This SAES workshop aims to continue the ongoing rethinking of modernism’s forms, conditions, and “posture[s]” of revolution. By avoiding the essentialisation of rupture and envisioning cultural change, in the wake of Fredric Jameson, “beyond the opposition between synchrony and diachrony,” we propose to pluralise our approaches to revolutionary modernisms, and thus to understand such performances of modernity by building on the radically multiple semantics of the notion per se, such as theorised by Reinhart Koselleck. Koselleck’s insight into revolution as a globally extendable marker of modernity is particularly significant for this purpose: “The word ‘revolution’ possesses such revolutionary power that it is constantly extending itself to include every last element on our globe.”

We propose to examine Virginia Woolf’s relationship to history by reflecting on her reading and writing of history, be that the history of her own time, of the past, women’s history or literary history.