Period concepts may correspond to no realities whatsoever

Evidence

There is, however, an even more radical possibility; namely, that period concepts finally correspond to no realities whatsoever, and that whether they are formulated in terms of generational logic, or by the names of reigning monarchs, or according to some other category or typological and classificatory system, the collective reality of the multitudinous lives encompassed by such terms is nonthinkable (or nontotalizable, to use a current expression) and can never be described, characterized, labeled, or conceptualized. This is, I suppose, what one could call the Nietzschean position, for which there are no such things as “periods,” nor have there ever been. In that case, of course, there is no such thing as “history” either, which was probably the basic philosophical point such arguments sought to make in the first place. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 616

Categorization

• DEFINE: Identifies the ‘Nietzschean position’ as the strongest form of anti-periodization: periods as totalizing fictions, and history itself along with them.
• XREF: Central to reader’s falsifiability question — this is the null hypothesis against which ‘cultural dominant’ must be defended.