A Historiography of the Trend

This talk seeks to examine the Trend as a model of history. The shape of trends can be seen in statistical graphs as “time series”— a set of points that index and calculate the transient movement of prices or populations. In fashion, trends articulate the changing cut of clothes but also the roving desires of the masses. If the Trend describes a fleeting pattern of collective wills, social movements, and psychic formations, it has also provided philosophers and economists with a model of history. Trend forecasting purports to be of the future, yet it is rooted in a method of calculating time that dates to the eighteenth century. How, then, does a historiography of the Trend reshape (art) history?

Please RSVP to Barbara Leavey blleavey@princeton.edu