What’s in an ‘age’? The now widely shared characterization of our present as the ‘Anthropocene’ serves as a reminder that the idea of an ‘age’ is originally a geological one. Yet, other ‘ages’ are just as ubiquitous in both literature and general historiography. These range from the ‘industrial’, the ‘modern’ and Eric Hobsbawm’s much-quoted ‘age of extremes’ all the way to the ‘global’, ‘oil’, ‘space’, ‘information’, ‘digital’ and numerous other ages. All such periodizations share a claim to exceptionality and imply political, if often invisible consequences. Elevating a single technology to an overarching key characteristic meant to subsume a particular period in human history under a singular rubric, any ‘age talk’ serves to introduce a loosely defined, yet suggestive periodization and claims its conceptual superiority over other descriptors. While ‘ages’ serve to compress empirical complexity, analytically and argumentatively they often do less than they boldly insinuate.

This panel historicizes ‘ages’ as historiographical products, labels and conceptual shortcuts that all historians bring into play, whether they like it or not, usually without paying much attention to their choice. Participants focus on four selected and much-debated twentieth-century ages — the ‘Machine Age’, the ‘Jet Age’, the ‘Age of the Anthropocene’ and the ‘Planetary Age’ – in a chronological, typological and indirectly comparative manner. What these four ages have in common is that they all feature a technoscientific characteristic at their respective core which they elevate to a common nominator for a period in time. What distinguishes them is their points and contexts of historical origin; their geographical extensions; and their political implications. Consequently, all four presentations address the same set of five identical questions: First, what are the conceptual origins, intellectual connotations and political implications of the respective ‘age’ in focus? Second, what does it take for an ‘age’ to be declared as one – and what for its end to be proclaimed? Third, what are the gains and losses by labeling a particular time period in such a manner, thus prioritizing one perspective over other, competing ones? Fourth, how do different ages relate to each other? Are they by necessity mutually exclusive or is a certain degree of intersectionality feasible, especially when they stem from different periods? And fifth, are there foregone ages that have silently vanished or even been actively eliminated from the historian’s vocabulary?

The session ‘Ages in History’ combines empirical and begriffsgeschichtliche findings on the origin, career and impact of four particularly prominent, partly overlapping, if not competing ‘ages’ with currently prevailing meta-historical problems including multiple temporalities, the problem of ‘decadology’ and every historian’s bread-and-butter operation, periodization. ‘Ages in History’ is dedicated to a core, albeit commonly overlooked historiographical issue with far-reaching praxeological consequences, with the hope of increasing conceptual precision and self-awareness.