Nick of Time

Grosz Elizabeth Grosz

Description

In this pathbreaking philosophical work, Elizabeth Grosz points the way toward a theory of becoming to replace the prevailing ontologies of being in social, political, and biological discourse. Arguing that theories of temporality have significant and underappreciated relevance to the social dimensions of science and the political dimensions of struggle, Grosz engages key theoretical concerns related to the reality of time. She explores the effect of time on the organization of matter and on the emergence and development of biological life. Considering how the relentless forward movement of time might be conceived in political and social terms, she begins to formulate a model of time that incorporates the future and its capacity to supersede and transform the past and present.Grosz develops her argument by juxtaposing the work of three major figures in Western thought: Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Henri Bergson. She reveals that in theorizing time as an active, positive phenomenon with its own characteristics and specific effects, each of these thinkers had a profound effect on contemporary understandings of the body in relation to time. She shows how their allied concepts of life, evolution, and becoming are manifest in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Luce Irigaray. Throughout The Nick of Time, Grosz emphasizes the political and cultural imperative to fundamentally rethink time: the more clearly we understand our temporal location as beings straddling the past and the future without the security of a stable and abiding present, the more transformation becomes conceivable.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of mind

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 06 décembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822386032
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE NICK OF TIME

THE

Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely

ELIZABETH GROSZ

Duke University Press Durham and London 2004

OF TIME NICK

∫2004 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States

of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan

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Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix Introduction: To the Untimely 1

PART I. DARWIN AND EVOLUTION 1. Darwinian Matters: Life, Force, and Change 17 2. Biological Di√erence 40 3. The Evolution of Sex and Race 64

PART II. NIETZSCHE AND OVERCOMING 4. Nietzsche’s Darwin 95 5. History and the Untimely 113 6. The Eternal Return and the Overman 135

PART III. BERGSON AND BECOMING 7. Bergsonian Di√erence 155 8. The Philosophy of Life 185 9. Intuition and the Virtual 215

Conclusion: The Future 244 Notes 263 References 297 Index 309

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the help, support, and input of many institutions and individuals. I owe a debt of gratitude to three universities in particular. The earliest researches for this book were under- taken at the Centre for Cultural Studies and Critical Theory at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Without the support and encourage- ment of faculty and students there, on whom I rehearsed the earliest and most incoherent ideas developed here, I would have had no idea where to go next, what to concentrate on, what to eliminate, what I knew enough about already and what I knew I didn’t yet know, what was then beyond me, what I had to acquire in order to make sense of what, for me, was a new and unfamiliar topic. The first two sections of the book were written while I worked in the Departments of Comparative Literature and English at the State University of New York at Bu√alo. I am particularly grateful to the graduate students in those departments, who su√ered through a number of courses in which I developed and refined much of the material that would find itself, I hope in improved form, here. These improvements and refinements were the results of the feedback and queries of these smart and critical students. My stay at ub was particularly facilitated by the kind and generous support of Ms Theresa Monacelli and through the intellectual stimulus provided by my colleagues there, Professors Mimi Long, Jill Robbins, Isabel Marcus, Carol Zemel, and Joan Copjec. My thanks to them for their generosity, kindness, and support during the period of my tenure atub. The book’s final sections were completed while I worked in the Women’s

viii

The Nick of Time

and Gender Studies Department at Rutgers University. I would like to thank especially Ms Joanne Givand and Professors Joanna Regulska, Barbara Bail- let, and Harriet Davidson, who, each in her own way, made my transition to Rutgers as smooth and seamless as I had dared hope. I am grateful to the department and to Rutgers University for providing me the stability and confirmation, not to mention leave, I needed to complete the book. While institutions provide the structure of material and economic sup- port that enable books to be written, it is more personal, sometimes indirect or oblique, relations with individuals that drive one to write a particular book in a particular way. I am extremely grateful to a small circle of friends, colleagues, and family who have supported me while I pursued the some- times crazy and often inchoate paths that led me to produce this text, par- ticularly Judith Allen, Sue Best, Pheng Cheah, Sally Munt, Tony Nunziata, John Rajchman, Jacqueline Reid, Gai Stern, Jen St. Clair, Mary Gross, Tom Gross, Irit Rosen, Tahli Fisher, Daniel Gross, and Mia Gross. Claire Cole- brook deserves special mention for her incisive, detailed comments and helpful suggestions. The book has definitely improved as a result of her suggestions. My thanks, as always, to my mother, Eva Gross, for being there, and for understanding that sometimes it is all right to not understand what her daughter has been up to. I want to acknowledge the particular place of Nicole Fermon in the production of this book. Without her support and belief, there would be no point in writing, especially writing about the need to a≈rm the new, the future, the unknown. She made the future seem an exciting place to want to be, to see, and to help produce. This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Imre Gross, who made me under- stand, more than anyone, how precious time is.

Charles Darwin dmThe Descent of Man osThe Origin of Species

ABBREVIATIONS

Friedrich Nietzsche bgeBeyond Good and Evil ehEcce Homo gmOn the Genealogy of Morals gsThe Gay Science ‘‘oulthe Utility and Liability of History for Life’’’’ ‘‘On tiTwilight of the Idols wpThe Will to Power zThus Spoke Zarathustra

Henri Bergson ceCreative Evolution cmCreative Mind meMind-Energy mmMatter and Memory