Christophe Bouton is professor of philosophy at Bordeaux Montaigne University. He publishes
The Acceleration of History.
From Lights to the Anthropocene
, Ed. Seuil, May 2022.
FIGAROVOX. - What does the now widespread formula of "acceleration of history" mean?
Christopher Button. -
The formula was popularized by Daniel Halévy's book,
Essay on the acceleration of history
published in 1948, and it has since enjoyed increasing success in academic works and the media, where it has become commonplace in very different senses.
Beyond this polysemy, I observed two main meanings.
The acceleration of history designates, on the one hand, the idea of an acceleration of the rhythm of events, an idea that began to emerge in Western societies at the end of the 18th century around the French Revolution.
It thus translates the experience of an increase in political and social changes over ever shorter periods of time, which is sometimes accompanied by the feeling of the loss of traditions.
On the other hand, the formula points to the technical and economic acceleration that began with the industrial revolution of the 19th century, it aims at an acceleration in the history of the means of transport, production and communication, as well as of the scientific discoveries that are the origin.
Recently, at the beginning of the 2000s, a third meaning appeared in the context of the debates on the “Anthropocene”, a controversial notion which intends to name this period when men are capable of upsetting the great fundamental balances of nature.
I discovered in the specialized literature on this subject the recurring theme of the "great acceleration", which underlines the fact that the harmful consequences of human activities on nature - global warming, greenhouse gas emissions greenhouse, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc.
– have been increasing according to exponential curves since the middle of the 20th century.
There is thus a direct link between the acceleration in the technical and economic sense, which leads to an increasing consumption of fossil fuels, and the climate emergency,
It is this double origin, political on the one hand, technological and economic on the other, which makes the experience of acceleration one of the characteristic features of modernity.
Christopher Button
What are the foundations of this concept? How did the French Revolution contribute to its emergence?
Even if the formula appears after the Second World War, the notion of the acceleration of history, as I said, is older and goes back to the French Revolution where it had a political meaning.
It is both an observation, that of a rapid upheaval in society which contrasts with the secular stability of the Old Regime, and an imperative for action.
The German historian Reinhart Koselleck has shown this and quotes in particular on this subject this eloquent sentence of Robespierre in his speech to the Convention of May 10, 1793: "
The progress of human reason prepared this great revolution, and it is you that is specially imposed the duty to accelerate it
”.
Chateaubriand, who tries in his
Historical Essay
to make the
events were running faster than my pen
”.
The link between acceleration and revolution is largely found in Marx, who asserts, in the context of the 1848 revolution, that revolutions are “
the locomotives of history
”.
This expression illustrates well the convergence between the political revolution and the industrial revolution, symbolized by the "steam horse".
Marx also insists, in the
Manifesto of the Communist Party
, on the cult of change which characterizes in his eyes capitalist societies, which cannot exist without permanently revolutionizing the means of production and social conditions.
It is this double origin, political on the one hand, technological and economic on the other, which makes the experience of acceleration one of the characteristic features of modernity.
In 1843, Heinrich Heine was enthusiastic about the opening of the railway lines from Paris to Rouen and Orleans, "a new era of universal history" which brought places and peoples together, while seeing in it the disturbing announcement new suffering.
Christopher Button
How are “acceleration” and “progress” related?
During the 19th century, the category of acceleration was associated with that of progress: one must accelerate progress, and progress is often defined by an acceleration (of transport, communications, discoveries, reforms, etc.) .
In 1843, Heinrich Heine was enthusiastic about the opening of the railway lines from Paris to Rouen and Orleans, "
a new era of universal history
" which brought places and peoples together, while seeing in it the disturbing announcement new suffering.
This testimony reminds us that we must not give in to an overly simplistic conception of modernity as a love of speed and change.
Because as soon as it appears, the experience of acceleration arouses concerns and reservations that will continue to grow.
In fact, we observe three types of judgment with regard to it: frank adherence, which is based on the imperative "we can't stop progress!"
;
mixed judgment (of which Heine's position gives an example);
and the critical gaze, which is often linked to a questioning of progress as it has become uncontrollable (unfortunately we can no longer stop progress) and dangerous.
In a lecture given at the French Academy on December 18, 1975, Maurice Schumann wondered: “Does the acceleration of history destroy freedom?”.
Nietzsche denounces in a premonitory way the flow of information that we no longer have time to digest
Christopher Button
What is the "monstrous acceleration of life" of which Nietzsche speaks? Has the man of action replaced the scientist?
Nietzsche is a good example of a keen critical eye on acceleration.
The "monstrous acceleration of life", which he stigmatizes in 1878 in
Human, All Too Human
, designates the economic and technological progress of his time, in particular the press, the machine, the railway, and the telegraph.
The acceleration of social life that they entail is monstrous in his eyes in that it provokes a depreciation of the contemplative life and of culture (
Bildung
), in favor of the cult of work, of the busyness that characterizes the modernity with its
prestissimo
tempo
.
The scientist is devalued in favor of the "man of action", that is to say the politician or the businessman who lives with his eyes riveted on the bulletins of the Stock Exchange.
This finding still seems relevant today.
Nietzsche also denounces in a premonitory way the flow of information that we no longer have time to digest.
And he opposes to this perpetual agitation a rehabilitation of the ancient model of
otium
, of leisure freed from the constraints of work, a notion which, in my opinion, would make it possible, in a democratized form, to counterbalance the cult of urgency.
Are we in “presentism” societies?
When everything is going faster, we have “the head in the handlebars”, we don't have time to look back and anticipate what is happening.
For some historians, like Pierre Nora, the acceleration of history would thus lead to a loss of the past and a dissolution of the future, so that the present would become the dominant historical category of modernity.
This is what François Hartog calls "presentism".
This important notion makes it possible to grasp many aspects of our current historical experience, such as the logic of the short term, the tyranny of urgency, the obsession with time, the social rejection of aging, the cult of immediate topicality, etc. .
On the other hand, it seemed to me that if presentism is certainly a fertile reading grid for our modernity, it does not exhaust the relationship to time of contemporary societies.
It is in competition with other experiences of time, such as a concern for the past that we observe today, in my opinion, in the will to preserve heritage or the implementation of the duty of memory, and a concern for the future which is expressed in the political demands for social progress which have not disappeared from our democracies and, more recently, in the increased concern for the problem of global warming.
What Ernst Bloch calls the spirit of utopia has reappeared in Western societies in new forms.
Christopher Button
You claim that “the future has resisted the tyranny of the present”. What do you mean ?
This thesis is somewhat related to my own background.
I was very marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when I was a student.
There was plenty of talk then about the end of history (I'm thinking of Francis Fukuyama) and the exhaustion of utopian energies, two themes that will be taken up by Hartmut Rosa in his book
Acceleration
.
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the end of what has been called the Marxist utopia was seen as the end of any alternative to the capitalist system, the victory of TINA (There Is No Alternative) dear to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
We were condemned to live in a certain present, without being able to imagine a better future.
However, as François Furet had noted in
Le Passé d'une illusion
, "
it is too austere and too contrary to the spirit of modern societies for it to last
”.
And indeed, what Ernst Bloch calls the spirit of utopia has reappeared in Western societies in new forms.
I give the example of basic income or universal income, an idea that some authors have made the cornerstone of their "realistic utopia" (I am thinking in particular of the American sociologist Erik Olin Wright).
Even if this idea is controversial from both a political and economic point of view, it illustrates at the very least the existence of a social project offering an alternative to current capitalism.
The other example that I put forward is the idea of "eutopia", an expression that I used to name the current concern to preserve the planet to make it a place of sustainable life (from "eu", "good in Greek, and “topos”, the “place”).
Does the acceleration of history cause a break with the past and traditions? Are our modern societies breaking with the tradition of history as the mistress of life?
Just as, in my opinion, the thesis of a dissolution of the future must be qualified, it should be emphasized that the relationship to the past of modern societies is plural and has partly resisted the processes of acceleration.
Alongside the loss of traditions that accompanied the end of peasant societies, there is still a keen interest in history as a source of examples and lessons.
As I try to show in detail in my work, the old ancient commonplace of a “mistress of life” story has not disappeared but has been transformed with modernity.
We see it for example in the 19th century with Nietzsche, who underlined the "inconveniences" but also the "usefulness" of history for life, and, in the 20th century, with Walter Benjamin, according to whom no struggle for
Today, history remains very present in political speeches, for better or for worse, as we are seeing at the moment with Vladimir Poutine (I refer to the essay
Poutine historie en chef
by Nicolas Werth, Gallimard, 2022).
Hence the importance in my eyes of the critical vigilance of historians, who can deconstruct the ideological and falsifying uses of history.
Christophe Bouton,
The Acceleration of History
, Seuil, May 2022 Seuil