The relationship between history and justice traditionally has been dominated by the idea of the past as distant or absent . This ambiguous ontological status makes it very difficult to situate the often-felt “duty to remember” or obligation to “do justice to the past” in that past itself, and this has led philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Keith Jenkins to plead against an “obsession” with history in favor of an ethics aimed at the present. History’s ability to contribute to the (...) quest for justice, as a result, often seems very restricted or even nonexistent. The introduction of the “presence”-paradigm in historiography can potentially alter this relation between history and justice. However, to do so it should be conceived in such a way that it offers a fundamental critique of the metaphysical dichotomy between the present and the absent and the underlying concept of time that supports this dichotomy. The “presence”-paradigm can be emancipatory and productive only if presence and absence are not perceived as absolute dichotomies. In the first part of this article I elaborate on the influence that the present/absent dichotomy has on the notion of justice by introducing a conceptual contrast between what I will call the “time of jurisdiction” and the “time of history.” The second part of the article focuses on the way certain aspects of the dominant Western chronosophy reinforce the present/absent dichotomy and thereby prevent us from thoroughly exploring the ambiguous but often very problematic presence of the past. Throughout the article I refer to the relatively recent phenomenon of truth commissions and the context of transitional justice to discuss some challenges for the “presence”-paradigm. (shrink)

In four major parts, this study investigates the phenomenon of scrolling. Its first task is to argue in favor of a specific quality of the experience of scrolling, distinguishing it from other forms of distraction, notably from the flow experience. Scrolling takes the shape of aimless drifting. Secondly, it investigates the phenomenon of scrolling against its relevant historical, economic, social, and cultural backdrop, with the intention of understanding scrolling as a typical phenomenon of today, rather than subscribing to a biased (...) and superficial critique of its wastefulness or outright pathological character. The third part presents a comprehensive analysis of the temporal makeup of scrolling. Its temporality is expressed in the specific impatience of scrolling. Furthermore, scrolling amounts to a temporal reduction in the sense of favoring the present moment (and suppressing the temporal dimensions of the past and the future). The reductiveness of scrolling pertains to the semantic content as well. I argue that scrolling does not allow for certain experiences (such as, e.g., profound sadness). The temporality of scrolling is one of experiencing lived time as the permanence of passing. In the last section, I connect scrolling to boredom, and argue that scrolling accomplishes the task of allowing for an existential distractedness. In conclusion, I propose a nuanced evaluation of scrolling: in a Pascalian sense, scrolling responds to a profoundly human need of distraction. Yet I find scrolling dangerous in how easily available such distraction becomes, and in how it accustoms the users to a reductive existential experience. Scrolling, unlike art (but also, in principle, photography, movies, books), shields the user from challenging and enriching experiences. (shrink)

Mostly the culture of literacy has taken shape within a realm of freedom, seemingly distant from the needs of the body and the demands of sustenance. At the same time, the world represented within so much of the world’s narrative, both truth and fiction, has been saturated in struggle and deprivation. This article tries to make some sense of this juxtaposition, freedom on one side and necessity on the other: in particular, the pull of past or residual forms of unfreedom (...) in the sphere of literary representation, within and against new or emerging expressions of emancipation, themselves accompanied or countered in modern times by ever-novel styles of exploitation. (shrink)

This essay is a fictocritical meditation upon the contemporary transformation of temporal experience as we find ourselves embarked upon an accelerating process of climate change and species extinction, including possibly that of the human species. The essay offers an extended reading of a recent villanelle published in John Kinsella’s Book of Villanelles that in turn responds to a controversial project by the Adani mining consortium to begin extracting coal over a large swathe of Wangan and Jagalingou country in the Central (...) Queensland Galilee Basin. The essay is an extract from a collaborative work in progress by John Kinsella and myself, Per Se: On the Imperatives of Place II, that will appear in early 2021 with Narr, building upon ˈtεmprərɪnəs: On the Imperatives of Place. (shrink)

There has long been a tension in Fredric Jameson’s work regarding the extent to which it is possible or warranted to develop transhistorical categories for literary interpretation across of the whole of the capitalist mode of production. In my contribution to this symposium, I take up the problem of how Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology participates in such questions in its consideration of periodisation and narrativisation through the particular construction of allegory, from the early modern age to our financial present.

Survival mode: on the depoliticization of the contemporary imaginary Resumen: En este artículo analizamos el actual estatuto de la utopía y de la distopía a partir de los cambios en la experiencia y la sensibilidad acontecidos en la postmodernidad-globalización. Reflexionaremos sobre la forma en la que experimentamos el tiempo y el cambio histórico y acerca del modo en el que la realidad aparece representada en los productos culturales contemporáneos. En este sentido, nos fijaremos en lo que hemos denominado la “privatización (...) de la utopía” a propósito del descrédito de la política y de los proyectos colectivos, y atenderemos tanto a la conciencia de un final que parece haberse instalado en nosotros desde hace tiempo como a sus posibles antecedentes.: We will analyze the present role and concept of utopia and dystopia in connection with the changes in our experience and sensibility that have taken place under postmodernity-globalization. We will think about our time and historical change experience and about the way reality is represented in contemporary cultural products. We will pay attention to what we call “the privatization of utopia” regarding the discredit of the political and collective projects and we will also consider the consciousness of an ending that seems to be settled in us for quite some time. Palabras clave: utopía, distopía, Fredric Jameson, Northrop Frye, George Orwell, Ricardo Piglia, privatización de la utopía, postmodernidad, globalización, experiencia del tiempo. Keywords: utopia, dystopia, Fredric Jameson, Northrop Frye, George Orwell, Ricardo Piglia, privatization of utopia, postmodernity, globalization, time experience. (shrink)

The predominant contemporary concept of time is arguably measurable time, promoted as being in accordance with science. This is commonly understood as the time of physics, as, for instance, E. A. Milne claims in an article from 1950 on the modern conception of time, contrasting this with Plato's description of time as the “moving image of eternity”. The prevalence of an emphasis on measurability within such a conception of time is hard to avoid, although this can be nuanced somewhat. In (...) this article I turn to the ancient Greek notion of kairos in order to find another approach to the question of conceptions of temporality. A main objective is to indicate what this concept signifies in terms of adjusting to circumstances, catching the right moment and paying attention to due measure. I also briefly consider Baltasar Gracián's notions of festina lente and détencion in an attempt to show how this suggests a way in which we may be able to develop the ability to do the right thing at the right moment. (shrink)

Among those who reject the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies, it is popularly held that death is bad for the one who dies, when it is bad for the one who dies, because it deprives the one who dies of the good things that otherwise would have fallen into her life. This view is known as the deprivation account of the value of death, and Fred Feldman is one of its most prominent defenders. (...) In this paper, I explain why I believe that Feldman’s argument for the occasional badness of death fails. While staying within an Epicurean framework, I offer an alternative that adequately accounts for a significant range of widely held intuitions about prudential value. My account implies that death is almost always good for the one who dies, yet often less good than not dying. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that remain for my account and hint at possible ways to address them. (shrink)

This thesis draws on the work of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy to propose ‘community’ as a conceptual and hermeneutical figure that opens up productive possibilities in the study of contemporary British literature. Community is advanced as a form of political ontology, which moves beyond contingent appearance toward radical possibilities for transformation in the current political landscape. Particular attention is paid to the way in which community is ‘put to work’ as part of the operation of the capitalist state, where community emerges (...) as a central site of political contestation. Community is demonstrated as offering ways of rethinking the figure of ‘politics’ itself, opening avenues for developing its meaning through emergent theories of ‘gender’, the ‘queer’ and ‘trans’. Community is addressed in the space of literature and representation, where Nancy’s figure of ‘myth interrupted’ is presented as an important dimension of communitarian thought. Through interrogating the representability of community, its mythic foundations are subjected to a process of radical openness that allows for a vibrant and dynamic form of community to emerge. Situating these capacities in the works of authors Jackie Kay, Jon McGregor and Ali Smith, literature is presented as a singular space through which communitarian possibility can be glimpsed. The conceptual figures of ‘death’, ‘gender transformation’ and ‘magic’ are proposed as offering new possibilities in our understanding of community, demonstrating how literature can offer productive and innovative ways of reimagining our understanding of community in the contemporary moment. In this way, this thesis contributes to ongoing debates about the significance of ‘community’ in contemporary thought, drawing on literature to propose the ‘politics of community’ as a productive avenue for addressing this. (shrink)

Many critics have pointed to the failures of modernist urban design, which include its obliteration of thriving neighborhoods, isolation of functions and production of alienating spaces hostile to the human form. Less focus has been placed on defining the source of the modernists’ errors. This essay argues that these errors were in part due to neglect of the nature of fully embodied experience, a neglect manifested in an overwhelmingly visual disposition in embodiment. The author argues that a visual disposition is (...) implicated in the occlusion of place by the modern concept of abstract space. This concept of space and the visual disposition that is implicated in it undergird the utopianism and veneration for abstract forms that characterized the project of modernist urban design. The author concludes by suggesting that the basis for a humanizing urbanism should be the solicitation of all the senses in synesthetic interaction. This phenomenological critique can help us to see precisely where modernist urban design went wrong; it can also help lead us out of the false dichotomy between alienating modernism and orthodox traditionalism by establishing a basis for successful urban environments in embodiment rather than in any rigidly determined formula for urban design. (shrink)

This contribution aims to highlight the ambivalent condition of the concepts of transparency and acceleration, considered as key concepts for the understanding of the changes experienced by the conceptions of time from Modernity to Postmodernity. In order to enlight this double value, we will show the difference between a centrifugal acceleration, due to modernity, tied to modernity, which time structure is articulated as an asymptotical approach to the focal point toward it is oriented, and a centripetal acceleration, where the transparency (...) is so perfect that in absence of both bottoms of retraction and a center of gravity providing an order to the time sequence, it expounds all to the visibility, as the concept of freedom unfortunately remains linked to the selfcoercion. (shrink)

Jawaharlal Nehru was both a historian and a self-conscious agent of historical change. This essay explores his political thought by bringing these two perspectives together. I argue that his approaches to a number of issues, including the state project that has been his most significant legacy, shared a concern with linking together the past, present and future. My concern here is primarily with the post-1947 phase of Nehru's career, which was marked by key shifts in his political thought due to (...) a perceived transformation of temporal experience and an altered relationship with history. By attending to the way his thought worked through notions of temporality and historicity, this article offers insights into Nehru's understanding of technological modernity, violence, socialism, the individual, the nation and the role of the state. (shrink)

A position joining critical theory with the Marxist critique of imperialism informs the following discussion on the perceived shortcomings of Chibber’s study in its avowed claim to disavow postcolonial theory. Chibber’s insistence on reading Subaltern Studiesaspostcolonial theory is unsustainable in that it fails to address the epistemological premises of a theory adopted and not initiated by the project. Whereas Chibber does ably contest assertions made by Subaltern Studies concerning the special conditions of India halting capitalism’s universalising drive, his concentrated but (...) narrowly-focused and repetitive criticism disregards prior work contiguous to his own specialism as well as disciplines other than the social sciences. Thus the explanatory power of Uneven and Combined Development in understanding the internal conditions of societies conscripted into capitalism is cast aside, as are the resources of Marxist cultural criticism in writing a metanarrative of these consequences inallof their aspects: economic, social, cultural and experiential – omissions that paradoxically are to the fore in postcolonial theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe relationship between history and justice traditionally has been dominated by the idea of the past as distant or absent. This ambiguous ontological status makes it very difficult to situate the often‐felt “duty to remember” or obligation to “do justice to the past” in that past itself, and this has led philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Keith Jenkins to plead against an “obsession” with history in favor of an ethics aimed at the present. History's ability to contribute to the quest (...) for justice, as a result, often seems very restricted or even nonexistent. The introduction of the “presence”‐paradigm in historiography can potentially alter this relation between history and justice. However, to do so it should be conceived in such a way that it offers a fundamental critique of the metaphysical dichotomy between the present and the absent and the underlying concept of time that supports this dichotomy. The “presence”‐paradigm can be emancipatory and productive only if presence and absence are not perceived as absolute dichotomies. In the first part of this article I elaborate on the influence that the present/absent dichotomy has on the notion of justice by introducing a conceptual contrast between what I will call the “time of jurisdiction” and the “time of history.” The second part of the article focuses on the way certain aspects of the dominant Western chronosophy reinforce the present/absent dichotomy and thereby prevent us from thoroughly exploring the ambiguous but often very problematic presence of the past. Throughout the article I refer to the relatively recent phenomenon of truth commissions and the context of transitional justice to discuss some challenges for the “presence”‐paradigm. (shrink)

This paper explores the deep historical contexts for imagining natural disasters. By focusing on a foundational event in the Western disaster imaginary – the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 – and its remediation across centuries, the paper suggests that the real-time aesthetic of the mediation of extreme nature events that now abounds in contemporary culture is profoundly embedded in processes of historical intermediality. The term remediation is used to denote a genuinely historical mechanism by which past and present are (...) simultaneously made visible. Empirically, the paper investigates the superimposition of temporal dimensions in recreations of the ancient disaster from the late 18th century to the present. Using the insights gained from this spectacular case study, the paper ends by arguing that a re-temporalization of historical analysis itself is needed for history to contribute to contemporary concerns with the present as a conjuncture of multiple and conflicting time scales. (shrink)

This text was first published in Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, vol. 90 , March 2008 : 1–15. We thank gratefully Professor Robert Dodgshon for granting us the permission to reproduce it. ABSTRACT : From the moment it began to engage with time in a considered way, human geography has employed a variety of analytical and conceptual approaches to it. Recent work especially has greatly extended the range of these different approaches by stressing the innate - Géographie – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

Spaces of Geographical Thought examines key ideas like space and place - which inform the geographic imagination. The text: discusses the core conceptual vocabulary of human geography: agency: structure; state: society; culture: economy; space: place; black: white; man: woman; nature: culture; local: global; and time: space; explains the significance of these binaries in the constitution of geographic thought; and shows how many of these binaries have been interrogated and re-imagined in more recent geographical thinking. A consideration of these binaries will (...) define the concepts and situate students in the most current geographical arguments and debates. The text will be required reading for all modules on the philosophy of geography and on geographical theory. (shrink)

For much of the twentieth century, the discipline of literary studies has grappled with the question of how its generally sotto voce activity responds to a history that calls loudly for action. This essay treats the question of literature's quietism in relation to the problem of literature's modernity and temporality. The turn away from the noise of the world at the beginning of the century has been criticized as the motivation for and the effect of modernism's obsession with time. But (...) the modernist “time cult” did not simply withdraw into the space of the internal and eternal. By examining T. S. Eliot's complaint against time in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and engaging theoretical critiques of the desire to be modern, this essay argues that modernism explored alternatives to the static, quieted present, and that contemporary American time-travel narratives continue this exploration. Rather than see postmodernism as the inheritor of modernism's silent and disengaged moments, the essay concludes that both seek to examine the disquieting multiplicity of times and the denser, more complicated versions of the present that they engender. (shrink)

The following thesis is a work of cultural psychoanalysis in an era properly defined as "post-Holocaust". It begins with an extensive working through of Lacanian concepts, followed by an examination of fantastical appropriations of the trauma of the Holocaust---fantasies that serve as the very frame of our reality, or rather, hyperreality. After a further working through of the relations between the crypt and the unconscious, the thesis then brings in Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard to help further elucidate some of (...) the key arguments. (shrink)

The critical condition and historical motivation behind Time Studies The concept of time in the post-millennial age is undergoing a radical rethinking within the humanities. Time: A Vocabulary of the Present newly theorizes our experiences of time in relation to developments in post-1945 cultural theory and arts practices. Wide ranging and theoretically provocative, the volume introduces readers to cutting-edge temporal conceptualizations and investigates what exactly constitutes the scope of time studies. Featuring twenty essays that reveal what we talk about when (...) we talk about time today, especially in the areas of history, measurement, and culture, each essay pairs two keywords to explore the tension and nuances between them, from “past/future” and “anticipation/unexpected” to “extinction/adaptation” and “serial/simultaneous.” Moving beyond the truisms of postmodernism, the collection newly theorizes the meanings of temporality in relationship to aesthetic, cultural, technological, and economic developments in the postwar period. This book thus assumes that time—not space, as the postmoderns had it—is central to the contemporary period, and that through it we can come to terms with what contemporaneity can be for human beings caught up in the historical present. In the end, Time reveals that the present is a cultural matrix in which overlapping temporalities condition and compete for our attention. Thus each pair of terms presents two temporalities, yielding a generative account of the time, or times, in which we live. (shrink)