The Anachronism of History
Modern historiography is a modern and European invention, yet is thought to yield knowledge of all human pasts, giving rise to a paradox explored in this chapter. It is a cardinal sin for history writing to fall prey to anachronism, and yet applying the code of history to times and places where the presumptions that define it were/are not shared is itself anachronistic. What does it mean to write histories of premodern and non-Western pasts that were not disenchanted, where gods had not been deprived of agency, where the past constantly bled into the present, and where texts were not seen as the congealed remains of the purposes and meanings of their human authors? Modern histories of non-Western pasts must, this chapter concludes, be written in recognition that such histories are translations, not better or truer representations; and with acknowledgment of and due attention to the fact that much gets lost in translation.