Historical research on time is often theoretical, pondering on the general foundations of historiography, whereas case studies on temporality and its experience or on chronopolitics are still an exception. By relating and comparing the concepts and politics of time in National Socialism and Italian Fascism we aim to examine the fascist regimes’ relationships to past, present and future. We want to scrutinize both fascism’s dynamism as well as the close nexus between its futural momentum and its quest to reify a long forlorn, imaginary past. By establishing this nexus between future-oriented dynamics and an eternity that encompassed the past, fascism was able to fulfil not only the need for a new beginning and “revolution” but the longing for rootedness as well. The destruction of the past and the restoration of origin, the beginning of a new era and the thousand year standstill of time, revolution and eternity, were thus joined together in Fascism.

We hope to further contextualize fascism’s seemingly paradoxical temporality and to have a closer look at the simultaneous staging of fascism as both the origin of the break with centuries of decay and decadence and as the restorer of continuity and the preserver of permanence. Furthermore we aim to systematise the chronopolitics of the fascist regimes that have recently been dubbed “dictatorships of acceleration” (L. Raphel). Among other things we would like to discuss, if the “cumulative radicalisation” (H. Mommsen) of the regimes could be flanked by a concept of their “cumulative acceleration” and to position the fascist attitude towards time and the “restless standstill” of the regimes in the broader context of a more general history of the experience of time in the 1920s through 1940s.

We are searching for scholars on the doctoral or postdoctoral levels who would like to present their case studies on fascism’s temporality and fascist chronopolitics and discuss their approaches with the panel of experts that we have been able to gather.

Paper proposals of max. 500 words, together with a brief CV, should be sent to both fernando.esposito(at)uni-tuebingen.de and sven.reichardt(at)uni-konstanz.de by the 15th of December 2012.