INSITE Journal_04 After History

When we think of the word history, we immediately revisit the past; or more accurately, the past radically appears before us as a specter that still inhabits the present. We seldom reflect on this history, the one we live in today, on its duration and magnitude, on how it will be narrated or remembered in the future—by ourselves, by others. We may not even know how and when we suddenly became intrinsic to it. At what point does one event end to become another? To some historians, the present escapes our understanding precisely because we cannot feel an event until after it has happened, until it is history. In his book The Scent of Time, philosopher Byung-Chul Han introduces the notion of the present as a transitional point in which there is nothing “to hold on to” within itself anymore. This means that experience is volatile and erratic, rather than accelerated; therefore, in our urgency to fulfill multiple ambitions and “not miss out,” we rush from one place to another without being able to complete meanings and leave lasting traces. In this haste, not only is current history impossible to grasp and frame, but events are also left adrift as easily disregarded and forgotten. This is a tragic and perhaps hyperbolic scenario for history making.