The spectre of crisis. History in a planetary age

Abstract

Global pandemics and natural disasters have changed the ways of living and thinking and have given rise to various discourses on the collapse of the world. The omnipresence of the idea of “crisis” has led to several questionings that cut across different areas of knowledge. This article explores the challenges that the present time poses to the ways of thinking and writing history and undertakes a problematization of its assumptions, methodologies, and practices. It aims to conduct an exploratory route around some authors and ideas, susceptible of translating a conjuncture marked by transformations. It questions themes such as “human exceptionalism”, rethinks the division between history and theory, questions modernity’s time and the notions of direction, end and meaning of history, but also poses the hypothesis that there are histories connected to different temporalities, other ways of perceiving time, and re-signifying human agency.