History and Topology: The Fall and Rise of Anachronism

Abstract

The article concerns with the place and the role of the "anachronism” concept within the frame of a modern mode of historicity. A great while, anachronism originated concurrently with this mode has been considered as the past stuck in the present, with its past and present being indistinguishable. Currently, the situation has changed significantly: it is no longer a tormenting misconception but a critical instrument problematizing the self-identity of contemporaneity. However, even as such, it leaves the basic frames of established historical consciousness inviolable. On the other hand, radical attempts to dispatch Modern Time, and see polytemporality beyond the illusion of linear chronology, make the "anachronism” concept be devoid of any sense including critical one. Is it possible to combine a radically immanent ontology with the idea of anachronism as an essential instrument of historiographic reflection? The answer seems to be pursued in space discovered by the texts by Gilles Deleuze. Actually, rather strange temporal measurement appear in all the texts where a question of time is being discussed. Deleuze names it differently: Aeon, "void and pure form of time”, "non-chronological time”, and associates it with the space of virtual. American philosopher Manual DeLanda has suggested a "topological” interpretation of this measurement. 16 Such explication opens new opportunities for historiography in general, and new understanding of anachronism, in particular. Here we deal with not the strains between different measurements of a single temporal flow, not the peaceful co-existence of all tempi "simultaneously”, but the transillumination of virtual in actual assemblage.