Thinking globally about history
Quote of the month
There is a familiar claim in post-antique history writing that one of the characteristics of modernity was "Western, empty, post-Enlightenment time" liberating itself from this enclosed providentialist time, but … still carrying on many of its dynamics … One of the things my book is trying to do is to reverse that order and suggest that state-directed empty time was invented first and apocalyptic eschatology or enclosed providentialist time is a dialectical response to that.