Alexander C.T. Geppert

Till Kössler

Time is an obsession of the present, yet current debates seem largely unaware of its historical formation throughout the twentieth century. Given a century characterized by frequent ruptures and supersessions of competing temporal regimes, it is remarkable that time has not played a more central role in its historicisation, neither as analytical category nor thematic research subject. The nine articles in this special issue, set in Germany, England, Spain and Japan, pursue both perspectives. On the one hand they examine the conceptual role, function and importance of ›time‹ in and for the writing of history; on the other they analyse changing régimes d'historicité and the transformation of time practices empirically. Criticising established standard narratives of a global ›standardization‹ of time or its relentless ›acceleration‹, this volume rather emphasizes the pluritemporality of the twentieth century and foregrounds the historical preconditions of our digitally-driven present-day simultaneities. Thus, it explores the possibilities of the historicisation of ›time‹ as a fundamental category for thinking the twentieth century and offers a building block for a new ›time-history‹.

Zeit im 20. Jahrhundert

Obsession der Gegenwart

Imagining Outer Space makes a captivating advance into the cultural history of outer space and extraterrestrial life in the European imagination. How was outer space conceived and communicated? What promises of interplanetary expansion and cosmic colonization propelled the project of human spaceflight to the forefront of twentieth-century modernity? In what way has West-European astroculture been affected by the continuous exploration of outer space? Tracing the thriving interest in spatiality to early attempts at exploring imaginary worlds beyond our own, the book analyzes contact points between science and fiction from a transdisciplinary perspective and examines sites and situations where utopian images and futuristic technologies contributed to the omnipresence of fantasmatic thought. Bringing together state-of-the-art work in this emerging field of historical research, the volume breaks new ground in the historicization of the Space Age.

European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century

Imagining Outer Space

Luisa Passerini

Liliana Ellena

In Europe, love has been given a prominent place in European self-representations from the Enlightenment onwards. The category of love, stemming from private and personal spheres, was given a public function and used to distinguish European civilisation from others. Contributors to this volume trace historical links and analyse specific connections between the two discourses on love and Europe over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the distinctions made between the public and private, the political and personal. In doing so, this volume develops an innovative historiography that includes such resources as autobiographies, love letters, and cinematic representations, and takes issue with the exclusivity of Eurocentrism. Its contributors put forth hypotheses about the historical pre-eminence of emotions and consider this history as a basis for a non-Eurocentric understanding of new possible European identities.

Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century

New Dangerous Liaisons

Limiting Outer Space propels the historicization of outer space by focusing on the Post-Apollo period. After the moon landings, disillusionment set in. Outer space, no longer considered the inevitable destination of human expansion, lost much of its popular appeal, cultural significance and political urgency. With the rapid waning of the worldwide Apollo frenzy, the optimism of the Space Age gave way to an era of space fatigue and planetized limits. Bringing together the history of European astroculture and American-Soviet spaceflight with scholarship on the 1970s, this cutting-edge volume examines the reconfiguration of space imaginaries from a multiplicity of disciplinary perspectives. Rather than invoking oft-repeated narratives of Cold War rivalry and an escalating Space Race, Limiting Outer Space breaks new ground by exploring a hitherto underrated and understudied decade, the Post-Apollo period.

Astroculture After Apollo

Limiting Outer Space

Daniel Brandau

Tilmann Siebeneichner

Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and vio​lence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking ​European Astroculture trilogy, ​Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.

Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War

Militarizing Outer Space

Imagining Outer Space makes a captivating advance into the cultural history of outer space and extraterrestrial life in the twentieth-century imagination. Bringing together seventeen state-of-the-art essays, the volume explores the complexities of West-European astroculture and breaks new ground in the historicization of the Space Age.

Alexander C.T. Geppert

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