Epochenwenden
Zur Aktualität historischer Periodisierung
[Epochal Turns. On the Topicality of Historical Periodization]

Within the humanities, the rejection of epochs has long become an omnipresent issue: Too constructed, too naïve, too antiquated in an age of constant acceleration, and obsolete given the immensity of the “Anthropocene.” At the same time, however, there are just as many revived or newly set epochs in scholarship as there are in the public discourse that observes, claims, or wishes for turning points to achieve political goals. Examples include the recently proclaimed “turning point” as well as other, older proclamations of “turns” that sometimes seem more and sometimes less plausible. This includes the turn of 1989—also in contrast to the BRD’s phrase of the “intellectual and moral turn” about a decade earlier—or the mobility, energy, or climate turns throughout the last years.

The authors investigate the present-day use of the “epoch” construct from an interdisciplinary perspective while also considering global-historical issues. They investigate the assumption that the recent rise in epoch formations stems from a change in the way we think about epochs, what it means to set them and to what end.