Yes, I learned it yesterday in The World : starting September 9, the traditional television news, which lasted on average thirty-five minutes, will be extended to “take the time for information”, and it will now end at 9 p.m. This is also a general trend in the world of media. If we were to make a “journal of the newspapers”, we would see that they all last longer and longer. For example, on France Inter, the 7-9 stretches until 10 a.m. As for us, as you know, we start at 6:30 a.m.
It’s as if current events were devouring everything. I met Xavier Mauduit yesterday, he was pale. He was afraid that current events were devouring History, and that the course of History would become the course of present history. In the meantime, it’s the long present that is gaining ground, an increasingly stretched present, probably a consequence of what the historian François Hartog calls “presentism”. That is to say, the growing importance of the present in our minds, as if the present were the only regime of historicity that existed.
It’s a fascinating paradox: as our era becomes more obsessed with itself, its self-love is rather tenuous. Everyone is convinced – probably wrongly – that we are living through the worst period in human history. And yet, news has never occupied so much space. The news lasts longer, but humor, films, series… everything draws even more from the present time. The present has become the main source of inspiration, even obsession, for itself.
From a certain point of view, it is normal that this present constitutes an enigma in itself, since it is increasingly cut off from the past, without which it is nevertheless impossible to understand it. How can we grasp the current Ukrainian offensive against the Russian city of Kursk without knowing what Kursk represented during the Second World War? What meaning can we give to what is happening in the Middle East if we ignore the 70 or even 100 years of history that preceded it?
But as long as the present is only interested in itself, even with news broadcasts lasting several hours, how can we really understand the world around us? In short, does this present have a future?
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