MARIA STAVRINAKI
Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Rather than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene, this is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the “new” was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought.

Maria Stavrinaki teaches art history and theory at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is the author of Dada Presentism: An Essay on Art and History and Contraindre à la liberté: Carl Einstein, les avant-gardes, l’histoire.