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Something Happened to the Future
Reconstructing Temporalities in Dutch Parliamentary Debate, 1814–2018
in Contributions to the History of Concepts
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Joris van Eijnatten
Joris van Eijnatten
Utrecht University, The Netherlands j.vaneijnatten@esciencecenter.nl
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Pim Huijnen
Pim Huijnen
Utrecht University, The Netherlands p.huijnen@uu.nl
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Abstract
This article stands in Reinhart Koselleck's tradition of investigating the historical experience of time. It focuses on the manner in which the experience and conceptualization of the future changed in Dutch parliamentary speech between 1814 and 2018. Based on a quantitative analysis of a corpus of political texts of more than 800 million tokens spanning more than two centuries, we argue that the future transformed from something unknown but principally predictable into a synonym for change itself during the final quarter of the twentieth century. We contend that this resulted in unpredictability becoming the future's defining trait and the future, consequently, losing its character as a knowledgeable singular in a process of what can be called “de-singularization.”
Contributor Notes
Joris van Eijnatten is professor of digital history at Utrecht University and general director of the Netherlands eScience Center. E-mail: j.vaneijnatten@esciencecenter.nl
Pim Huijnen is assistant professor of digital cultural history at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. E-mail: p.huijnen@uu.nl