In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

432 FRAMES
tions into an (illusory or not-so-illusory) position of spatial closeness.
Only such proximity would indeed enable us to touch, smell, and hear
the past.40 As an aspect of time, however, simultaneity allows for paradoxical
relations among the phenomena re-presented. For if what we call
a paradox is the simultaneous presence of two contradictory terms, it
follows logically that a historiographic perspective of simultaneity engenders
multiple paradoxes.
Choosing simultaneity as a frame-condition for this book not only
required a tolerance toward paradoxes. It also excluded, independent of
any philosophical preferences, the possibility of treating subjects as
agents, because actions can be credited with agency only in a narrative,
and narratives require sequentiality. The world of 1926 therefore appears
here as a stage without actors. This of course does not mean that
I am "not interested in people," but is a consequence of the form I chose
for the re-presentation of a past year. In renouncing the sequentiality of
a narrative plot, I also forgo the most "natural" criterion for selecting
among the historical materials. What are the limits of my research, and
of the re-presentations based on this research, if I do not pursue or
construct a story line? Certainly not the boundaries of any "national
culture"-and not even (at least not by way of any logical deduction or
induction) the limits of Western culture. The only reason my pictures of
the world in 1926 are de facto confined to Western culture lies in the
(highly contingent and deplorable) fact that all the materials accessible
to my linguistic and semiotic competence come from the West. Whether
the various pictures I present really coalesce into a larger panorama of
Western culture is another empirical question. The materials seem to
point to a fairly coherent network of everyday phenomena, with national
idiosyncrasies as well as suggestions of openings toward non-Western
worlds. Somewhat paradoxically, the various totalizing world-pictures
that emerged within this framework belong to the more idiosyncratic
elements. They constitute a second level of reference for the concept of
"world," a level occupied by multiple and normally well-circumscribed
ideas-as opposed to what I call "the world of 1926," which constitutes
this book's ultimately unattainable object of re-presentation. Inside each
national or regional culture, the totalizing world-pictures are generally
not experienced as "specific" in any sense (neither "black," nor "Western,"
nor "middle-class," nor "Italian"). But it is easy to delineate their