When is After? Periodization may not be father to the man,
but it is to anyone trying to tell a story about the past. Without “before” or
“after” how would we tell stories, determine causation, or assign
responsibility? But knowing when to begin the beginning or end the end is an
art in itself—or, as T.S. Eliot thought, “an occupation for a saint.”
Nevertheless, or perhaps as a direct consequence, we students of the past spend
far too little time thinking about the reasons why we choose one starting point
over another. In the worst case, we don’t even ask this question at all, but
unthinkingly repeat what we’ve been told—by others who may themselves not have
asked the question.
For an institution pre-occupied with making and knowing,
“When is After?” takes on specific shapes. It is bound up with the lives of
things and, just as much, with their afterlives. Histories from things and art
histories of things must, equally, take a stand on exactly when the change of
phase occurs that defines an explanatory context. As objects have become a more
familiar type of source, and as consumption, re-use, and emotion have become
roads more frequently taken, “after” has become a more essential component of a
properly panoramic perspective.
As Bard Graduate Center celebrates its twenty-fifth year the
project of looking back in order to move forward in more interesting ways is
one that we embrace. In the Research Forum we have launched the “Re-Visions”
feature, in which talks and book chapters are re-combined so as to reveal them
as answers to new questions. “Counter-histories” is the next to appear,
suggesting that we might say, with a nod to Faulkner, that “After isn’t ever
over. It isn’t even after.”
Finally, following last year’s theme “What is Distance?”,
“When is After?” marks the next step towards BGC’s goal of creating a library
of fundamental questions for students of the cultural sciences.
