A history of temporal orders: notes on the concept of Regimes of Historicity by François Hartog

Abstract

This article consists of a study on the theory of the historian François Hartog through the work entitled Regimes of Historicity, Presentism and Experiences in Time (2003). The interpretation of this book presented here is based on the premise that the work does not aim to produce a historiographical synthesis on historical cultures, nor a History on History or time itself, but rather an essay on historical-philosophical interpretation on the forms of organization of experiences in and of social time. As for the argumentative structure of the article, it first starts from a brief characterization of the relationship between Hartog and Brazilian historians in the context of publication in the national territory, followed by a critique of the intellectual infrastructure of his work, as made by Hartog in his general thesis, later as this focus on the experiences of and in the present leads the author to the analysis of different types of meaning and structuring of social time in the cultural tradition and elsewhere. Finally, in the conclusion, the theoretical-methodological importance of the concept of Historicity Regimes is pointed out, qualifying it as an analytical instrument whose applicability is interdisciplinary, and, finally, also discussing the applicability of a history of temporal orders in the current Brazilian historiographical debate.