Non-contemporary Contemporaneity
摘要
We understand the non-contemporal contemporaneity in lines of Koselleck: as a situation when we distinguish—in a single socio–cultural field—the presence and impacts of various cultural elements of different date of provenience and of various dynamics of their transformation. We present here some modalities of such configurations, before all in the relation to narrative theories of historiography and the historism (as different to historicism). On the Czech history around 1900 we ask, if we can ontically assess a cultural integrity of an epoch. We follow the Wittlich’s interpretation of the Štursa’s sculpture Melancholic girl as a real cultural meta-attractor that unifies what can be called “Czech Art nouveau”. We argue that such a unity is more likely but a result of a narrative historical interpretation (Ankersmit). This conclusion we also project into the concept of quasi–character (Ricoeur, Mandelbaum) that we do not link to whole societies, but only to plenty of interpretative communities. These arose in different times and with a different temporality of their transformation, and can coexist or even overlap in a single socio–cultural field, all representing cases of Closure 2. Hence, we see analogies between the evolution of biological species and of socio–cultural complexes, We return again to the topics of plasticity and elasticity of (cultural) evolution. Non–temporal contemporality might also somatize—in course of human evolution.