<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>What Is the name of the year
2020?</title></head><body>
<div>[via
https://thegermanissue.com/texts/what_is_the_name_of_the_year_2020.ht<span
></span>ml]<br>
</div>
<div><b>What Is the Name of the Year 2020?</b><br>
<br>
This summer, when re-reading Peter-Paul Koch's essay "<i>Making
<time> safe for</i></div>
<div><i>historians,</i>"(1) I was, once again, reminded that
years should be treated as<br>
names, not as numbers. This may be most obvious to those of us who
have ever<br>
tried to arithmetically operate with dates that lie outside the
confines of our<br>
immediate present - but the issue at hand is more than just a
technical<br>
problem. Just like, over time, cyclical concepts of time have gone out
of<br>
fashion,(2) the postulate that human history will, and must, remain
in<br>
alignment with a monotonically ascending sequence of integers, has
been running<br>
out of steam for quite a while, and may have already entered its
trajectory<br>
towards the dustbin of said history.(3)<br>
<br>
Until organized religion planted the dubious origins of today's
numbering<br>
schemes, the rise and fall of kings and dynasties was a rather obvious
choice<br>
for naming otherwise uneventful years.(4) The Roman Consular Years are
one of<br>
many examples,(5) and when historians try to map them back onto the
set of<br>
numbers, the shaky foundations of human historiography become
painfully<br>
apparent. But there were always those outlier years when it was hard
to make<br>
out who was actually in power, or when being in power, or not, didn't
seem to<br>
make much of a difference.<br>
<br>
2020 appears to be a special year in many ways. It is also one of the
rare<br>
years whose name - its "number" - already had a proper
meaning. Until the year<br>
itself arrived, 20/20 used to be synonymous with "perfect
vision,"(6) and one<br>
could argue that the year so far has reinforced this meaning.
"2020 feels as if<br>
someone had switched on the light: Everything is the same as before,
just much<br>
more so, and all of a sudden, everything appears much
clearer."(7)<br>
<br>
Yet, "perfect vision" may not be the last word when it comes
to putting a name<br>
on the year that we're in. The Chinese name for 2020 is "The Year
of the Metal<br>
Rat,"(8) which evokes the image of a mutated robotic rodent that
gnaws at the<br>
foundations of our global order. The United States, one day in the
future, may<br>
remember 2020 as "The 4th Year of the 45th Dynasty," and
there is not much<br>
comfort to be found in that name either. But what other names can we
already<br>
think of, now that most of 2020 lies behind us?(9)<br>
<br>
For inspiration, a short selection of years that were more special
than others<br>
is included below.(10) (A few of the entries are just movie titles...
sorry for<br>
that ;-))<br>
<br>
1978: The Year of the Three Popes<br>
1888: The Year of the Three Emperors<br>
1066: The Year of the Three Kings #1<br>
1483: The Year of the Three Kings #2<br>
1936: The Year of the Three Kings #3<br>
1992: A Year of Kings(11)<br>
1991: The Year Punk Broke<br>
1965: The Year We Were Nowhere<br>
1978: In a Year With 13 Moons<br>
2001: A Space Odyssey<br>
2010: The Year We Make Contact<br>
1816: The Year Without a Summer<br>
1848: The Year of Revolutions<br>
1914: One or Several Wolves?<br>
-333: bei Issos Keilerei<br>
2000: Y2K<br>
1968: "1968"<br>
1971: WTF happened in 1971?(12)<br>
<br>
My own pick for 2020 would be: In a Year of Leaky Abstractions.<br>
<br>
<br>
Notes:<br>
<br>
(1)
https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/04/making_time_saf.html<br
>
<br>
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_time<br>
<br>
(3) The concept of linear time and history has been challenged
on many fronts,<br>
from post-colonial studies to quantum
mechanics. It has also been <br>
experimentally abandoned in practice (see,
for example,<br>
https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com), and
some of the findings look<br>
rather promising.<br>
<br>
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnal_year<br>
<br>
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_consuls. In
fact, the Roman<br>
reign over time has never ended, and left us
with one of the most broken<br>
naming schemes in existence: the names of our
months, where ancient<br>
emperors are followed by cardinal numbers
that are all off by two. To<br>
_mix_ names and numbers is never a good
idea.</div>
<div><br>
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity<br>
<br>
(7) not attributed to anyone in particular<br>
<br>
(8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac. We are dealing
with a lunar<br>
calendar here, so the Chinese year
"2020" would be the one that begins on<br>
January 25, 2020, and ends on February 12,
2021.<br>
<br>
(9) I am aware that this question is both premature (history is
usually<br>
written from a safe distance) and misguided
(history is usually written by<br>
the winners). But maybe that's the point
here.<br>
<br>
(10) Obviously, any such list, and one could make much better ones,
will show,<br>
by omission, that most historical events
refuse to align with the Earth's<br>
revolution around the sun. That's why we also
have The Day the Music Died,<br>
Ten Days That Shook the World, The Week of
Blood, The Summer of Love, The<br>
Years of Lead, The Greatest Hits of the 80s,
and The Short Century. But<br>
whatever calendar units we choose: putting
names on them will always<br>
remain a hopelessly heliocentric approach to
human history. Science and/or<br>
fiction may eventually come up with better
ideas.<br>
<br>
(11) according to Brian Springer's film Spin:
https://0xdb.org/0114512/00:00:31<br>
<br>
(12) https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-2009/msg00016.html.
I<br>
personally suspect that this is off-by-one,
and 1972 ("The Year We Left<br>
the Moon") was the year in question -
but maybe that's just my own<br>
preference.<br>
<br>
<br>
Images:<br>
</div>
<div>https://thegermanissue.com/jpg/XX_XX.jpg [via
https://pad.ma/documents/BKZ/100]<br>
</div>
<div>https://thegermanissue.com/jpg/20_20.jpg [via
https://pad.ma/LBT/00:00:16]</div>
<div> </div>
</body>
</html>