Achronology as a cultural force, part 1

 

I can see through time           

- Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons S05E13        


As a historian, I am trained to divide history into periods, and I am also trained to deconstruct such periods and critique them. Periodisation is a tool for making sense of large amounts of information, and sorting various narratives and various blocks of information into more comprehensible units. But such tools as periodisation can easily become weapons, which is why so much of the historian’s task is taken up by explaining why terms such as “the Middle Ages”, “Antiquity”, “pre-modern” and “the Enlightenment” are deeply problematic and can be used to promoted racist, nationalist, supremacist agendas. Periodisation can, in such instances, become a cultural force in that it helps create sensations of history moving towards predestined or inherently natural endpoints, which can be used to interpret any major event in history. Such teleological views of history can function as rallying points for groups or organisations, and they also serve to establish an idea of any given group being at the centre of history, whereas all other groups are merely extras or collateral. However, periodisation is not the only understanding of history that can have an impact on how societies and groups approach the past. Another such understanding is what we can call “achronology”, and in this blogpost and the next I will explore some aspects of the achronological view of the past, and what how that view can shape current events.  

Achronology is in a way the opposite of periodisation, because while periodisation rigidly – often too rigidly – divide the past into temporally sequenced blocks, achronology undoes that sequence and puts every part of history into the same block. Since every part of history inhabits the same block, achronology opens up for encounters between historical individuals, phenomena, concepts or objects that could not possibly encounter one another. In this way, achronology is also different from anachronism. Anachronism means that something is in the wrong time period, and we typically see this in works of historical fiction, be it in novels, comics, films, etc. One of my favourite examples is when the eponymous protagonist of the comic strip series Prince Valiant meets Marino, the founder of the independent country San Marino, while also fighting the Huns of Attila. According to legend, Marino operated around 301, while Attila ruled the Huns from the 440s until his death in 455. There is, in other words, no way that Prince Valiant could have encountered both Marino and Attila. What makes Prince Valiant’s impossible encounters anachronistic rather than a case of creative achronology is that the adventures of Prince Valiant are firmly set in the fifth century. Consequently, when later concepts such as crusading ideology or later phenomena such as the Viking raids are brought into Prince Valiant’s world, the boundaries of time are broken and anachronisms are being committed. In achronology, on the other hand, such boundaries cannot be broken because they do not exist in the first place. While periodisation and anachronism predicate chronological differences, achronology obliterates those differences and puts everything into a temporal here-and-now. This also means that time travel stories are not achronological, because such stories depend on the ability to traverse those temporal divides that achronology refuses to acknowledge.        

Like creative anachronism, achronology is also a concept commonly employed in entertainment. Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere, for instance, takes place in a London Below that effectively comprises all elements of London’s history in one and the same time-space. The events in Neverwhere are located in a fixed time period, the here-and-now, but that time period encompasses all other periods and can therefore not be considered a case of anachronism. Similarly, Robert Holdstock’s novel Mythago Wood employs achronology by constructing a complex woodland that contains within it corporeal manifestations of the myths of all peoples and cultures that have lived in that part of Britain since the Ice Age. While the novel does operate with the concept of chronological divides, and while this wood is sectioned according to a chronological scheme, those that enter the wood are not subject to the constraints of that chronology. Consequently, Robin Hood, Cú Chulainn and Saxon immigrants all inhabit the same here-and-now.         
       
Achronology is a very fruitful creative tool, just like anachronism, and can be used to very entertaining and also educational ends. I am myself very much in favour of achronology when used in such positive creative ways. But like everything in culture, achronology can also be used as a cultural force, namely something that shapes the culture that receives it. When I call achronology a cultural force I mean this: that the erasure of temporal divides can convey an understanding of the past as a single, unified block whose main defining feature is that it isn’t now, and this understanding can in turn shape how people go about in shaping the present and the future. How achronology impacts contemporary culture depends on where it is received, when it is received, and by whom it is received.   

In some cases, the impact of achronology can take the form of constructing folk-spirits where one feature of a people’s past becomes the defining essence of that people. This essence can then be imagined as a constant to be found in all of the past. Such an idea can lead in two main directions, both of which are sinister and deeply problematic. One direction is to see this spirit or essence is still with us, and that can be used to set a people apart from others and to insist on their primacy in world events, where all of the amorphous, unified past serves as a heavy legitimising weight behind such a claim. The second direction is to fuel fantasies of degradation, where this essence now is lost and must be recovered, which in turn is a way of alienating everyone that does not have a claim to this essence. In Norway, invocations of the Viking spirit – which appears from time to time – is a form of this achronological thinking.      

It is important to emphasise that what I have drawn up here is a scheme of the impact of achronology in its purest form. It is a model of an intellectual construct, and such models rarely map perfectly onto reality. There are very few cases – if any – of pure achronology at work in the cultural discourse, at least when that achronology is not employed for creative ends. But there are elements of achronological thinking at work in society, and these erase or hinder a nuanced understanding of chronological progress. Such achronological thinking might not completely remove any understanding of the past as divided into periods, but the length of those periods and the connection between those periods are obscured, and this obscurity simplifies the past. It is in this simplification that achronology strikes most forcefully.  

While periodisation has its problems, it does help us to comprehend how incrementally history is meted out, and how much human activity and how many human lives go into a year, a decade, or a century. In other words, history is a long process where things can chronologically progress slowly or quickly depending on various factors. (I here use progress not in the qualitative, teleological sense, but just as a way of describing the passing of time from one year to the next.) It is this understanding of history as a complex chain of temporalities that contain numerous known and unknown lives and deeds that prevent us from seeing the past as something simple. Achronology, however, works to simplify the past by erasing or obscuring the temporal divides. One of the most dangerous consequences of that erasure is that people who lose or are prevented from accessing the complex understanding of history are more likely to be receptive to conspiracy theories that stretch back into the very distant past. Ideas about sinister global cabals – typically launched against Jews and still employed in contemporary anti-Semitic discourse to devastating effects – depend on a kind of achronology in which it is possible to maintain large-scale secret society that can pass down its work through generations. Because achronology facilitates a thinking about the past as a single block, it is easier to accept the ludicrous idea that such societies have been in operation across centuries.     

A similar version of such achronological thinking was launched in Norway a few years back, when a freemason suggested that the Freemasons had roots in the Vikings, and as evidence he used a figurine from a third-century burial mound that sported a cloth that the freemason interpreted as the apron that is part of Freemason insignia. What we see here is that the Viking Age – a purely historiographical construct – was extended back in time to the third century, connected to the mythical history of the Freemasons. Because Freemason mythology claims to have roots in the period of the reign of King Solomon, the Norwegian freemason effectively latched his extended Viking period onto the more extensive Freemason period, and managed to connect three dots – the reign of King Solomon, the Viking Age, and eighteenth century – into a unified history. While this kind of historical fantasy does operate with temporal divides, these divides are both closer to one another and more permeable than in reality, and this provides fertile ground for fantasies of continuity, whether those fantasies are used for embellishing one’s institutional identity or fomenting anti-Semitic hatred.          

There are numerous other examples of how achronology works as a cultural force, and this preliminary sketch is just a first attempt to put the fundamental idea into writing. I will emphasise that I don’t disapprove of creative anachronism, I relish it when it is done well, and I also do not think that achronological thinking exist in its purest form. But my point here is by simplifying the past and the slow chronological progress of that past, we can become receptive to fantasies that impact how we view or current time, and how we engage politically in the current time. Belief in the possibility of secret societies sustained across centuries or millennia, or belief in folk-spirits that remain unchanged across centuries or millennia, are both very dangerous because such belief makes the believer receptive to propaganda, manipulation and political programmes designed to alienate or ostracise individuals or entire peoples. Achronology plays a part in the willingness some people have to accept simplistic or conspiracy theory-oriented explanations of the past. And while there also are other factors at play, such as national mythologies or economic pressures, the misunderstanding of the past according to principles of achronology is one of the important factors to facilitate the weaponisation of the past to abuse people in the present.      

In my next blogpost, part 2, I will focus on one specific case which can be said to be fuelled by achronology.