The Texture of Time and Temporalities in the Historical Culture of the Twenty-First Century

The problem of time has long occupied a central place in philosophy and intellectual history, yet it continues to resist final comprehension, remaining, as Paul Ricoeur observed, an unresolved aporia. In contemporary scholarship, new efforts are directed towards constructing a transdisciplinary theory of time that integrates philosophical reflection, historical reasoning, and the social sciences. Within the conditions of the Anthropocene, this rethinking of historicity entails a shift from a single, linear conception of time to the study of multiple and intersecting temporalities. The growing body of literature over the past decade, together with the intensity of theoretical debate, reveals the emergence of a “temporal turn” in historical culture and the consolidation of a distinct field of time studies. These approaches focus on the texture of time as a lived and experienced phenomenon, drawing attention to its material, affective, and relational dimensions. The study of temporality now intersects with the material, affective, and relational turns in the humanities, linking historical inquiry to broader transformations in human self-understanding. Exploring the interplay of heterogeneous temporal constellations complicates the historian’s task yet expands the possibilities of historical explanation. The temporal turn, therefore, signals not only an epistemological revision within historical thought but also a profound reconfiguration of how modern societies imagine duration, continuity, and change in the twenty-first century.

temporal turn, transdisciplinarity, texture of time, multiple temporalities, historicity, Anthropocene, philosophy of history, historical culture