Time

Time

A Vocabulary of the Present

Edited by: Joel Burges and Amy Elias

New York University Press | 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18574/9781479807499

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Contents

About this book

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.

Author information

BurgesJoel:

Joel Burges is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester, where he is also affiliated with Film and Media Studies, Digital Media Studies, and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies.EliasAmy:

Amy J. Elias is Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and author of Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s Fiction (2001) and co-editor of The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the 21st Century (2015). She is the founding president of A.S.A.P.: The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.

Reviews

David Sigler, ariel: A Review of International English Literature:
Time: A Vocabulary of the Present is an outstanding and cohesive collection filled with insights and provocations. It will merit frequent re-readings from a number of perspectives as time studies continues to evolve as a multi-disciplinary field...[The] volume represents an important step toward developing new and more critical ways of thinking about time

Susan Stanford Friedman, PMLA:
New critical discourses about time—what Joel Burges and Amy J. Elias allude to as the 'postmillennial emergence of time studies' in their introduction to Time—challenge this linearity and the methods related to it. Centered in studies of contemporary literature and art, the new temporalities dismantle the teleology of linear chronology and reconceive time as multidimensional and multiplicitous.

Amir Eshel,author of Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past:
Arriving at a moment in which there is a need for new frameworks around temporality, historicity, and memory,Timeoffers a rich and beautiful mapping of the concept of & time, showing where we have come from in our thinking, but more importantly, where we are headed. A true intellectual gem.

The many writings in this book make clear that time studies are thriving.

All in all, the twenty contributions collected in the volume stand as an ambitious and rewarding discussion, which encourages the reader to rethink the problem of time in contemporary theory and art practices.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	vii
Introduction. Time Studies Today Joel Burges and Amy J. Elias Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
Part I. Time as History: Periodizing Time
1. Past / Future Amy J. Elias Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	35
2. Extinction / Adaptation Ursula K. Heise Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	51
3. Modern / Altermodern David James Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	66
4. Obsolescence / Innovation Joel Burges Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	82
5. Anticipation / Unexpected Mark Currie Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	97
Part II. Time as Calculation: Measuring Time
6. Clock / Lived Jimena Canales Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	113
7. Synchronic / Anachronic Elizabeth Freeman Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	129
8. Human / Planetary Heather Houser Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	144
9. Serial / Simultaneous Jared Gardner Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	161
10. Emergency / Everyday Ben Anderson Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	177
11. Labor / Leisure Aubrey Anable Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	192
12. Real / Quality Mark McGurl Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	209
Part III. Time as Culture: Mediating Time
13. Aesthetic / Prosthetic Jesse Matz Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	225
14. Analepsis / Prolepsis James Phelan Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	240
15. Embodied / Disembodied Michelle Stephens and Sandra Stephens Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	255
16. Theological / Worldly Stanley Hauerwas Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	281
17. Authentic / Artificial Anthony Reed Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	294
18. Batch / Interactive Nick Montfort Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	309
19. Transmission / Influence Rachel Haidu Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	323
20. Silence / Beat Paul D. Miller Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	337
Time Studies Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	345
About the Contributors Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	355
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	361

Time

A Vocabulary of the Present

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