Karl Schlögel, "Narratives of Simultaneity: Questions for a Topographically Sensitive Historiography"

Karl Schlögel, Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

Professor Schlögel will discuss the problems of narratives of simultaneity. There is a spontaneous predominance of time and chronological order in historiography, for which entirely convincing arguments do not exist. Conventionally, time dominates. Professor Schlögel will question this dominance and discuss what might happen if historians respect the symmetry of time and space. The resulting epistemological consequences directly impact the question of narration. In his view, historians have much to learn from M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of “chronotope,” along with the great writer-philosophers like Musil, Joyce, Doderer, Bely, and Proust.