Kontexter som tidsskikt

Contexts as layers of time

A core assumption in the fields of historical studies is that historical understanding requires contextualization. If we want to understand something historically, we have to consider this something in context. This chapter challenges an idea of historicization as tantamount to situating texts in already-defined contexts and argues for a contextualizing practice that can account for several ongoing pasts in the present. It proposes an understanding of contexts as time layers which would direct our attention to the multi-temporality of historical texts, rather than to their specific location within an already chronologically determined past. It is argued that such an understanding would enrich our contextual work by making visible the histories of the many times present in the texts and phenomena we study.