Theorizing Palimpsests: Unfolding Pasts into the Present

How do we connect the past with the present to address structural problems? While the pursuit of a cause-and-effect past flowing into the present contributes to the understanding of an event or object, how that past is recalled, represented, related, disconnected, suppressed, and/or obfuscated in any given present matters. This article proposes palimpsests as a critical tool for analyzing the many histories of the present. To illustrate this theoretical practice, the article offers a palimpsestic reading of a museumized object, the Nubian Temple of Dendur, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The structural nature of a history of the present comes into view only when one is able to discern multiple histories, presents, categories, and objects layered together within the palimpsest of history.

Iğsız, Aslı. “Theorizing Palimpsests: Unfolding Pasts into the Present.” History of the Present 11, no. 2 (October 1, 2021): 193–208. https://doi.org/10.1215/21599785-9015288.