Vortexian History
The world is changing at a rapid pace, and so is the history of this world. We need a new history for the realities of the twenty-first century that meets a number of seemingly contradictory requirements. It should be rooted in specific places but aware of global contexts; it needs to acknowledge the constraints that come with a multitude of entanglements while leaving agency for human and non-human actors; it should recognize economic, social, political, cultural, technological and environmental issues without a predefined hierarchy; and it should avoid the allure of teleological narratives without denying that we are on a downward slope. Can we find narratives that take all this into account? Yes, we can.
Vortexian history offers a new way to recount the history of environmental challenges in the age of global modernity. It starts with specific events, artifacts, places, and the like and explores the gradual accumulation of all sorts of things that frame our approach to environmental issues: laws and technologies, seminal books and scientific innovations, cultural tropes, and expert systems. Most of all, it presents this history in a way that allows readers to experience the dynamism of the modern world: we are truly at sea in our engagement with environmental challenges. More precisely, we are adrift in a giant, planetary-sized vortex that has defied all attempts at comprehensive control. And if you find that metaphor too watery, please note that I am not the first historian who thought in the language of hydrology. One of the inspirations for “The Vortex” came from Fernand Braudel’s reflections on the tides of history.
