no nation is simply young or old, new or ancient, despite the date of its independence. “New” national, international, or global emergences create an unsettling sense of transition, as if history is at a turning point; and it is in such incubational moments—Antonio Gramsci’s word for the perceived “newness” of change—that we experience the palimpsestical imprints of past, present, and future in peculiarly contemporary figures of time and meaning.
