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After initially identifying defamiliarization as a central aspect of Nancy Rose Hunt's essay "History as Form," this comment reflects on the implications that her reading of Georg Simmel and her emphasis on objects and materiality have for the writing of history. If Hunt suggests, with Simmel, that the form of history is autonomous from history as it unfolds, the claim here is rather that there is no necessary relationship between writing and its topic. Considering how earlier European historiography excluded Africa (in particular) from the domain of history, it is no coincidence that this contingent relation between form and history has been particularly energizing for Africanist historiography—leading to innovations both in practice and theory. The comment concludes by briefly discussing three concepts that have informed such innovation: the vernacular, suturing, and multiple temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article is an attempt to address on a theoretical level an antinomy in postcolonial approaches to the question of temporal difference. Current scholarship tends both to denounce the way in which the others of the Western self are placed notionally in another time than the West and not only analytically affirm but indeed valorize multiple temporalities. I elaborate on the two problematic temporal frameworks-linear developmentalism and cultural relativism-that belong to a colonial legacy and generate the antinomy in question, and then proceed to discuss possible alternatives provided by a Koselleck-inspired approach to historical time as inherently plural. I thereby make two central claims: (1) postcolonial conceptions of multiple temporalities typically, if tacitly, associate time with culture, and hence risk reproducing the aporias of cultural relativism; (2) postcolonial metahistorical critique is commonly premised on a simplified and even monolithic understanding of Western modernity as an ideology of 'linear progress.' Ultimately, I suggest that the solution lies in radicalizing, not discarding, the notion of multiple temporalities. Drawing on the Brazilian classic Os sertões as my key example, I also maintain that literary writing exhibits a unique 'heterochronic' (in analogy with 'heteroglossic') potential, enabling a more refined understanding of temporal difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]