scholarly journals CANADIAN GHOSTS AND THE WILL TO TRUTH: READING MARLENE NORBESE PHILIPS’ LOOKING FOR LIVINGSTONE

eTopia ◽  
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Concetta Principe

While the ghost may be a device for resolving past issues in literature, its presence in the archive is central to Derrida’s critical approach in Archive Fever. Presenting this paper at an international colloquium “Memory: The Question of the Archives” at Freud’s own archive, Derrida considers Yerushalmi’s dialogue with the ghosted Freud as the desire that drives the archive: “… hauntedness is not only haunted by this or that ghost,… but by the spectre of the truth which has thus been suppressed” (Derrida 1998: 87). For Derrida, truth is a trace as elusive as “ash,” untouchable but always recognizable in its absence, enforcing the Freudian trust in memory as true in part, the search for which, Derrida claims, inspires a sort of illness; thus, the fever of the archive. Derrida recognizes that remembering and repeating are central to the archive as an injunction to bear witness to the past which, according to Derrida, is a responsibility not to those who have passed,but for those who will read in the future.1 Nietzsche’s understanding of the will to truth as that which perpetuates the assumption that truth exists can be understood as implicit to the endlessly repeated aporia of Derrida’s ghost (Nietzsche 1956: 288). This spectre is made visible by the will to truth of a witness for specific future time and place.

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Shields

Background: This article considers the temporal aspects and effects of infrastructure that bridges past, present, and future rather than connecting places or delivering services.  Analysis: Four “moments” of time infrastructure will be considered in the case of a reconstructed heritage wooden bridge: heritage sites that link to the past, undertakings that mark the present, endeavours that project the current society forward into the future, and the forgetful overlooking of infrastructure as a taken-for-granted and abject temporality.  Conclusion and implications: This requires a topological approach, studying “infrastructurality” as heterochronic and as a liminal “super-object” that transcends its normative presence and Euclidean dimensions. Contexte : Cet article examine les aspects et effets temporels des infrastructures qui relient passé, présent et futur plutôt que de relier des lieux ou de fournir des services. Analyse : Quatre « moments » de ces infrastructures temporelles seront considérés par rapport à un pont en bois patrimonial reconstruit : les sites patrimoniaux qui évoquent le passé, les initiatives qui marquent le présent, les efforts qui projettent la société actuelle vers l’avenir, et l’oubli de l’infrastructure car on la considère comme temporalité abjecte qui va de soi. Conclusion et implications : Cette étude requiert une approche topologique où l’on envisagerait l’« infrastructuralité » comme hétérochronique et comme « super-objet » liminal transcendant sa présence normative et ses dimensions euclidiennes.


Author(s):  
David Carroll

Jean-François Lyotard was a prominent French philosopher who is generally considered the leading theorist of postmodernism. His work constitutes an insistent critique of philosophical closure, historical totalization and political dogmatism and a re-evaluation of the nature of ethics, aesthetics and politics after the demise of totalizing metatheories. In his early works, Lyotard confronts the limitations of dialectical philosophy and structuralist linguistics and analyses the disruptive, extradiscursive force of desire and the nonrepresentational or figurative dimensions of art and literature. In La Condition postmoderne (1979a) (The Postmodern Condition, 1984), he treats narrative pragmatics and language games as the bases for a critical approach to postmodern art and politics, as well as to the problem of justice. Recent texts insist on the obligation of philosophy, politics and writing to bear witness to heterogeneity and to what is repressed or forgotten in all representations of the past. His work questions the limits of philosophy, aesthetics and political theory in terms of problems linked to the irreducible complexities of art and literature and the nonrepresentational affects of historical-political events.


Early China ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 29-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Gibas

AbstractThis article demonstrates that historical narrative in the Zuo zhuan is founded on the concept of “timeliness,” that is, on the understanding of time as being endowed with moral qualities. The choice between a “timely” (shi 時) or “untimely” (bu shi 不時) course of action determines the success or failure of the person involved in it. The origins of the ideas of time that shape the historical narrative of Zuo zhuan can be traced to mantic literature of the same period, such as almanacs.Early Chinese writers of history—like diviners—strove to explain the past in order to predict the future. Seen in this light, “knowing history” implies understanding and mastering the mechanisms that drive it; and looking into the past is tantamount to “knowing” the future.


1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaat Declerck

The standard analysis of the past perfect is that it represents the time of a situation as anterior to a time of orientation which is itself past with respect to the time of speech. However, there are a couple of uses in which the situation referred to actually lies in the future. This article concentrates on one of these uses, illustrated by sentences likeSoon you will again be able to do all the things that youhad donebefore. In this use, the past perfect refers to the future and there does not seem to be a past time of orientation at all. The article not only attempts to account for this use of the past perfect but also offers an explanation for the fact that the same tense cannot be used in other, seemingly similar, sentences, such as the following: [If you peep through this hole in the curtain]you will see the audience that {have/*had} come to see the play.


1992 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Tilly ◽  
Noëlle Gérôme

Tradition is understood as a subset of a central historical concern: social and cultural discontinuities in time and space. The historical study of social tradition is an important contribution to knowledge; it seeks to understand the ways in which groups (states, classes, communities, families) formalize, symbolize, and interpret the past—and how such visions shape the ways in which people interpret, accept, or resist present conditions and influence behavior in the future.


1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Harner

ABSTRACTSeventy-five children, 3, 4, and 5 years old, were interviewed about: (a) toys they had played with just a few minutes earlier, (b) toys they had played with on the preceding day, (c) toys they would play with in a few minutes, and (d) toys reserved for use on the following day. Verb forms indicating past and future time were used as well as the adverbials before and after. The past verb form was understood equally well in reference to the immediate past and the more remote past. However, the future verb form was better understood in reference to the immediate future than in reference to the remote future (the following day). The difference is discussed in terms of the intersection of time and mood in future verb forms. Immediacy of action and certainty of occurrence are suggested as early meaning components of future verb forms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (95) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miina Norvik

The present article studies the semantic functions and syntactic behaviour of past participle constructions in Livonian: līdõ ‘will be’ + active past participle (APP) / passive past participle (PPP) and sǭdõ ‘get; become’ + APP / PPP. Parallels are drawn with the corresponding constructions in the other Southern Finnic languages, as well as Northern Finnic and the Indo-European contact languages. The main focus is on Livonian līdõ ‘will be’ + APP.  Considering the primary meaning element, time reference (future, past, or present), and the clause type (main or subordinate), a distinction is made between two main functions: (i) expressing anteriority, and (ii) epistemic modality. It is argued that Livonian līdõ + APP deserves to be regarded as the future perfect, as its primary function is to express anteriority in the future domain. Furthermore, līdõ + APP is shown to stand out with regard to the usage of temporal (future) meaning in subordinate clauses, as it is more common for a future-marking device to be redundant in subordinate clauses or associated with modal meanings. The expression of epistemic modality is regarded as its secondary function and possibly a later development; the epistemic usage is primarily associated with the construction occurring in main clauses.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
NADJA NESSELHAUF

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of the future time expressions will, ’ll, shall, be going to, progressive with future time reference, and be to in the course of the late modern period. The article focuses on possible reasons for the considerable changes that have taken place in the past few centuries. To what degree can the changes be described as certain forms having been (partially) replaced by others? To what degree have general or register-specific changes in discourse affected the use of future time expressions? These questions are investigated on the basis of the British part of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers).The analysis reveals that it is a complex interaction of both types of processes that is responsible for the recent evolution of future time expressions. Redistribution processes turn out to be highly complex in themselves, going far beyond the frequently described replacement of shall by will and probably proceeding in chains. With respect to discourse change, one result is an unexpected overall decrease in the tendency of writers (and speakers) to refer to their own plans, intentions, etc. Partly responsible for this development is a discourse change in science writing, where the author has increasingly disappeared from the text, so that text structure is much less frequently expressed in terms of the author's intention. A further register-specific discourse change that the investigation brings to light is a development in diaries from an earlier restriction to reporting past events to the expression of more personal views, including hopes and fears for the future.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz

AbstractIn the paper, previous conceptions of free time and the various definitions that are connected with it are challenged. The author assumed that the subject might not have free time at his/her disposal, because that time does not concern the subject at all. The subject did not have free time in the past; the subject can neither shape it in the present nor in the future. Free time does not concern him/her at all, because free time as such does not exist at all. We have only to do with occupied and unoccupied time. The first form of time concerns the past and the present. Future time is not occupied both in that sense that it does not exist yet and that it never exists. Moreover, the author considers the existence, understanding, and possibility of the cognition of time as such. Thus, he rejects various common theories of time. He refers to the Kantian, subjective, “self-related” conception of time and he attempts to strengthen it with the Heideggerian transcendental theory of time. According to the author, it is derived from, among other things, the considerations on being done by some of the ancient philosophers: Anaximander, Pythagoras and his followers, Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle.


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