Antiquity and the Meanings of Time by Kennedy Duncan F.;

Author:Kennedy, Duncan F.; [Kennedy, Duncan F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 1213943
Publisher: I.B.Tauris

Albert’s scholarly theory invokes closure no less than Yu Tsun’s activities and his Chief’s detective work do, but his comments on Ts’ui Pên’s manuscript point to an important difference with Ts’ui Pên which they share: he creates whereas they re-create.24 And herein lies the problem for counterfactual historians as they indulge their creative imaginations. Choose a fork in the road, and follow the path you know was not taken. Is that a direct route to some known destination, or does it fork in turn? And so on: the possible futures proliferate ad infinitum. Allow Alexander to live, and only a little way on you have him waging a war against Carthage. The implication is that after conquering Carthage, he meets inevitable defeat at the hands of the Romans. Livy had the sense to stop there, thus denying posterity the spectacle of Hannibal, the censor from Africa, intoning before a rapt assembly of the Senate and People of Rome, with the vatic pomp accorded only to the native speaker of Latin raised by the dictates of a stern mother, that Corinth must be destroyed.25 Geschichtswissenschlopff!

But...what if the thought processes that go into such speculation are not unconnected with thinking historically more generally? Stephen Albert does the classic thing in the situation he finds himself in. Confronting a stranger in his house (what Derrida would call an arrivant), he keeps talking, keeps the stranger’s attention while trying to work out what to do. So, he explains further to the clearly curious Yu Tsun the meaning of his great-grandfather’s work. At the same time he is thinking out loud as he tries to understand the situation he finds himself in now. Albert suggests two examples to Yu Tsun, the first relating to the possible futures of this situation:

Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts’ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings.

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