CfP: História - Revista da FLUP, IV Série, Número 8, 1.º semestre, 2018 - O(s) Tempo(s)

 

Indeed, historical time, linked to changes in society, seems to be positioned between eternity (datable) and immortality (timeless). From static time to linear time, explanations and the expectation of a future as a concept of progress have been conceived, a view that has led to a classification of the periodicity of History. Cumulative writings emerge as evidence of the past, a construction that, with Voltaire, became explanatory of the causes, connections and outcomes. Then, the times of History unfolded into cycles and inter-cycles, over centuries and centuries-old; into long-term rhythms or structures, the medium term of junctures and short cycles, or the short stretch of an event.

 

This complex reality, which necessarily requires adjustments, particularly when the information paradigm and the network society progressively induce disturbances in the sequential order of the events taking place, thus compressing time. To some extent, the movements to safeguard heritage are, consciously or unconsciously, a result of this tendency towards the end of generational continuity, between the quest for control over space (defensive reaction) and the quest for control over time (striving to preserve nature for future generations).

 

At the same time, the valorisation of time has led to the emergence of social times, in the transformation of work time and leisure time, or the freedom to use time in its several variables: from the sacred calendar, with its devotional and liturgical times, to times of political celebrations and social claims for a calendar of leisure.

 

The measurement of time took on multiple forms, in a progressive movement of cycles, such as day and night and seasons of the year, within a human, mechanical and, nowadays, atomic configuration of fractions of seconds. The History of measuring time is the search for standardisation and establishing norms, although there is a perception that the process of replacing belfries, bells and clocks takes us to another domain, that of changes in sound landscapes and the culture of the sensitive, of social representation.

 

This, in turn, leads us to another inevitable dimension, in the merchants of the Middle Ages were condemned because their gains meant a mortgage on time which was considered as belonging to God. The reason being that all trade activities were based on the anticipation of gains depending on the variable of time – accumulation, in times of possible famine, or buying and selling at more favourable junctures. Theoretical reasoning at canonical and theological level adapted very slowly to the changes in economic practices, all the more so because infrastructures seem to increase gains in time. The merchant's time accelerates when he profits from adding interest to his capital, in an ambivalent and shocking innovation that has persisted to the present day, translating into, at times, untraceable gains.

 

But time is also the climate moment, it is the weather and the seasons of the year, and continues to be a configuration of the perceptions of time that, more and more, we want to control, measure and understand in order to anticipate its extremes. The prevailing trend is to scientifically record the frequency and intensity of these natural phenomena. However, these records contain a much broader range of data to assess cultural and social responses, taking into account the time before and after those events, particularly of natural disasters, where memory emerges as a fundamental reconstructive element of the extreme event, at each moment.