Temporal Multiplicity in E. P. Thompson & Reinhart Koselleck

This paper attempts to trace the semantic valences that invest particular textures of temporality with significance. I borrow the term “semantic valence” from the discipline of linguistics for reasons that should become more explicit. We need not dwell on the more scientific implications of these terms for linguistics. For my purposes, semantic valences are the varying shades and degrees of formal meanings associated with a particular concept, synchronically or diachronically. With this understanding of semantic valence in mind, I contend that one method of undertaking such a “trace,” especially when its object of inquiry is the characterization of time, is a historiographical comparison. This “trace” will sketch out how two scholars—who have been received as paradigmatic in their respective spheres of influence—characterize, express, and represent temporal change and multiplicity. In order to advance this inquiry, I will place E. P. Thompson’s seminal essay, “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” and Reinhart Koselleck’s Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time into conversation.