Updatism: Pandemic and Historicities in the Never-Ending 2020

Abstract

In this essay we demonstrate that the present and the future are also history and must be dimensions of historiography. For that, we return to episodes from our book Alamanac of COVID-19 and some of our readings of key moments of this year in order to reflect on what we have called updatist historicity. In some moments we use the retrospective as a tool. In others we choose to maintain the anachronistic effect of certain passages in order to highlight the contingent aspect of all representation of time. We divided the text into three main parts. The first presents the most recent shifts in the hypothesis about an updatist historicity. In the second, we gathered some episodes from 2020 as a way to elucidate what we are calling updatism in its relations with politics and history, and finally we point out preliminary paths for action with counter-updatist effects.