Abstract

AGUAYO BORQUEZ, Claudio. Anachronism and History. About Reactionary Historiography: The Chilean Case. Rev. hist. Am. [online]. 2022, n.163, pp.231-267.  Epub Feb 27, 2024. ISSN 2663-371X.  https://doi.org/10.35424/rha.163.2022.1224.

The objective of this work is to expose the concept of reactionary historiography. First, I will focus on delineating the debate about the uses of historiography inside conservative and right-wing thought, starting from the recent idea of Alt/Histories used by Louie Valencia-García. I will show that anachronisms are an important part of reactionary historiography and that they produce an effect of non-synchronicity (Ungleichzeitigkeit), according to the German philosopher Ernst Bloch. In a second moment, I will delimit this non-synchronicity in the framework of European political theology and what Carl Schmitt calls “the political philosophy of the counterrevolution”. Contrary to some approaches that I question here, reactionary thought would not prioritize a linear and synchronous image of history, but instead feeds on an exceptionalist representation of the revolutionary event and the responses that could be given to it. Subsequently, I expose some exponents of reactionary historiography in Chile and discuss the philosophical presuppositions of their work: especially Mario Góngora and Jaime Eyzaguirre, two fundamental thinkers of Chilean conservatism. The concept of reactionary historiography, in my opinion, would help to deconstruct the philosophical presuppositions and the “theoretical metastases” in the words of Hans Blumenberg, with which history reads critical events. Far from being innocent, the political uses of the past are overdetermined by conjunctural positions and determinable theoretical conceptions. Through a visit to the essays of Catholic intellectuals of the nineteenth century and of the Chilean right-wing though of the twentieth century, I start the investigation of a chapter of the conceptual history of the Latin American right, reactionary historiography.

Keywords : reactionary historiography; non-synchronicity; reactionary thought; traditionalist history; conservative thought; Chilean right.

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