Giorgio Buccellati, Critique of Archaeological Reason
THEMES
Archaeology and history
Giorgio Buccellati, July 2013
Stefania Ermidoro, June 2015
Heidegger
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Heidegger (gB)
Paragraph 73 of Sein und Zeit is entitled: "Das vulgäre Verständnis der Geschichte und das Geschehen des Daseins," and on pp. 380-382 it deals extensively with how "objects preserved in Museums" can be understood as properly historical, in an ordinary ("vulgär") sense. Heidegger's standpoint is of interest because it develops several notions relevant for our argument.
(1) The objects as such are present in the here and now, so that what really belongs to the past is "die Welt, innnerhalb derens sie [the objects], zu einem Zeugzusammenhang gehörig, als Zuhandenes begegneten und von einem besorgenden, in-der-Welt-seienden Dasein gebraucht wurden" (p. 380). This stresses the importance of the context.
(2) This "world," this context, no longer exists. But the objects are witnesses ("Zeugen") to the "ancient inner concrete life of that world" ("das vormals Innerweltliche jener Welt," p. 380). Accordingly, the historical character of these "still extant antiquities" is rooted in the "pastness" ("Vergangenheit") of the existential dimension ("Dasein") of the world, the context, to which they belonged.
(3) Historicity does not depend on temporal distance: "Seiendes wird nicht mit dem Fortrücken in eine immer fernere Vergangenheit «geschichtlicher», so dass das Älteste am eigentlichsten geschichtlich wäre" (p.381). [Interestingly, the significance of "pastness" is not linked with the notion of brokenness, of the solution of continuity of a properly archaeological past.]
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