Historical Time and Acceleration. A Constitutive Bond

Abstract

This manuscript addresses the link between the concept of ‘historical time’ and the thesis of the acceleration of history and society in constitutive terms. ‘Historical time’ is used as concept mainly from the eighteenth century and corresponds to a way of understanding the contemporary world as a moment in which a ‘chronology’ of time and, along with it, the appearance of a temporalized history itself, take place. Different temporal schemes support this transition: a pass from synchronicity to diachrony, the transition from iteration to the ‘event’, circularity to the linearity. In what follows, I propose to observe some implications and articulations of the ‘historical time’ and ‘social acceleration’ theses, advancing the hypothesis that they are both connected and mutual dependent.