J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment

Let's say The Machiavellian Moment describes the emergence of a new historical consciousness in 15th-century Florence, beginning with Savonarola’s preaching on an imminent Florentine apocalypse. Pocock details how this might have placed the notion of "City" in new relation to time and place, giving rise to a new kind of individual agency, a sense of historical urgency, and a new mode of historicizing, that fundamentally affected the individual’s understanding of their place in civic society. Relative to performance work, this development of historical consciousness, shifting from a temporally ambiguous civic role to the attainment of new agency in space and time, along with the power that accompanies it, could be considered relative to character and movement.