Writing in reverse: Archiving the future in Mercier's Van 2440

In Van 2440, Louis-Sébastien Mercier invents a new kind of historian who is capable not only of recounting and critiquing the past, but also of embedding himself in the politics of the present to shape the trajectory of the future. To illustrate this point, I focus on three elements of the novel: the "nouveaux testamens," or the journals kept by French citizens in the future; the un-numbered section "L'éclipse de lune"; and the lengthy footnotes that divide the page, the story, and the narrator, creating the illusion of a dialogue between present and future.