The Early Modern
Margreta de Grazia profile
M 12-3
Historical periods are artificial but hardly arbitrary: they organize how we work and think, and to particular effect. In this seminar we will begin with a consideration of the different kinds of temporal units by which the past has been organized-- reigns, empires, centuries, periods, etc. -- and of the general questions that have been raised around periodization: where to draw the boundaries between periods, how to account for change, whether different time lines are needed for different activities, the relation of the synchronic to the diachronic and of the cyclical to the linear. The focus of the seminar will, however, be on the Early Modern and its construction in the 19th century by Hegel (Philosophy of History), Marx (Capital, Volume I), Burkchardt (Civilization of the Renaissance), and Nietzche ("The Use and Abuse of History"), and Michelet ( La Renaissance ). A number of questions will be raised. What does it mean that "Early Modern" necessarily postdates the temporal stretch it designates by two or three centuries, that it must wait until the "Modern" is securely in place before it can be identified with its beginning or early stages? Does it make a difference that "Renaissance" connects the period to the recursive past and its synonym "Early Modern" ties it to the progressive future? Why the desire to stretch out the Modern further at both ends, to include the 12th century at one end, for example, and the ever-receding present at the other? We will be examining the kind of events that are associated with the Early Modern -- ideational (consciousness), economic (nascent capitalism), aesthetic (single-point perspective), technological (the printing press, gunpowder), and political (absolutism) -- and the kinds of figures: primarily Luther, Descartes, Montaigne, Hamlet. We will also turn to more recent writings on periodization, by Foucault, Althusser, Lowith, Blumemberg, Kosselek, and Heidegger in addressing such problems as how are definitions of the Modern and Early Modern bound up with concepts of the new, of revolution, of progress, of emancipation? how does recent work on sexuality and on property press upon what Foucault has termed "the history of the sovereignty of consciousness"? is Heidegger right in maintaining that the characteristic feature of the Modern Age is the very need to represent the past in terms of periods? what would it mean in relation to the Early Modern if the Modern were to end or has already ended? and finally, how are our own current approaches to the early modern swayed by periodizing schema? There will be weekly written assignments, one 15-30 minute oral report, and one final paper (mid-semester draft required).
updated 2006-10-06
