists agreed,
relatively early on in the history of the discipline, that ethnographic knowl-
edge must be based on empirical field research carried out among people who
are our contemporaries ([1983] 2002, 143; also see Fabian 1991, 226). Since
fieldwork involves personal interaction and communication with the Other,
and since communication presupposes shared or intersubjective time, even
the most autistic anthropologists cannot but recognize or acknowledge the
coevalness of the Other (Fabian 1991, 198).
Yet, once the practical knowledge gained during field research is turned into
written discourse, the coevalness of the Other is soon forgotten or disavowed
and through a conjuring trick the Others empirical presence turns into his
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theoretical absence ([1983] 2002, xli). The disjunction between the concep-
tions of time employed in anthropological writing (science) and ethnographic
research (experience) is so striking that Fabian writes about a schizogenic use
of time ([1983] 2002, 21 and 33).
Nonetheless, Fabian believes that an emancipatory anthropology is possible.
In order to work toward such an anthropology he develops a double strategy:
first, he analyzes the allochronist aspects of the existing anthropological dis-
courses; second, he tries to identify the conditions for a discourse that would
be able to reinforce intersubjective coevalness and inter-societal contempora-
neity. Some of the most important factors that promote allochronism are the
literary habit of describing the Other in the present tense and the grammarians
third person, the disregarding of autobiographical aspects in anthropological
writing, and the epistemological vice of visualism (the habit to treat vision as
the noblest of all senses), which work[s] against the grain of temporal con-
tinuity and coexistence between the Knower and the Known (Fabian [1983]
2002, 109). In contrast, an emancipatory anthropology should pay attention to
the experiential/hermeneutical dimensions of intersubjective time and over-
come the contemplative stance (in Marxs sense, Fabian specifies) and develop
a materialist theory of knowledge. A way to combine these hermeneutic and
materialist approaches, Fabian argues, is to focus on how coevalness is cre-
ated/implied in the production of meaningful sound or speech. Speech has
a material dimension, but moreover, the temporality of speaking (other than
the temporality of physical movements, chemical processes, astronomic events,
and organic growth and decay) implies cotemporality of producer and product,
speaker and listener, Self and Other ([1983] 2002, 164). The last sentence of
Time and the Other suggests optimism: there are ways to meet the Other on
the same ground, in the same Time ([1983] 2002, 165).
 Rethinking History 9

Metaphysics of presence in Time and the Other

Although Fabians work provides an invaluable contribution to the analysis of the
politics of time which goes far beyond the discipline of anthropology I am
unconvinced by the way coevalness is theorized. Fabians account cannot realize
its emancipatory potential and it even reinforces the allochronist epistemology it
criticizes. Despite its sophistication, it is founded on a problematic metaphysics,
one which Jacques Derrida calls the metaphysics of presence. The entire tradition
of Western thought, Derrida (1973, 99; also see 1997, 12) claims, is grounded in
and organized around the metaphysical presupposition of presence whether
this is defined as the proximity of (material or ideal) objects, as the self-presence
or the self-identity of a subject/cogito in the immediacy of its own mental acts,
as the co-presence of self and other in intersubjectivity or, at the most funda-
mental level, as the maintenance of the point-like now of the temporal present
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itself. Derrida strongly criticizes this presupposition, and never stops stressing
the problematic nature of its different forms. I cannot discuss in detail Derridas
many vigorous intellectual attacks against the concept of presence here, but I
will apply the critique of the metaphysics of presence to Fabians work by freely
paraphrasing, interpreting, and elaborating upon some of Derridas arguments.
It is hard to be entirely sure, but I assume that Fabian was first struck by the
denial of coevalness that contradicts the common-sense recognition of coeval-
ness qua co-presence long before he became convinced that the seemingly evi-
dent fact of coevalness itself also deserved to be theorized. This would explain
why a positive account of coevalness is only provided summarily toward the
end of Time and the Other and in some subsequent essays. It would also explain
the strange way in which Fabian sometimes simply posits or assumes coevalness
and contemporaneity instead of arguing for them. Yet, I focus here on the way
that Fabian does provide arguments.
One of Fabians contributions is his analytical differentiation between coe-
valness and two other temporal relations that are often mixed or confused. He
describes the three as follows:
(1)First, there is synchronicity/simultaneity, which refers to events occur-
ring at the same physical time. Fabian adds that this physical time is
often used as a parameter in describing socio-cultural processes, but
is conventionally taken to be neutral in relation to these processes
and is thus allegedly not subject to cultural variation.
(2)Second, there is contemporaneity, which Fabian defines as co-occur-
rence in [] typological time. This typological or mundane time
is measured, Fabian ([1983] 2002, 23) explains,
in terms of socioculturally meaningful events or, more precisely, intervals between
such events. Typological Time underlies such qualifications as preliterate vs. lit-
erate, traditional vs. modern, peasant vs. industrial, and a host of permutations
which include pairs such as tribal vs. feudal, rural vs. urban. In this use, Time
may almost totally be divested of its vectorial, physical connotations.
 10 B. Bevernage

(3)Finally, there is coevalness, which combines the meanings of both

simultaneity and contemporaneity and which Fabian relates to the
German term Gleichzeitigkeit. Beyond that, Fabian ([1983] 2002, 24)
adds, it connotes a common, active, occupation, or sharing, of time.
Coevalness is closely related to intersubjective time, which has its
philosophical sources in phenomenological thought and connects to
the communicative nature of human action and interaction.
These definitions guard Fabian from simply equating coevalness or contempo-
raneity with the physical presence or co-existence of material objects as is
often done in vulgar employments of a metaphysics of presence. Fabians claim
that coevalness covers the meanings of both physical simultaneity as well as
typological or mundane contemporaneity is moreover of central importance
to the goal of deconstructing allochronism. Merely defending the physical
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simultaneity of mankind would not be an emancipatory project. The ideolog-

ical (and epistemological) crux of allochronism is dependent on typological/
mundane time or mixtures of typological/mundane and physical time rather
than pure physical time. Straightforwardly denying the physical simultaneity
of the Other would indeed be a simple mistake. Yet, this is not what is done by
allochronistic spatio-temporal distancing that, rather than literally positing the
physical pastness or absence of the Other and his or her life-world, declares
the Other to be dpass in a typological/mundane sense still around, and thus
simultaneous with the Present, but not really of this Present or contempora-
neous with it. Recall how Fabian remarks that allochronistic spatiotemporal
distancing does not necessarily rely on explicit references to temporal concepts
but also functions through indirectly temporalizing adjectives such as mythi-
cal, ritual or animistic. These latter concepts push opponents out of the realm
of contemporary debate and turn them into an object of knowledge removed
from the Present of the knower.
In sum, in order to provide a negation of what is denied in the allochronis-
tic forms of denial of coevalness, Fabians notion of coevalness has to refer to
more than mere physical simultaneity; it has to include the insight that time is
a carrier of significance. One could say that Fabian, at least insofar as he wants
to develop an effective remedy against allochronism, needs a significant or
meaningful notion of coevalness and contemporaneity. Reducing coevalness
or contemporaneity to physical simultaneity would render them meaningless
or insignificant in this context.
When applied consistently, Fabians differentiation between physical sim-
ultaneity, on the one hand, and the more significant relations of contempo-
raneity and coevalness, on the other, could offer a way out of the metaphysics
of presence. The problem is that Fabian is not always consistent. In many pas-
sages, notions of simultaneity, contemporaneity and coevalness are mixed or
switched. Despite Fabians claim that coevalness and contemporaneity cannot
 Rethinking History 11

be reduced to physical simultaneity, his arguments for the undeniable reality

of interpersonal coevalness and intersocietal contemporaneity do actually, at
many points in his work, boil down to claims about the undeniable physical
simultaneity of the co-existent or the co-present. It is precisely where Fabian
tries to take the step from simultaneity to coevalness and contemporaneity that
his argument becomes problematic: here the metaphysics of presence return
with a vengeance.
The difficulty is most obvious in Fabians reference to the temporality of
speech as a guarantee for coevalness or intersubjective time. At first sight Fabian
seems conscious of the presentist assumptions that underlie the preference of
speech over writing what Derrida (1997, 8) famously calls phonocentrism.
Fabian ([1983] 2002, 119) is sceptical about Walter Ongs idea that the oral and
auditory would be more existential or personal than written texts. However,
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his argument changes. The true epistemological reason why the aural and oral
should be invoked, Fabian argues, is situated in their interpersonal (rather than
personal) time economy. The oral and the aural, according to Fabian, enable
coeval dialog ultimately due to the sensuous nature of meaningful sound. The
production of meaningful sound, involving the labor of transforming, shaping
matter, is constitutive of human consciousness or the Self the Self, Fabian
([1983] 2002, 164) writes, is constituted fully as a speaking and hearing Self
and enables the coeval dialog between two or more Selves. As Fabian ([1983]
2002, 164) puts it: Ultimately [the denial of coevalness] rests on the negation
of the temporal materiality of communication through language.
I will return to this constitution of the Self, but first I want to concentrate on
the link Fabian makes between the material or the sensuous and the coeval. I
have sympathy for Fabians attempt to ground coevalness on a material basis,
but I do not think it works, at least not as the means to a meaningful/signifi-
cant concept of coevalness. Sound can doubtlessly make people aware of their
physical simultaneity or even encourage people to attempt to engage in a relation
of meaningful coevalness, but the sensuousness of sound is no guarantee of
meaningful coevalness. Is the meaning of meaningful sound determined by
its sensuousness? Does the tactile sign language in which deaf-blind persons
communicate by touching each others hands free them from the need for
semiotics and from the possibility of differnce or non-contemporaneity which
Derrida relates to all uses of language? I raise these questions because I believe
Fabians reference to the sensuousness of speech threatens to reinforce the idea
that a relation of pure presence can be reached that reduces epistemological
distance and preempts those dimensions of communication that restrain us
in reaching perfect meaningful coevalness.3
In the worst case, the idea of coeval field-research could reinforce the belief
in the existence of a naked ethnologist who can enter his/her field unbur-
dened by the bad epistemology that characterizes his/her life as a scientist. As
if the practice of distancing and the need for representation or epistemological
 12 B. Bevernage

mediation could be shaken off once anthropologists leave their writing desk. But
Fabian ([1983] 2002) is too much of an anti-positivist to believe in the naked
ethnologist or the existence of naked data. He recognizes that no knowledge
can be produced without some kind of distancing or mediation. Instead of
being armed with classical spatiotemporal distancing-devices, Fabian ([1983]
2002) argues, anthropologists should be equipped with an alternative episte-
mology based on reflexive or hermeneutic distance. This analysis of different
notions of distance is another of Fabians intellectual contributions, and inter-
estingly this analysis is developed in the direction of a reflexive or hermeneutic
theory of coevalness. Fabians argument is so clear that I can do no better than
to quote it:
Reflexivity asks that we look back and thereby let our experiences come back to
us. Reflexivity is based on memory, i.e. on the fact that the location of experience
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in our past is not irreversible. We have the ability to present (make present) our
past experiences to ourselves. More than that, this reflexive ability enables us to
be in the presence of others precisely inasmuch as the Other has become content
of our experience. This brings us to the conditions of possibility of intersubjec-
tive knowledge. Somehow we must be able to share each others past in order to be
knowingly in each others present. (Fabian [1983] 2002, 92)
The intellectual field explored here is fascinating. Fabians analysis brings to
mind the work of Reinhart Koselleck who recognized that historical time can-
not be reduced to a physical phenomenon but is subject to historical change. In
order to explain changing notions of time Koselleck (2004) famously introduced
the hermeneutical concepts of space of experience [Erfahrungsraum] and hori-
zon of expectation [Erwartungshorizont]. These concepts are perfectly suited for
analyzing changing conceptions of time because they have a meta-historical
status: all human beings have some experience or memory concerning what
has happened and certain expectations or hope concerning what will happen.
Every conception of time can be defined by the specific way it interrelates a
space of experience and a horizon of expectation. The tension between the two
offers a phenomenological explanation for the experience of (historical) time.
Fabian was probably not overly familiar with Koselleck at the time of writing
Time and the Other, but I think he would agree that the inclusion of expectation
can enrich his analysis.4 Admittedly it makes the quest for coevalness more
difficult. Yet it is compatible with Fabians perspective. In line with Kosellecks
analysis, coevalness could be reached by sharing each others space(s) of expe-
rience and horizon(s) of expectation. The possibility of intersubjective time
would then seem to depend on better communication in which people are
more open about their experiences and expectations and willing to share them.
But one should not become too optimistic. The above account depends on
the idea that one can simply share ones experiences and expectations with an
Other, and this in turn depends on the idea that the Self can freely dispose of or
make present its own experiences and expectations. Both ideas are problematic
 Rethinking History 13

for several reasons. First, the idea that one can take possession of his or her
own experiences and expectations presupposes the metaphysical idea of a Self
that exists separately of its experiences and expectations instead of being the
sum of these experiences and expectations. Second, the idea that the Self can
gain unmediated access to its own experiences is, once again, as in the case of
the reference to sensuous speech, based on an underestimation of the need for
signification and representation. Fabian speaks of the Self s capacity to (make)
present its own past experiences, but Derrida would argue that this act compels
the Self to engage in representation. Even the Self has to represent its own
experiences in order to take conscious/cognitive possession of them, and this
always involves a certain distance or mediation and signification. Human
experiences are mediated by other (non-coeval) experiences and expectations,
and it goes without saying that this leads to an infinite regress that obstructs the
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practical feasibility of the communicative sharing of experiences and expecta-

tions. Even sensuousness cannot offer unmediated access to our experiences
because the sensuous needs to be made sense of too. If I get a black eye it
makes a big difference on an experiential level whether I brought it upon myself
by running into a door or whether it was done to me by a hostile Other. This
difference in significance is not reducible to the sensuousness of the black eye;
it is negotiated by my Self, the Other (not in the case of the door of course)
and the society that surrounds me.
It should thus not be thought that experiences are first pure presence and
only later represented or contaminated with signification. Signification is inher-
ent in experience, and experiences are mediated or represented from the very
first moment. The temporality of experiences can hardly ever be reduced to
the physical time of their occurrence, and it is a clear sign of the poverty of
the historical code of chronology that it cannot recognize this. To give an
extreme example: In order for an experience of rape in contrast to ordinary
violence to occur, one needs the a priori experience of living in a society that
invests (human) sexuality with a special value. Moreover, it is typical for rape
to be followed by a-posteriori experiences of shame, humiliation or trauma. I
speak about a-priori and a-posteriori experiences for explanatory reasons
only; in fact, these non-coeval experiences are part of the experience of rape,
and it is as distorting to reduce the temporality of this horrific experience to
the physical time of its actual occurrence as this would reduce its significance
to a merely physical dimension. Or to give another extreme example: it is
known that political prisoners (members of the ANC in South Africa during
Apartheid, for example) often endure torture or extreme hardship in captivity
better than people who are subjected to this horror for seemingly random
reasons, because prior training/experience or anticipations/expectations help
them to make sense of the injustice done to them.
Finally, one must take into account that the Self can be constituted by several
different spaces of experience and horizons of expectations, so that the Self
 14 B. Bevernage

can comprise a certain internal temporal Otherness and thus be non-coeval

in a certain sense for example because it has different experiences of tem-
porality in private and professional life, or because it combines expectations
of an imminent new millennium in the sphere of technology with a profound
cultural pessimism and a belief that, generally seen, history always repeats itself.
I list these arguments because they show how the defense of coevalness along
the lines sketched above forces us to fall back on different problematic forms of
metaphysics of presence, which implicitly reduce coevalness to physical simul-
taneity or material (co-)existence. Fabian seems to solve the problem of inter-
subjective coevalness by a problematic reference to a self-present (and in this
specific sense coeval) subject/Self that can take possession of its experiences as
if they were objects with a physical presence. Although the difficulty is moved
from one level to another, coevalness remains problematic. The problem does
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not start with the sharing of time between coeval Selves but already with the
assumed coevalness of these Selves.
Remarkably, Fabian shares the metaphysics of presence with the very episte-
mology which he rejects as allochronic. Contrary to what Fabian seems to think,
practices such as classical representationalism and visualism do not contradict
the idea of presence but are dependent on it. Visualism, though allochronic in
its effects, is only convincing as an epistemological device capable of producing
objective knowledge of another Self or other cultures and social relations if one
presupposes that the latters existence can be reduced to that of self-present
physical objects. The classical notion of objective representation similarly pre-
sumes a distance between the represented object and its representation but is
ultimately based on the idea that the represented object itself has, or once had,
a full presence hence the concept of representation. Similarly, anthropologists
can only treat the Other as an object of knowledge in their writings because
they claim to have been in the Others presence during field research that is,
because they ignore the Others non-self-presence and mistake their relation
of physical simultaneity with the Other for a relation of coevalness. Seen from
this perspective, there is no fundamental contradiction between uses of time
in anthropological writing and in ethnographic research. And since there is
no contradiction, I do not think coeval field-research can provide an antidote
to allochronism.

Time and totality: Louis Althusser

How then to dismantle the allochronic edifices of spatiotemporal distancing
or at least gain a deeper understanding of how they work? Such critical under-
standing can only be gained by addressing the phenomenon of allochronism
at the specific level on which it takes place. Addressing allochronism forces
us to move to philosophy of history, to which it is closely connected. As men-
tioned already, Fabian in fact seems to recognize this. At the very end of Time
 Rethinking History 15

and the Other Fabian ([1983] 2002, 159) introduces some ideas that provide
the beginning of a more historical (yet thoroughly anti-historicist) theory of
co-temporality: a theory that would consist of recognizing that all human
societies and all major aspects of a human society are of the same age.
This notion of co-temporality seems to differ strongly from the epistemic,
experiential and hermeneutic notions of coevalness that Fabian develops in the
rest of his book and might be appropriately described as a specific concept of
historical contemporeneity. Yet, whatever it is called, it seems worthwhile to
follow this lead in an attempt to intellectually counter allochronism.
In order to avoid the trap of allochronic historism a critical theory of his-
torical contemporaneity should, according to Fabian, reflect on the relation
between notions of time and notions of totality. More specifically, such a the-
ory should elaborate on the notion of totality developed by Hegel and Marx.
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Marx, for example, despite the allochronist tendencies of some of his writings,
developed a radical presentism a theory about the simultaneity of different
historical moments and forces that contained the theoretical possibility for
a negation of allochronic distancing (Fabian [1983] 2002, 159). Fabian ([1983]
2002, 158) also approvingly quotes Louis Althusser, who calls for a renewed
reflection on the structure of totality.
It is strange to find Althusser in Fabians defense of coevalness given that
there is no reference to the formers theory of non-contemporaneity. Instead
of illustrating the presumed absurdity of a denial of contemporaneity of the
present with itself, Althussers work demonstrates both the direction in which
a critical analysis of the politics of time could proceed and the ways in which
this analysis can become stuck and reinforce allochronism by sticking to the
idea of a foundational contemporaneity.
Althussers main objects of criticism are Hegels concepts of totality and his-
torical time. Hegelian time, according to Althusser (1979, 94), has two essential
characteristics: its homogeneous continuity and its contemporaneity, which
underlie the notion of a historical present. The second aspect is fundamen-
tal and functions as a condition of possibility for the first. The notion of the
contemporaneity of time is, according to Althusser, rooted in a metaphysical
freezing of the temporal continuum. He calls this intellectual operation where
one makes a vertical incision at a moment in time to reveal a historical pres-
ent an essential section [coupe dessence]. Althusser (1979) remarks that this
essential section is only thinkable in combination with a specific conception
of social totality one in which all the elements of the whole are given in a
co-presence and, as such, is highly ideological. The ideological character of
Hegels concept of time worries Althusser primarily because Hegel borrowed
it from a vulgar empiricism that still underlies the practice of most historians
and social scientists.
Just as the Marxist conception of totality should not be confused with the
Hegelian spiritual whole, so too, according to Althusser, a Marxist notion of
 16 B. Bevernage

time should be distinguished from the Hegelian one. In line with what Althusser
(1977, 101) calls overdetermination, Marxist totality is a complex structured
whole, made up of relatively autonomous levels that cannot be reduced to the
primacy of a center. This has important theoretical consequences. The struc-
tured totality can no longer be grasped with the commonsensical notions of
a historical present or historical contemporaneity. In fact, Althusser radically
breaks with the notion of a singular time by positing a plurality of times:
it is no longer possible to think the process of the development of the different
levels of the whole in the same historical time. Each of these different levels
does not have the same type of historical existence. On the contrary, we have to
assign to each level a peculiar time, relatively autonomous and hence relatively
independent, even in its dependence, of the times of other levels. [] for each
mode of production there is a peculiar time and history [] philosophy has its
own time and history; aesthetic productions have their own time and history;
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scientific formations have their own time and history, etc. (Althusser 1979, 101)
Here we are confronted with a radical critique of the idea of the contempora-
neity of the historical present.
When it comes to his theoretical critique, Althusser is well aware of potential
pitfalls. Once one rejects the ideological model of time it is important not to
substitute another for it. One has to resist the temptation to relate the plurality of
different times to a single ideological base time or reference time. If a reference
time is reintroduced, it becomes impossible to resist treating the dislocation of
different times as forms of backwardness or forwardness in time.
Regrettably, however, Althussers own philosophy is not free of ambiguities
on this issue. Despite his stress on the plurality of times, he claims that these
are only relatively autonomous and that their co-existence is fixed in the last
instance by the level of economy. As Jay (1984, 407) explains, this strange
philosophical move should be interpreted as an attempt to head off charges of
non-Marxist pluralism.5 Despite the fact that Althusser (1977) immediately
adds that the lonely hour of the last instance never comes, the relapse into
economic determinism raises questions about the consistency of his chrono-
sophy. If there is a center to the social after all in the form of the economy
for instance how do we prevent the reintroduction of a reference time that
measures all temporal dislocations in allochronistic terms of forwardness or
backwardness?

The fiction of the contemporary

The discussion on Althussers work shows how allochronism does not derive its
full epistemological or political force from a mere denial of historical coevalness
or contemporaneity but, rather, is dependent on foundational or referential
notions of coevalness or contemporaneity. The discussion also hinted at the fact
that one of the main reasons for Althusser to maintain a notion of a referential
 Rethinking History 17

time was a fear of an irreducible pluralism. Since this fear is well-founded,

it may not be wise to entirely discard the idea of a historical present or some
sort of contemporaneity. To address this problem, I turn to a notion that has
recently been introduced by Peter Osborne: the fiction of the contemporary.
Osborne does not use the contemporary merely as a periodizing term
denoting the historically most recent period but is interested in how the con-
cept works as a structure of historical temporalisation. Interestingly, Osborne
considers the fiction of the contemporary at once inherently problematic as
well as inevitable and very real.
Beyond its mere association with the up-to-date, the idea of the contem-
porary is basically that of the historical present as a living disjunctive unity of
multiple times or a coming together of the times of human lives within the
time of the living (Osborne 2013a, 79). The contemporary is a con-temporary:
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it is based on a coming together not simply in time, but of times (Osborne

2013b, 17). As Osborne (2013b) puts it, the concept of the contemporary pro-
jects a single historical time of the present, as a living present: a common, albeit
internally disjunctive, present historical time of human lives.
This notion of a living historical present is problematic in several ways,
however. On a theoretical level, Osborne argues, it is problematic because it is
beyond any possible experience. The contemporary is the product of a hypo-
thetical reasoning or presupposition and in Kants terminology can be called
a heuristic fiction. Yet Osborne immediately adds that this heuristic fiction is
not easily disposed of since it is needed by all types of human science.
On a more fundamental level, Osborne argues, the notion of the contempo-
rary as the self-contained unity of the living present is problematic for reasons
that were already explained by Heidegger. As Heidegger argued, the living
present can never exist on its own but only ex-ists as a fractured conjunction
of the past and the future. Because the contemporary projects into presence
a temporal unity that is actually primarily futural, Osborne (2013b) calls this
concept structurally anticipatory or historically speculative.
The concept of the (historical) contemporary is also empirically problem-
atic. Despite the increasing interconnectedness created by globalization and
transnational capitalism, the continuing existence of social disjunction renders
the notion of an existentially unified historical present into a utopian idea. For
Osborne (2013b): There is no socially actual shared subject-position of, or
within, our present from the standpoint of which its relational totality could be
lived as a whole, in however epistemologically problematic or temporal existen-
tially fragmented form. As a utopian idea, however, the concept of the contem-
porary functions as if this subject position actually exists (Osborne 2013b, 23).
This as if explains why Osborne speaks of the fiction of the contemporary.
By saying that the contemporary is fictional Osborne does not mean that it is
unreal. Rather he means that the contemporary, as an objectively produced
subjective structure, results from a productive imagination that is based on
 18 B. Bevernage

fiction as a narrative form (2013a, 70). The fiction of the contemporary is very
real because it works as a performative projection that renders present or
socially actualizes an actually non-existing total conjunction of lived times.
This rendering present of a conjunction of lived times is done in a para-
doxical way, however. On the one hand, it gives a certain duration or existen-
tial unity to the historical present, which fixes the transitory nature of the
instantaneous present. This is manifest in the idea of contemporary history
and in the question on the periodization of the present. On the other hand, the
contemporary also marks a temporal fracture or disjunction in the existential
unity of the present. The contemporary, explains Osborne (2013a), regulates the
division between the present and the past within the present. Osborne there-
fore calls the contemporary an operative fiction. He describes the core value
around which this operative fiction revolves as actuality, in distinction from
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the fading existential hold of what is still present but out-of-date that is, no
longer articulating living relations between a multiplicity of spatially distributed
standpoints (Osborne 2013a, 81). Clearly this regulative notion of actuality
must be historically speculative, and Osborne (2013a) indeed argues that the
living relations of contemporaneity that constitute actuality can never be sim-
ply recognized but are always partly projected as a task to be achieved. Due
to this performative and speculative nature, one might say with Osborne that
the contemporary on an epistemological level should be situated in-between
the fictional and the historical narrative mode. Osborne gives the example of
the global histories of the present written by prominent intellectuals such as
Eric Hobsbawm, Giovanni Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank. Despite the fact that
they base their hypothesis of the unity of the present on facts, these histories
remain performative constructions as much as they are empirical even if
globalization increasingly actualizes these projections and increasingly enables
their transition from fictional to historical narrative, as Osborne stresses.
Finally, the contemporary, according to Osborne, is problematic on yet
another level that of the geo-political. The fiction of the contemporary is
always a geo-political fiction because besides problematizing the disjunctive
unity of time it also raises the question of the unity and disjunction of social
space (Osborne 2013b, 25). What one considers as contemporary and what
periodization one will choose for it will therefore considerably differ depend-
ing on ones geo-political standpoint. As Osborne (2013a) puts it by quoting
Dipesh Chakrabarty: the geo-political dimension raises the question Where
is the now?

The politics of time beyond allochronism vs. coevalness

Osbornes work offers a useful insight into the politics of time. Obviously the
fiction of the contemporary is thoroughly political. Yet, more specifically, it
should be pointed out that this notion is not at odds with allochronism. In
 Rethinking History 19

fact, the fiction of the contemporary is upheld by acts of allochronism while

allochronism in turn depends on the fiction of the contemporary. Allochronism
and the fiction of the contemporary are mutually co-constitutive. Even in its
geographically most encompassing form (as often expressed in ideas about
globalisation and the emergence of a global culture), the fiction of the con-
temporary is based on an allochronising mechanism of differentiation in which
the actuality of the contemporary is defined by contrasting it to that what
is deemed out-of-date or non-contemporary in the (chronological) present.
Although allochronism is most visible when its temporal coding attaches to
geographical space and distance such as the one between the West and the
Rest it works equally well when attached to cultural, social or institutional/
legal spaces and differences.
Anthropological discourse is not the only discourse that engages in allochro-
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nism; modern historical discourse is doing so at least as profoundly. The

allochronising fiction of the contemporary is the stuff which many forms of
historical periodization are made of. This is especially the case for the mother
of all historical periodizing: the separation between the historical present and
the historical past.
A number of thinkers have pointed out the political nature of historical peri-
odizations and especially of the assumed split between the historical past and
the historical present (see e.g. Davis 2008; Fasolt 2004; Lorenz and Bevernage
2013). Since the historical present can never be reduced to a single point in
chronological time its definition will always, as Jacques Le Goff notes, remain
a basic problem. Le Goff (1992, 31) also correctly argues that definitions of the
present always contain ideological aspects and should be seen as a program
or project. Similar remarks are made by Dipesh Chakrabarty, who sees a close
connection between what he calls the periodizing instinct and the political
instinct. How we periodize our present, Chakrabarty (2004, 459) argues, is
thus connected to the question of how we imagine the political. The reverse
must be true as well: that every imagination of the political entails a certain
figure of the now.
The separation and thus constitution of the historical present and past is
generally enacted as much pro-actively as retro-actively. De Certeau (1975,
16) pointedly describes this phenomenon in arguing that the division between
past and present is not merely an absolute axiom of historiography but the
result of an act of separation [le geste de deviser], which is the very condition
of possibility for (modern) historiography.
De Certeau argues that the idea of a strict division between present and
past is founded in a socio-political logic and in its turn has important political
implications. The following quote suggests how allochronism is as fundamen-
tally ingrained in modern historical discourse as it is in anthropology:
Within a socially stratified reality, historiography defined as past (that is, as
an ensemble of alterities and of resistances to be comprehended or rejected)
 20 B. Bevernage

whatever did not belong to the power of producing a present, whether the power
is political, social, or scientific. [] Historical acts transform contemporary doc-
uments into archives, or make the countryside into a museum of memorable
and/or superstitious traditions. Such acts determine an opposition which cir-
cumscribes a past within a given society. (De Certeau 2006, 216)

Conclusion
Towards the conclusion of Time and the Other, Fabian ([1983] 2002, 154) poses
the question of whether there are criteria by which to distinguish denial of
coevalness as a condition of domination from refusals of coevalness as an act
of liberation. I do not think such criteria can be found. Moreover, it would be
senseless to attempt to measure whether the denial of coevalness or contem-
poraneity has more often led to allochronist abuse or to emancipatory use:
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endless anecdotal proofs can be piled up in favor of both theses. However,

allochronism can only be effected if an emphasis on the non-coevalness or
non-contemporaneity of the Other is combined with the positing of a seemingly
undeniable referential coevalness or contemporaneity as in the notion of
the contemporary. Only from the perspective of such a referential coevalness
or contemporaneity can difference be translated in terms of spatiotemporal
backwardness or forwardness. Saying that the Other lives in another time is
not in itself ideological: this effect only comes into being when one claims the
Other lives an earlier phase of our own time. Hence the best way to dismantle
allochronism is to embrace the idea of non-coevalness and the non-contem-
poraneity of the present with itself. This does not mean that there is no such
thing as a historical present, however; rather, it reminds that the notion is not
natural but results from a hegemonic fictional construction.
Taking non-coevalness and non-contemporaneity as a starting point for an
analysis of the politics of time has great advantages, I think. First, by reject-
ing the idea of coevalness and contemporeity as natural or given an idea
that Fabian explicitly rejects but nevertheless sometimes inadvertently facili-
tates we are not intellectually compelled to treat people who stress their own
non-coevalness or non-contemporaneity for emancipatory political reasons
as if they were living in denial or as pathologically out of touch with reality.
Second, this approach offers the basis for a more profound analysis than can be
sustained by Fabians account. It shows not only the political character of the
allochronist version of the denial of coevalness, but also renders the stress on
coevalness and contemporeneity political by stressing its constituted nature. In
this context, it should be remarked that allochronist anthropological discourse
not only functions in a way that distances the geo-political Other or denies
the contemporaneity of other cultures, but that it equally helps to create the
fiction of the referential contemporaneity of the West itself (the West as the
contemporary). As noted, anthropology is certainly not alone in sustaining this
 Rethinking History 21

fiction. Allochronism constitutively underpins the epistemology and politics

of modern historical discourse in an equally profound way. Only by means
of a critical deconstruction of both anthropological discourse and modern
historical discourse (and their interaction) can allochronism be fully grasped
and countered.

Epilog
Let me give a final example to illustrate the advantage of the proposed perspec-
tive. I became convinced that Fabians perspective does not work when I had to
translate an official letter for an Ethiopian-born refugee applying for political
asylum in Belgium. The letter stated that asylum was denied, and requested the
young woman to declare that she would voluntarily leave the country within
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a short time. This was impossible, returning to Ethiopia was not an option.
There she was, a newly-born illegal in the fortress of Europe, still on Belgian
territory, but no longer part of its system. I asked her what she planned to do,
although I could have guessed the answer: for several years she had made no
plans for a future beyond a few days. I wanted to comfort her by saying that my
family and I would make sure that everything would be OK, but realized that
saying this would be an outright lie. Of course, we could materially support
her, but what really needed to be given was not ours to give. She was denied a
horizon of expectation and forced to live in a constant state of provisionality
that is what the Belgian state was doing to her and which I felt incapable of
changing. It struck me how vastly her situation differed from mine. Although
we were physically simultaneous, we were non-coeval. This non-coevalness
was not only, or even primarily, due to our different spaces of experience but
to the radically different expectations that I was allowed to have. None of the
plans that I made could be conceived in her situation: she could not reasonably
expect to get a degree that granted her a decent job or a state pension; neither
could she expect to receive anything more than the most basic medical care.
Did I engage in an oppressive form of allochronism by denying our coeval-
ness? I do not think so. On the contrary, stressing non-coevalness enabled me to
understand some of the complex reality that many illegal refugees and migrants
inhabit. Nations, it became clear to me, construct hegemonic contemporaneity
by excluding great numbers of non-contemporary people, and the appropriate
reaction to the practice is not situated in a denial of this non-contemporaneity
but, rather, in endlessly reminding the contemporary nation about the
non-contemporaneity at its core.

Notes
1.
Fabian ([1983] 2002, 127).
2.
Fabian ([1983] 2002, 35).
 22 B. Bevernage

This longing for non-mediated presence is very clear in Fabians essay Presence
3.
and Representation [1990], where he contrasts these two concepts and proposes
the former as a solution for the allochronic tendencies of the latter.
Koselleck is included in the bibliography of Time and the Other but Fabian
4.
mentions him as a newly discovered author in a later essay (Fabian 1991, 226).
5.
The accusation of subverting the Marxist notion of totality was formulated
against Althusser by Thompson (1978, 289).

Acknowledgments
I want to thank the following people for their critical comments: Johannes Fabian,
Peter Osborne, Chris Lorenz, Henning Trueper, Maria Ines Mudrovcic, Kenan Van
De Mieroop, Elias Grootaers, Gita Deneckere, Maja Musi, Jan-Frederik Abbeloos, Lore
Colaert, Katie Digan, Anton Froeyman, Gisele Iecker de Almeida and Kalle Pihlainen.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Berber Bevernage is Assistant Professor of historical theory at the Department of
History at Ghent University (Belgium). His research focuses on the dissemination,
attestation and contestation of historical discourse and historical culture in post-conflict
situations. He has published in journals such as History and Theory, Memory Studies,
Social History and History Workshop Journal. Berber is (co-)founder of the International
Network for Theory of History which aims to foster collaboration and the exchange of
ideas among theorists of history around the world.

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