There has been talk lately about a crisis in the contemporary experience of time. This article reflects on the historicist François Hartog's hypothesis of the end of the modern regime of historicism, and from there goes on to deal with two issues that have taken shape simultaneously to this crisis: a/ the status of the current subjective turn, particularly the figure of the witness, and b/ the question on how to establish a new relationship with the past once the future has relinquished fulfilling its role as a symbolic force of orientation in the present. Key words: historical time, subjective turn, witness, regimes of historicism, R. Koselleck, F. Hartog.