“…Given the restricted focus of this article, what matters to me here, on one hand, is to discern the temporal sharing of these ideas: exploring the propositions of the two essays, unlike the temporality more frequently associated with modernity -homogenous, abstract, linear, progressive and oriented towards the future (Anderson, 1991;Giddens, 1991;Gumbrecht, 2015;Habermas, 1990) -in the Brazilian society that took shape from the nineteenth century both the present time and its possible futures continued to be saturated with tangible (i.e. non-abstract) elements bound to a singular past, feeding on it (and, to a large extent, being encircled by it) during its leaps towards the modern order (Bastos, 2003: 135, 146-152;Cavalcante, 2008: 151;Feldman, 2013: 121;Lage, 2016: 126, 354-355;Ferreira, 1996;Pesavento, 2005: 60;Vecchi, 2005: 167-168;Waizbort, 2011: 49-50;Wegner, 2000: 51). Moreover, rather than provisional or circumstantial, this composite temporal configuration, "dense and heterogenous" (Chatterjee, 2008: 63), with its disjunctive effects on reality, would prove to be as fundamental as distinctive of this societal experience.…”