On Futures and Endings

Sep 11

NARRATOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF CRISES

ANNE FUCHS

History and Theory 62, no. 3 (2023).

The article examines the changing relationship of the present to the future from a narratological perspective. It argues that three dominant narrative schemas structure the contemporary experiences of temporality in the Western social imaginary: the modern crisis narrative, the apocalyptic narrative, and the chronic crisis narrative. In its first part, the article shows how the modern sense of crisis, which emerged in the late eighteenth century, sedimented into a powerful narrative template by knitting together the past, the present, and the future into a unified plot. The second part focuses on the resurgence of apocalyptic stories in the Western social imaginary and humanities discourse. The final part highlights the special contribution of aesthetics of precariousness to the Western imaginary of time and temporality. It argues that the “chronic crisis narrative” deflates the teleological narrative arc of the modern crisis paradigm while also shunning the end-time discourse of the apocalyptic narrative.