Copies, Concepts and Time

By Anne Eriksen

Abstract
Copies are defined by their relation to an original. The understanding and evalu-
ation of this relationship has been changing over time. A main argument of this
article is that originals and copies are phenomena with no “natural” or essential
meaning outside of their specific historical settings. The idea to be explored is how
changing historicity regimes have transformed notions of originals and copies
over time and how these differences also are reflected in the intrinsically temporal
relation between the two concepts. The discussion will be framed by two theory
sets. The first is Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood’s investigation of two
kinds of temporality that vied for dominance in works of art in the late Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. The second is Walter Benjamin’s discussion of artwork
in the “age of mechanical reproduction”, i.e. the twentieth century. The second half
of the article seeks to add to the historical complexity described by both theory
sets by introducing a concept of tradition and discussing the early modern ideals
of exemplarity, emulation and copiousness.

Keywords: Changing notions of originals and copies, Copia, Historicity regimes,

Temporality

Eriksen, Anne: “Copies, Concepts and Time”, Culture Unbound, Volume 9, Issue
1, 2017: 6–22. Published by Linköping University Electronic Press: http://www.
cultureunbound.ep.liu.se
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Copies, Concepts and Time

Copies are relational. They have to be copies of something. The relation that defi-
nes them is fundamentally hierarchical as it situates the copy as secondary to the
original. It is also temporal because the copy comes after the original. Finally, it is
normative, in the sense that the original sets the norms that the copy has to adhere
to in order to be a “good” copy and to be successful in the relationship. However,
this comparatively simple set of suppositions houses a range of tensions and ambi-
valences. The relation between original and copy invites negotiation and struggle.
Moreover, it has changed over time. If not totally historically contingent, neither
the relation between them nor the terms in themselves have been understood in
the same way throughout all periods of Western culture. Today, this relation is be-
ing challenged by digital copies and new technologies, and, as this article explores,
the hierarchy between the original and its copies is certainly not a stable entity
that has been handed down unchanged from the past.
In contemporary culture, originals and copies define a semantic field loaded
with values – cultural, moral and economic – and norms. Viewed together, the
two concepts address distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad, true
and false, appearance and essence. Their relationship concerns issues of faith and
betrayal, confidence and crime, legitimacy and illegitimacy, honesty and decep-
tion. At the same time, tensions and shifts will appear that complicate the structu-
re of the relation as well as the values that define it. A single example can serve to
illustrate the potential for ambivalence: A “good copy”, one that is faithful and true
to its original, is also one that is honest about its own nature as a copy. It does not
seek to pass for the original, but keeps its place in the hierarchy. However, if the
copy is too good, i.e. so much like its original that its nature as a copy is hidden or
invisible, it is no longer “good” in the moral sense. It becomes a fake – an illegiti-
mate copy – passing falsely as the original. Surpassing itself, it also trespasses on
the border between right and wrong. The same object can thus be (visually, tech-
nically) good and (ethically, economically) bad at the same time, in both cases as a
copy, and in both cases defined by its relative position in the network of meanings
and valuations.
The relations that are implied in this play of meaning, values and norms can be
approached discursively, with the original as a “nodal point” or privileged signifier
that organises and determines the meaning and relations of the surrounding signs
(Jørgensen and Phillips 1990). Relevant as this perspective might be to a denatu-
ralisation of the concepts and the values they are allowed to represent, discourse
theory will not dominate the following investigation. What will be examined here
are the concepts and their relation in a historical context. The original and its co-
pies cannot only be seen as moments in a given discourse (synchronously), they
also represent understandings and evaluations that have been produced and tran-

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smitted historically. They have been given meaning in specific and different social
and cultural contexts. One of the main arguments of this article is that originals
and copies are phenomena with no “natural” or essential meaning outside of their
specific settings. Shifting historical conditions have produced changes in concep-
tualisations and evaluations. At the same time, the meaning of the two concepts
is in itself based on temporal structures. While temporal changes thus supply a
historical context for the changes that are to be investigated, shifting notions of the
meaning of time are also intrinsic to the meaning of the concepts.
The aim of the following discussion is not to present some kind of general
over-view of the history of copies and copying. Instead, the investigations will
centre on the effects and impact of different historicity regimes on the under-
standings of originals and copies. The French historian François Hartog, who
has coined this term, describes historicity regimes as theoretical constructs that
can be classed alongside Weber’s ideal type as formal categories. “Depending on
whether the category of the past, the future, or the present is dominant, the order
of time derived from it will obviously not be the same. Hence certain behaviors,
certain actions, and certain forms of historiography are more possible than others,
more—or less—in tune with the times, untimely or seemingly perfectly timed”
(Hartog 2015: xvi). The notion of historicity regimes should above all be used heu-
ristically, he argues, and is a good fit for comparative studies. Hartog is emphatic
that historicity regimes cannot in themselves be observed empirically. He also un-
derscores that they “do not come in a series, one mechanically following another,
whether these are understood as sent from heaven or emanating from the earth”
(Hartog 2015:xvii). Thus, he points out, they are not, for instance, identical with
the “stages” so often called upon in early modern universal history. His careful
omission of references leaves the impression that his term is not intended to be
understood as structures like Foucault’s epistemes. The experience of temporality
that defines the regimes will nonetheless also acquire specific cultural expressions,
and Hartog directs his attention to

... the categories that organize these experiences and allow them to be
spoken; and more precisely, on the ways in which these universal ca-
tegories or forms we call “the past”, “the present” and “the future” are
articulated. How are these categories, which partake both of thought
and of action, actualized at different times, and in different places and
societies, and how do they make possible and perceptible a particular
order of time? (Hartog 2015: 17)

A certain seriality nonetheless pervades Hartog’s description of the regimes. For

many centuries, he claims, the European experience of temporality was domina-

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ted by the category of the past. Only during the nineteenth century did a futu-
re-oriented temporal experience gain ground. Among other things, this produced
the modern academic discipline of source-based, critical history. It can be added
that this was also the “classical age” of public museums. In our present world, a
new change is taking place, according to Hartog, and a new historicity regime,
dominated by what he calls presentism, is emerging.
The perspectives developed by Hartog provide a means to explore and de-
nominate the experience of temporality and its implications in different cultu-
ral contexts (cf. Eriksen 2014). The idea which is explored in this article is how
changing historicity regimes have transformed notions of originals and copies
over time and how these differences are also reflected in the intrinsically temporal
relation between the two concepts. This discussion will be framed by two theory
sets, presented in the two subsequent sections. The first is Alexander Nagel and
Christopher Wood’s investigation of two kinds of temporality that vied for domi-
nance in works of art in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The second is
Walter Benjamin’s discussion of artwork in the “age of mechanical reproduction”,
i.e. the twentieth century. Between them the models discussed by these authors
describe the beginning and the peak of modernity in the Western world, respec-
tively. They might, therefore, be taken to represent the two poles of one coherent
development. However, none of these authors has the intention of contributing
to simple linearity. Nagel and Wood take a decided stance against the traditional
Panofskian idea of Renaissance art as a break with the past and the beginning of
new progress, and insist on presenting a more complex and nuanced picture of
the period. Benjamin describes a development initiated by modern technology –
through his terminology “mechanical reproduction” – but remains ambivalent in
his interpretation of this as liberating or destructive for art. The final sections of
this article seek to add to the historical complexity that both theory sets describe.
To do this, a concept of tradition will be introduced and the early modern ideals of
exemplarity, emulation and copiousness will be discussed.

I. Substitution and Performance

What is an original? Or rather, what is its history? The art historians Alexander
Nagel and Christopher Wood locate the emergence of the idea of the original in a
process that took place over a long period of time, from the Middle Ages and into
the Early Modern period (Nagel and Wood 2010). An expressed aim of their work
is to question the traditional idea in art history of the Renaissance as a rupture,
and as the birth of a truly modern understanding of art that included the use of
the central perspective and a corresponding temporal perspective based on an
understanding of time as style. This implied a new concept of the anachronism. As

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an alternative to this model, Nagel and Wood present the idea that two different
understandings of a work of art, and the way it relates to time and incorporates
temporality, existed more or less as parallels over a considerable span of time. The
one, which they call substitutional, goes back to the Middle Ages and beyond,
while the other, called performative, only slowly and gradually emerged. It was
this performative mode that generated the idea of the original as we still think of it
today. Consequently, the model presented by Nagel and Wood is not only relevant
to the history of art in the period they discuss, it also has a more general signifi-
cance. The model does not only emphasise the historical specificity of the idea of
the original artwork, it also insists on the longevity of the substitutional mode and
consequently on the dynamic relation between the two.
Objects that represent the substitutional model are described by Nagel and
Wood as ones which are able to retain “[their]its identity despite alteration, repair,
renovation, and even outright replacement” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 8). They ex-
plain that the substitutional model

proposed the perfect interchangeability of one image or work for

another. Under this model, the work did not merely repeat the prior
work, for repetition proposes difference, an altering interval. Rather, the
work simply is its own predecessor, such that the prior is no longer pri-
or, but present.” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 11)

Their book Anachronic Renaissance elaborates on this understanding through a

series of investigations of artworks that have set this model into play, each work
having been understood simultaneously as unique and as a token and a link in a
chain unbroken by time despite fundamental material change:

To perceive an artefact in substitutional terms was to understand it as

belonging to more than one historical moment simultaneously. The
artifact was connected to its unknowable point of origin by an unre-
constructible chain of replicas. That chain could not be perceived; its
links did not diminish in stature as they receded into the depths of time.
Rather, the chain created an instant and ideally effective link to an au-
thoritative source and an instant identity for the artifact. (Nagel and
Wood 2010: 30)

One central example in their book is icons, where modern copies of ancient pain-
tings long were understood as surrogates for lost originals. They also investigate
the case of new buildings which were understood as re-instantiations of prior,
ancient structures. Their argument is that the apparent “misdating” of these buil-

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dings during the medieval and early modern times and the corresponding under-
standing of them as very ancient, did not stem from ignorance or lack of historical
knowledge. Rather, it was based on specific ideas about how art incorporates time.
Nagel and Wood underline that “there is a mystical dimension to substitutional
logic, a conviction of the real, and not merely symbolic, link between event and
event, and between artifact and artifact” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 33). They argue
that this substitutional logic was not a superstitious or primitive way of thinking,
effectively uprooted and replaced by more advanced understandings in the Re-
naissance.
As they describe its complexity and capacity to weave together separate points
of time, the substitutional model appears not only as powerful, but also as elabora-
te and refined in the ways it makes authority materialise in time and independent
of time. The model also renders how the uniqueness (or originality) of an object
will reside in the unbroken identity and in the capacity of the substitutional chain
to keep original qualities and meanings alive in a constant presence – rather than
in the material object itself. In the present context, it is also highly important that
this model has no place for copies, nor really for originals, as the concept is com-
monly understood today. On the one hand, each physical object or structure is a
copy of the lost original type. On the other hand, each copy is at the same time this
original, kept afloat in an eternal present. By collapsing the temporal hierarchy
that is fundamental to the modern understanding of an original and its copies,
the substitutional model also cancels the relationship that defines them to us. The
substitutional logic demonstrates that other temporal bonds between the objects
can be historically possible.
Parallels can easily be noted between the substitutional model described by
Nagel and Wood and the figurative or typological thinking identified by Erich
Auerbach and shown by him to have been developed in early patristic literature:
The entire Old Testament was interpreted to prefigure the New. Auerbach writes
that this method of interpretation, elaborated on in abundant detail, represents an
approach to human and historical phenomena that is radically different from our
modern approach:

The typological interpretation combines two events, causally and chro-

nologically remote from each other, by attributing them a meaning
common to both. [I]n order to explain the significance of a single histo-
rical event, the interpreter had to take recourse to a vertical projection
of this event on the plane of providential design by which the event is
revealed as a prefiguration or a fulfillment or perhaps as an imitation of
other events. (Auerbach 2014:116)

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Auerbach goes on to emphasise that in this process of interpretation, “neither the

prefiguring nor the prefigured event lose their literal and historical reality by their
figurative meaning and interrelation” (Auerbach 2014: 117). The typological mo-
del is thus not one of allegories or symbols. As is the case with the substitutional
model in Nagel and Wood, both elements remain fully real, while they at the same
time stand in for each other. In both cases, moreover, the temporal dimension is of
another kind than that of modern historical thinking, which makes it possible to
link objects and phenomena together in other ways. It should be noted, however,
that the substitutional model in its way is still chronological: It is an explicitly
ancient object that is maintained in a constant present. The typological thinking
goes even further in sidestepping historical causality, weaving meanings, objects,
figures and events back and forth through time.
Nagel and Wood contrast the substitutional model with the performative,
which, they argue, treats temporality in a different way. The performative mode
lets objects derive all their meaning from their anchorage in time. These are works
“credited to an author, an individual who ‘originates’ or ‘founds’ (Latin auctor,
from augere, ‘to increase’), that were most tightly tethered to a point in time. Such
works testified to their author” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 14). Nagel and Wood
point out that

the painting, like its talented author, has one body that can never be du-
plicated. The painting’s resistance to duplication allows it to dominate
time. The author intervenes in time by performing the work [...] To des-
cribe the authored work as a performance is to emphasize its punctual,
time-sensitive quality.” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 15)

Their argument shows that a work whose authenticity and authority resides in
this kind of temporal specificity can only be copied, not substituted. The other
work will always come after, and for this reason its creation can never be identical
with the original performance. Trying to appear so will make it a forgery. Humbly
admitting its secondary character may make it a respectable copy. The structure
of the performative mode is what creates the hierarchy that was described in the
introduction to this article.
Nagel and Wood’s main argument is that in Renaissance art these two compe-
titive models of origins and temporality were held in suspension. A large number
of images and buildings from the late medieval and early modern period were
built on a paradox, they claim: “the possibility that a material sample of the past
could somehow be both an especially powerful testimony to a distant world and at
the same time an ersatz for another, now absent artifact” (Nagel and Wood 2010:
31, italics in original).The two authors are reluctant to say that the performative

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model finally conquered or that it represented a kind of watershed in European art

history. What is important in the present context is, nonetheless, that this model
supplies the fundamental structure of the understanding of the original and its
relationship to copies that is being taken for granted today. As it is described by
Nagel and Wood, time and temporality are at the very core of this structure.
What defines the original itself is the way it relates to time and incorporates
time. It is its fixity in time that makes the original original and it is the unique
performance of a specific individual in a specific context that creates originality
as well as authority. Hence, all other objects, however much they might look like
the original, will not share this position, and therefore be reduced to copies, repli-
cas, models and so on. While the chain of objects suggested by the substitutional
model stretches out across time and space making each object an equally valuable
rendering and at the same time making copies an irrelevant issue, the performa-
tive model does the opposite: Temporal fixity defines the original as unique. This
structure is also what defines both specific and generic fakes. Seeking to pass for
an original, a specific fake will claim to be an outcome of the very performance
that gave birth to the original in question. A generic fake, on the other hand, pre-
sented as an unrecognised work of some great artist, will not attempt to seize upon
a point in time that is already occupied by another work. Instead, it will claim a
temporal fixity of its own, passing as the result of another, but as an equally unique
performance by the same artist.

II. The Auratic Original

It is not difficult to see that the defining qualities of the performative model as des-
cribed by Nagel and Wood strongly resemble Walter Benjamin’s definition of his
term aura. To Benjamin, what gives an original work of art its unique auratic qu-
alities is precisely its “here and now”, which “has no replica” and is fundamentally
tied to its situation of origin. To explain his term Benjamin proposes a compari-
son between the auratic uniqueness of historical objects and that of natural ob-
jects, and defines it as “a strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance
or semblance of distance, no matter how close it may be.” The examples given with
this definition are mountains and a branch observed “at rest on a summer’s noon
… until the moment or the hour becomes part of their appearance…” (Benjamin
1999).
The aura, then, is defined as a unique quality given by distance and fixity. It is
also this aura which, according to Benjamin, is threatened in the “age of mechani-
cal reproduction”. The numerous and easily accessible copies that are made avai-
lable through modern technology of mechanical reproduction do away with both
the distance and the uniqueness of the object. It is no longer fixed in time and

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place, but can move around seemingly freely. The more copies, and the easier the
accessibility, the less remains of the aura.
There have been many heated discussions on Benjamin’s theory and its im-
plications. It can be read as part of a more general critique of modernity, or as a
comment on the totalitarian regimes of his time, and their production and use of
mass culture. It can also be regarded as an expression of more or less romantic
nostalgia, a lamentation of the loss of common traditions and magic – a disen-
chantment of the world. On the other hand, Benjamin also discusses the gradual
loss or dissolution of aura as a liberating process, emancipating objects and people
alike (Benjamin 1999). Without their aura, the objects also lose much of their tra-
ditional authority. Their position as ideals or models is no longer uncontested. In
this way, the waning aura opens for the emergence of new cultural expressions
and for new agents to announce their presence.
Even Benjamin’s model includes temporal processes and relations. On the one
hand, it describes a development that takes place in time, a gradual decline from
an idealised state in the past to a historical change in the present, regardless of
whether this decline is understood as lamentable or liberating. On the other hand,
it also identifies the auratic state with the object’s fixity in (distant) time. This is
what defines the original in contrast to the mechanical reproductions, which for
their part are not defined by their moments of creation. They are not seen as the
products of a specific point in time and could be said to lack the unique “here and
now” which defines the original. Benjamin does not go into the more precise rea-
sons for this, but it seems probable that the sheer multitude of copies, made pos-
sible by the mechanical reproduction, is in some way thought to obfuscate their
actual moment of production, or at least deprive it of its defining implications.
Despite the central role temporality plays in Benjamin’s model, he does not
seem to regard the original in itself as a historical concept, but rather as a natural
– albeit threatened – species. In contrast to Nagel and Wood he does not consider
the idea of the original to be historically conditioned or contingent. The auratic
original may be in the process of disappearing from the world, but in Benjamin’s
argument it does not ever seem to have been in the process of entering it. Its own
origin is relegated to a timeless “before”.
Benjamin’s presentation of the auratic object may thus appear as the ultimate
triumph of the performative model as it is described by Nagel and Wood. The
auratic object steps forward as an original that has now become a fully naturalised
species, liberated from any processes of historical change. Nonetheless, between
the early modern notions discussed by Nagel and Wood and Benjamin’s auratic
objects there is no straight and unidirectional development. One of the main re-
asons for this is the lasting artistic practices of imitation, emulation and elabora-
tion, not least of classical forms and ideals. The following sections will contribute

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to the discussions in Nagel, Wood and Benjamin by exploring these practices and
ideals and examining their implications for the understanding and evaluation of
originals and their copies.

III. Imitation, Tradition and Exemplarity

For many centuries in European history, learning to become an artist meant spen-
ding years copying the works of one’s predecessors and classical art. Despite the
importance of the performative model, as described by Nagel and Wood, and the
respect and position gained by the great masters, whose names fill the textbooks
in the art history that we read today, a place in the workshop or studio of one
of them long represented a respectable and far more common career path, even
for well-schooled painters and sculptors. In our modern museums, labels with
“school of ” or “after” attached to artworks still reflect this practice. Such works
are in some ways exempt from the logic imposed by the performative model. If
a name is stated on these labels, it is most often not that of the actual painter or
sculptor, but of the one whose “school” has produced it, or whose work it has been
made “after”. Moreover, if the work is dated, this is often somewhat approximate.
In a world of auratic originals, works of this kind fail to correspond fully to the
valid categories, which makes them confusing and obscure. They may not be exact
copies and they are not fakes, but neither can they be recognised as fully perfor-
mative creations. They are the products of another logic of artistic performance
and another historicity regime than that of the modern world.
The logic behind “school of ” and “after”, and similar phrases, is that of tradi-
tion and exemplarity. It represents a way of thinking that recognises the authority
and value of the original. The original still represents a unique creation and an
intrinsic temporal fixity. It is a specific work made by a specific person at a parti-
cular moment in time, and it cannot be changed for another. However, ascribing
exemplary value to this work also provides it with a far-reaching agency and great
powers to shape the works that come “after”. Consequently, these works do not
only follow the original in time, they also seek to follow it as an example, as a
model to learn from, to imitate and emulate. Doing so, they constitute a link in a
chain of tradition and are, at the same time, a tribute to that tradition.
As a pedagogic principle, imitation was thought to give the skills to work in
the style of the great classical artists and the ability to learn from the most admi-
rable models. As a result, the artist would develop his own creative powers and
his ability to work independently. As pointed out by Gordon et al. in a study of
Protestant humanism in Zürich, imitation was not only training in judgment but
also “a means of self-discovery through a method of reading and writing that drew
deeply from history and historical contexts” (Gordon et al. 2016: 14–15). Mor-

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eover, the aim of this work was not merely mechanical copying. Emulation was
as important as simple imitation. Elements of contest and a potential for change
were involved and, in principle at least, it was possible to surpass the models that
one imitated. They could be reworked and remoulded into something even better
and more perfect. Whatever the actual outcome of the practice, the works that
were produced represent copiousness rather than copies. Imitation created ver-
sions, replicas and variety. As pointed out by Terence Cave, the word copia was
far more frequently used than copy in early modern writing. In rhetoric, this term
was closely linked to the principles of imitation and emulation, and referred to
the abundance and variety of arguments that a skilled orator held at his command
(Cave 1979). The result of the traditional practices of imitation, and intrinsic to
the ideas behind them, was abundance rather than mere copies.
Imitation of ancient models was nonetheless also a debated issue among Eu-
ropean humanists. What did it actually imply? Did an exact imitation of Cicero’s
speeches actually mean imitating Cicero’s eloquence when so many centuries had
passed? How would Cicero have expressed himself if he had lived in the sixte-
enth century? The issues raised by Erasmus’ Ciceronianus (1528) led to passionate
discussions, which in turn have been thoroughly explored in later research. The
early modern debates have been seen as expressions of an emerging sense of his-
toricity, expressed through a growing awareness of problems of anachronism (see
for instance Cave 1979, Scott 2009, Gordon 2016, and for theoretical perspectives,
Schiffman 2011). As such, they represent a close parallel to the development of
the performative mode, as described by Nagel and Wood. In the present context,
it should be noted that the understanding of temporality, and thus of anachronism
which structured much of the debate, still differ from our modern understanding.
It was not the value of imitation of classical models that was contested, but rather
the possibility of achieving it. The models from the past were still ascribed au-
thority and exemplarity. Being aware of anachronism did not imply stopping to
revere the past, but the discovery of some fundamental problems in reaching it.
The early modern regime of historicity remained oriented towards the past.
Tradition may be a useful concept to explore to understand its temporal dimen-
sion and its implications for copies and copying. The term tradition can be un-
derstood as designating specific cultural goods that are transferred over time and
“passed down” from generation to generation. It can also be defined as a cultural
process that takes place over time and includes the transmission of cultural goods.
This process refers to the past, draws on it and imbues it with authority. Tradition
can thus be defined as the normative workings of the past in the present, tending
towards cultural stability – real or claimed (Handler and Linnekin 1984; Eriksen
1994; Bauman 2004). In actual fact, the process of transmission most often also
comprises reworkings, elaboration, invention and negotiation. Even the “singer

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of tales” who most eagerly protests his or her faithfulness to an oral tradition will
invariably confer changes upon it, as shown for instance in the now classical work
of Parry and Lord (1965) and Walter Ong (1982).
It should be noted, nonetheless, that there is more to the processes of com-
munication or transmission than just the degrees of change – intended or not.
Richard Bauman has pointed out that tradition is “a discursive and interpretive
achievement, the active creation of a connection linking current discourse to past
discourse” (Bauman 2004: 147). He describes this activity in terms of mediation
from a source to a target, “processes and routines in which recontextualization is
deliberately managed [and] conventionally regimented” (Bauman 2004: 130). The
effect of these carefully staged reiterations is an enactment of authority:

The mediator’s replication of the source utterance, by preserving its in-

tegrity and displaying special care in its reproduction, amounts to an
act of discursive submission, the subordination of present discourse to
discourse that emanates from the past. Moreover, I would suggest, sub-
mission to the form of the source utterance has a concomitant effect
on the rhetorical power of the text: upholding the integrity of the form
opens the way to acceptance of the validity of the message. (Bauman
2004: 153)

The process of transmission which defines tradition thus implies imitating a mo-
del from the past that is held in high esteem, and doing so in a way and according
to such methods that the authority of the model is transferred to the new work.
Even though it is not fully identical with its model, or even claiming to be so, the
new work will gain acceptance and be valued both as representing the model and
as being different from it. The new work is a version, a variant, a re-phrasing or
reworking. Considering it a mere copy would mean reducing its richness as well
as the creative vitality that it embodies.

IV. The End of Exemplarity?

Hartog emphasises that the historicity regimes that he describes should not to
be regarded as models following and replacing each other in some kind of linear
development in the Western world. Nonetheless, one of his sources of inspiration
is Reinhart Koselleck and his investigation of the European Sattelzeit, i.e. the pe-
riod approx. 1750–1850, and the emerging modernity in this period. According
to Koselleck, a new experience of time and temporality was fundamental to the
changes that occurred in mentality, society and intellectual life. Koselleck argues
that the topos of history as magistra vitae – the teacher of life – dissolved during

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this period. Going back to Cicero, who is acknowledged to have coined the term,
this notion of history as a collection of models or examples to learn from is ba-
sed on ideas of stability and identity: It is because things do not fundamentally
change that past events and persons can work as models for the living and the
present (Koselleck 1985). Even if anachronism was “discovered” and discussed in
the early modern period, it was towards the end of the eighteenth century that
more fundamental problems made themselves heard: The past was not just diffi-
cult to reach and the models correspondingly difficult to fully understand – the
past lost its relevance. Its authority to shape the present was waning. Koselleck’s
theories have been discussed and contested. Did the magistra-vitae topos dissolve,
change, disappear (e.g. Phillips 2000; Jensen 2003)? Hartog’s concepts offer per-
spectives rather than definitive answers. He argues that the regime of historicity
which came to dominate in the modern world was future-oriented. Of course, the
past did not disappear, nor totally lose its meaning. But its significance and autho-
rity changed. In Hartog’s investigation, François-René Chateaubriand is the figure
to represent these changes. Both as a historian and writer, he embodies the new,
romantic ideals (Hartog 2015: 65–95).
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of the modern discipline (or dis-
ciplines) of history. This meant critical, source-based studies of the past carried
out by means of specific methods developed in the academic world. The same
period saw the establishment of public museums, which were not only larger and
more generally accessible than older princely or other collections, but which also
took much of their pride in possessing objects that were simply old. Much of their
acknowledged value stemmed from their age and “period”, which often became
more important than their beauty or exemplary character. The objects told a story
of development, progress, history and change, of a movement from the past to the
present and potentially into an open-ended future. Finally, and just as important,
this period was also the age of new artistic ideals that praised individual, erupting
and original creativity above the ability to imitate old masters. The past was che-
rished for its pastness, not for its exemplary value.
This produces another relationship to the past than the renaissance preoccu-
pation with anachronism did. It also creates another type of originals and copies.
It can be said to generate the kind of auratic object described by Benjamin. This
object is defined through a fixity in time that to a high degree resembles the per-
formative mode of Nagel and Wood. What has changed is the nature of time, so to
speak, or rather, the position of the past. An original created within the frames of a
performative model is fixed in a past that is in a living relationship to the present.
It is endowed with powers that reach beyond its immediate temporal setting. It
can work as an example to be followed, a model to be imitated. Even if its tempo-
ral fixity defines it and cannot be reproduced in a copy, some of its traditional au-

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Journal of Current Cultural Research

thority can be conferred to later works through imitation. This is not the case with
the auratic originals described by Benjamin. Defined by their “here and now”,
such objects are not only fixed in time, but linked to it. In the present – which is
their own future – they can be admired for their age, authenticity and aura, but the
exact point of all these qualities is that they cannot be transferred into the future.
Their very remoteness is their primary nature. They can only be reproduced in a
process that is doomed to omit the aura.

V. Presentism, Heritage and True Abundance

Is that really so? Benjamin’s notion of the aura and its implications for the produc-
tion of copies, facsimiles and new media versions has been vigorously criticised
by Bruno Latour and Adam Lowe. They argue that rather than chasing the aura
of the original, we should approach copies and new versions with an assessment
of whether or not they are well made. If they are, their aura, or rather the feeling
of authenticity that they evoke and the aesthetic experience they may produce,
can well exceed that of a musealized and scientifically conserved original (Latour
and Lowe 2011). Their contention is that the “obsession for pinpointing originality
increases proportionally with the availability and accessibility of more and more
copies of better and better quality” (Latour and Lowe 2011: 278). This implies that
the value of an original is created by the existence of copies, not by the original
as such. Copies are proof of fecundity, of abundance, while a work without such
offspring or inheritors “is not called original, but rather sterile or barren” (Latour
and Lowe 2011: 279). Just as copies are relational, so are originals. Works become
originals by being copied. A work of art, for instance a painting, can be ancient,
rare, beautiful and well made, but as long as no copies exist, it is just an old image.
Insisting on calling it an original seems somewhat odd as long as no copies are
known.
Latour and Lowe write in defence of high-quality digital copies, but their line
of argument can also be used to discuss more precisely how copies make origi-
nals. What defines the relations, and by what means does the copy confer value
on the original? It can be inferred that copies work by contrast, by some kind of
othering process, but what are the exact mechanisms? Distance, difference and
distribution are key concepts. The distance is obviously temporal – the copy does
not share the original’s unique moment of birth, but has been created at some later
moment. However, this also relates to the quality of the copy. Measuring it against
that of the original, and finding it inferior, the copy also enhances the quality of
the original-and of course, the distance may be spatial. This can be a matter of
pure geography – a copy of the Louvre’s Mona Lisa found in an art museum in
quite another part of the world – but it can also be a matter of different kinds of

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space. The protected original in the museum appears more valuable if the muse-
um shop is brimming with its reproductions or when its web-pages are frequently
visited. This point leads us to the issue of distribution and quantity. The more co-
pies available and in circulation, the more value is assigned to the original. Range
of distribution tends to have the same effect. And finally, difference: the copy has
to look like the original for the relation to be established at all, but does not need
to be the same size or material. A copy of a painting does not need to be a painting
itself. It can be a photographic reproduction, and the image may be transferred to
t-shirts, tote bags and tea towels rather than to flat surfaces resembling the origi-
nal’s canvas or panel. Once again, increased variety – copiousness – is not only an
indication of the great value ascribed to the original but also a means to create it.
As pointed out by Latour and Lowe, this abundance of copies and the corres-
ponding highlighting of originals are the products of modern technology. It may
also appear as the ultimate realisation of the future of technological reproduction
envisaged by Benjamin. However, large parts of it depend on a development of di-
gital media that Benjamin could not possibly have foreseen. It is equally important
that the contemporary abundance of copies can also be said to belong to another
regime of historicity than that of Benjamin’s period. His ideas seem to correspond
well to the experience of time and the future-oriented temporal structure of mo-
dernity, which today may have been superseded by a regime of presentism. Hartog
defines this as an extreme and immediate historization of the present or the very
close past, and describes it as “[t]he contemporary experience of a permanent,
elusive and almost immobile present, which nevertheless attempts to create its
own historical time” (Hartog 2015: 17f). One of the strategies employed in this
effort to create historical time is the construction of heritage, motivated by the ex-
perience that it may soon be too late, and that the past – even the near present – is
falling apart due to the acceleration of continuous change (Hartog 2015: 166). This
argument accords with the more general idea in modernisation theory, interpre-
ting returns to history, traditions or religion as answers to the loss of meaning, or
even ‘deprivation’, caused by modernity. However, the presentism of heritage work
can also be understood in less negative terms, not as a compensatory response to
the experience of loss, but as the genuine expression of an experience of tempora-
lity that is distinctive of our own time.
Hartog underscores that the notion of historicity regimes should be used heu-
ristically, not diagnostically. The regimes are not empirical phenomena to be dis-
covered “out there”, but represent perspectives that may bring analytical insights.
The present article has set out to argue that copies as originals, as well as the wider
semantic field that these terms are parts of, can be best understood historically, in
the double sense that their meaning and relations have changed over time, while
the terms in themselves also carry an intrinsic temporality. Their relation to each

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Journal of Current Cultural Research

other, which is fundamental to their respective meanings, is based on temporal

positions: They come before or after each other, and they gain their authority or
lack of such through a temporal fixity or through fluidity and reciprocal reference.
This field of temporal relations, which assigns different values to the different ele-
ments that constitute it, is in itself subject to historical change or rather to changes
in ways of understanding time and in the ways of connecting time, exemplarity,
value and copiousity.

Anne Eriksen is a professor of cultural history. Her research interests include he-
ritage and museum studies, collective memory, notions of history and temporality
and early modern antiquarianism. Among her publications are Museum. En kul-
turhistorie (Pax publishers 2009) From Antiquities to Heritage (Berghahn Books
2014) and “Time and exemplarity” (Journal of Early Modern Studies 2017) E-mail:
anne.eriksen@ikos.uio.no

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