Speaker
Description
Reinhart Koselleck remains a key reference for scholars investigating the conceptual history of crisis. Yet, his analyses (1959; 1972-97; 1986) display significant limitations: (1) the spatial scope is largely confined to the German context; (2) the temporal frame is centered on the Sattelzeit, i.e., the decades between 1750 and 1850; (3) the selection of primary sources relies predominantly on the so-called Höhenkamm-Literatur; and (4) the overall inquiry is guided by an underlying intention to critique modernity through the lens of secularization.
Addressing these constraints, this paper advances a set of methodological tools, theoretical premises, and heuristic hypotheses designed to expand and refine Koselleck’s framework for the study of ‘crisis’ in twentieth-century Europe. Specifically, it discusses: a transnational approach capable of tracing both semantic entanglements and the multiple speeds of the concept (Jollivet 2024; Steinmetz & Freeden 2017; Trencsényi 2022); the coexistence of different layers of time and asynchronous semantic articulations of the term (Koselleck 2000); the embedding of ‘crisis’ within a broader conceptual network – ‘revolution’, ‘progress’, ‘decline’, ‘normality’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘security’ – that shapes wide-ranging discursive, ideological, and linguistic practices (Dutt 2020; Freeden 2003; Richter 1995); and the emergence of new, or allegedly new, conceptual dynamics such as ‘scientification’, ‘popularization’ and ‘volatilization’ (Geulen 2010; Steinmetz 2012). By doing so, the paper seeks to lay the foundations for a renewed conceptual history of crisis – one that does not merely extend Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte, but rather tests its categories, reconfigures its premises, and opens up innovative trajectories for the analysis of the concept.
| Keywords | crisis, Begriffsgeschichte, 20th century, Europe, methodology |
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| a.ampollini@campus.uniurb.it |