Felipe Torres is going to present a working paper on 'Time as Regime'

Since social sciences and humanities have been deeply concerned with understanding temporality and its connections with historic-political dimensions, they have produced, for one side, macro-theoretical arguments to explain what has happened with temporality and its order within the onset of general patterns, particularly about Modern and Contemporary Times in the case of social sciences. In that vein, Paul Virilio and Hartmut Rosa have written extensively about long-tendencies toward the acceleration and high-speed of social process, whereas David Harvey and Anthony Giddens suggests the concept of “space-time compression” to explain what happens to structures and experiences in the modern world. On the other side, theorists such as François Hartog, Reinhart Koselleck and Helge Jordheim6, have emphasized the diversity and plurality of simultaneous times in the contemporary world, providing an overview of the modern experience, yet from an angle that captures the variability of this experience under the concept of a “regime of historicity” (Hartog) or “contemporaneousness of the non-contemporaneous” (Koselleck, and Jordheim following Koselleck). In the same vein comes Johannes Fabian’s germinal work, which uses anthropological perspectives to indicate the different areas that highlight how time is used to construct borders and cultural differences (such as advanced vs. delayed societies, developed vs. underdeveloped, evolved vs. primitives). In this framework, one can also locate empirical research on practices, uses and conceptions about time that are structured according to gender, social class, biography, etc. [CITAR PAPERS] in synthesis; for these approaches there is not just one temporal pattern (high-speed, acceleration or space-time compression) but several temporalities coming from the constitutive fragmentarity and diversity of the social. Then, according to the main analysis about time, there are two main opposed theses about temporality: time is constituted by general tendencies from economics and politics, to one standardized clock conception that supports process of acceleration and high-speed societies, constituting a macro-theoretical approach that methodologically conceives time as a one dimensional and homogeneous tendency. On the other hand, descriptions can be observed that support a conception of time as multiple, highlighting the variability and diversity that demands more complex understanding of socio-historical time conceptions and their characteristics. During the process of research, I realized that no theoretical perspective has dealt in a proper manner with that difference, having only produced insufficient tools for grasping the complexity of how temporal perspectives works in current societies. As such, it is interesting to note the lack of dialogue between these two approaches-explanations limiting the understanding of social theory of contemporary times to a paradoxical phenomenon that deserves to be clarified. More precisely, this apparent contradiction leads us to ask if both homogenization (macro-theoretical and general tendencies) and heterogenization (simultaneity and no-synchronicity of multiple times) are two faces from the very same kernel or, conversely, responds to different phenomena. In order to clarify this, we propose to use the concept of regimes of temporality to best interpret socio-temporal patterns as well as their frictions, complementarities and parallel manifestations. In other words, multidimensional experiences of time, as well as stable and dominant ones, need to be put into a framework that can provide explanations about their coexistence. The process through which, on the one hand, old spatiotemporal barriers are narrowed by technical mechanisms (internet, flights, cars, cultural and technical devices in general) and, on the other hand, multicultural encounters for decentralized, pluriverse and diversified times (cultural rhythms, non-standardized clock time, sacred times) deserve further investigation to explain their main characteristics, interconnections and rubbings. Considering this, this paper will demonstrate that the notion of regimes of temporality enables an historical address of linearity or circularity, progressive and regressive time, evolutive as well as scientific measures of time and its objectivity; where in all these cases several epistemologies, knowledges, politics and philosophical conceptions involve temporal perspectives, using temporal dimensions to explain, justify and legitimate social orders. That means that general temporal structures coexist with temporal forms that are not included in them. To approximate what might be denominated as the previously mentioned “regimes of temporality”, the theoretical framework analysis is subdivided as follows: i) the relevance of the notion “regime”; ii) regimes of temporalities; and iii) characteristics of some regimes of temporality (progress, acceleration, presentism-futurism).

Felipe Torres is going to present a working paper on 'Thesis on regimes of temporality. Paradox between homogenization and heterogenization'

In this text, I expose reasons to conceive time as a political matter, as well as ways in which time has acquired a political condition that can be tracked from Early Modernity until today. Over the past decades, academic discussions about time have positioned its political role. Following these efforts, this chapter intends to expose the reasons to conceive time as a political concept in at least three levels: a) as philosophy of history; b) as dimension of governmentality in terms of biopolitics; and c) as recognizable regime of temporality in contemporary societies.

Collective burnout? An interview between Richard David Precht und Hartmut Rosa

A fascinating and intensive dialogue, almost like a halt in the reflection about our present state of affairs - contrary almost to the topic of the debate - of almost three quarters of an hour about growth - speed and innovation (if you don't go back, as one can do).

So lean back and listen to Richard David Precht (author of amongst other fictional and non-fictional books Who Am I – And If So, How Many? 2011 (German version published in 2007 and translated into 32 languages) and Hartmut Rosa (Director of the Max Weber Center, University of Erfurt).

A summary of his ideas in English was presented by Pierre Maillard on Europa Star:

“Run, run always faster, not to reach an objective, but to maintain the status quo, to simply remain in the same place.” The work of German philosopher and social theorist, Hartmut Rosa, entitled Beschleunigung – Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne [to be published in English by Columbia University Press in 2012], discusses this paradox. As the pace of material, economic, and cultural life becomes ever faster, as we have conquered the instantaneity of information exchange and acquired the possibility of travelling at speeds hitherto unimaginable, we have the impression that nothing is moving, that we are simply walking on a treadmill.
Rosa explains that for the first time in 250 years, people in the Occident today do not expect a better life for their children, but fear just the opposite, that their life will be more difficult. If we want to avoid things getting worse, we must, every year, run ever faster, increase our efforts, innovate even more. The current crisis in the euro zone is a fitting demonstration. Political actions no longer tend to create a better society—no one promises that to anyone—but focus rather on staving off crises, adapting as fast as possible in order to avoid the worst. While we do not cease to gain time, to accelerate the flow of money, the rhythm of production, the exchange of information, the movement of goods and people—while everyday we gain time over time—we still have the impression that there is less and less time, whether on a personal, social, economic, or political level.
It is this ambivalent logic created by the acceleration of time that Hartmut Rosa seeks to describe.
Rupture of the horizon
Hartmut Rosa does not discuss the nature of time itself, leaving this question to others who, since the dawn of history, have arrived at very different answers. [In passing, we cite the most famous response of them all, coming from Saint Augustine: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”]
Rosa tries to understand the effects—the political, ethical, cultural, and social consequences—of the rupture that is produced between “classic” modernity, the modernity of “progress,” happening in a linear manner and directed towards a better time (whether it be capitalist or Marxist), and the “postmodernity”, in which time is no longer seen as a course moving towards a pre-determined objective, but as an instantaneous flux flowing towards a direction that remains uncertain. The idea of acceleration was born with modernity, but we can discern two great periods or two distinct sequences. As the above projection shows (Harvey, 1990), beginning in 1850 with the invention of the steam engine, the acceleration in transportation singularly reduced space, even gradually “annihilating” it. In this progressive conquest of space-time, the universal coordination of clocks played a central regulating role. [It was not by chance that Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, was adopted for the first time in 1847 by the Railway Clearing House, before it spread out to the entire world.]
For examples of this radical transformation of space, we can simply look at our observations when we walk through a space that we can touch or feel, or travel in a car on a motorway where the passing space becomes no more than an abstraction, tracing out a line that we pass over as quickly as possible. For the passenger in an aeroplane, this abstraction of space becomes complete, since the trajectory is no longer calculated in miles but rather in hours. The person in the car or in the plane is, however, heading towards a horizon, towards a goal. In both cases, they are following a linear path of time.

Read more


For those who are interested in Rosa's work, click here.

„RaumZeitlichkeiten ästhetischer Formen“

7. Workshop der Erfurter RaumZeit-Gruppe in Kooperation mit dem Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt

Datum: Montag, 23. Juni 2014

Ort:       Internationales Begegnungszentrum der Universität Erfurt, Michaelisstr. 38, 99084 Erfurt

Im Mittelpunkt des 7. Workshops der Erfurter RaumZeit-Gruppe (ERZ), diesmal in Kooperation mit dem Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universität Erfurt (MWK), stehen raumzeitliche Dimensionen ästhetischer Formen. Welche raum-zeitlichen Wirkungen entfalten ästhetische Formen in ihre(r) Umwelt – als Bilder in Kunst und Literatur etwa, aber auch in einem weiten Sinne in ihrer Objekthaftigkeit? Welche raumzeitlichen Dimensionen spielen bei der Bild-Produktion welche Rolle, aber auch: wie werden raumzeitliches Wissen und RaumZeit-Praktiken in ästhetischen Formen dargestellt? Raum und Zeit werden dabei als aufs Engste miteinander verknüpfte Produkte menschlichen Handelns verstanden, die ästhetischer Formen bedürfen, um (materiell oder immateriell) sichtbar zu werden – so sollen auch unterschiedliche Betrachtungsmodi über Zeit und Raum sowie Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehungen in den Blick genommen werden. Die Bildwissenschaften setzen sich seit einiger Zeit intensiv damit auseinander, wie Bilder/Darstellungen in ihre Umwelt wirken. William John Thomas Mitchell schreibt beispielsweise von ihrem Charakter als „quasi Akteure", Gottfried Boehm von der Eigensprachlichkeit von Bildern und Horst Bredekamp vom Bild-Akt. Die neuronale Ästhetik betont die bildformende Rolle des wahrnehmenden Subjekts. In gewisser Weise nehmen sie damit Diskussionsfäden auf, die Sigfried Giedion seit den 1940er Jahren insbesondere für die Architekturtheorie angestoßen hat, die sich unter dem Titel RaumZeitlichkeiten ästhetischer Formen fassen lassen.

Auf einer methodologischen Ebene rücken diese Diskussionen weiterführend bspw. folgende Fragen in den Fokus: Wie verhalten sich Kunstgeschichte, Literatur-, Film- und auch Geschichts- und Sozialwissenschaften in ihren ästhetischen Betrachtungen und Theoriebildungen gegenüber konstruktivistisch-performativen Ansätzen? Welche alternativen Möglichkeiten der Betrachtung der Produktion von RaumZeit bieten ästhetische Disziplinen?

Wie in den bisherigen Veranstaltungen der ERZ (www.uni-erfurt.de/philosophische-fakultaet/raumzeit-forschung/) sollen diesen und ähnlichen Fragestellungen aus multi-disziplinären Perspektiven sowie mittels Untersuchung diverser Darstellungsformen (Skulptur und Bild, Literatur, Film, Photographie, Karten) in unterschiedlichen historischen Konstellationen nachgegangen werden. In einem ersten Teil werden hierzu vorher bereit gestellte Grundlagentexte gemeinsam diskutiert, um dann die Fragestellungen anhand konkreter Fallstudien weiterzuverfolgen. Die Veranstaltung versteht sich als Einstieg in die Debatte – auf ihr sollen nicht zuletzt Potenziale weiterer (gemeinsamer) Projekte ausgelotet werden.

Grundlagentexte (Ausschnitte):

Giedion, Sigfried: Space, Time and Architecture, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, [1941], chapter VI

Mitchell, William J. Thomas: Offending Pictures, in: ders.: What do pictures want? The lives and loves of images, Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005, chapter 6

Digitale Versionen der Texte erhalten Sie nach Meldung bei Felix Strauch: felix.strauch@uni-erfurt.de

Programm

9 – 9.15 Uhr:            Begrüßung & Einleitung: Susanne Rau (Erfurt)

9.15 – 10.30 Uhr:     Sektion 1: Gemeinsame Diskussion von Grundlagentexten

Einführungen in die Texte: Jutta Vinzent (Birmingham / MWK Erfurt) & Sebastian Dorsch (Erfurt)

                                    Kaffeepause

10.45 – 12.15 Uhr:  Sektion 2: Moderne RaumZeit-Regime und Ästhetik

Hartmut Rosa (MWK Erfurt): Beschleunigung, Resonanz und ihre Bedeutung für die Ästhetik

Jutta Vinzent (Birmingham / MWK Erfurt): Temporality and Spatiality in Modern Art

Kommentar: Helmut Hühn (Jena)

12.15 – 13.45 Uhr:   Möglichkeit zum (gemeinsamen) Mittagessen

13.45 – 15.15 Uhr:  Sektion 3: Karten - Texte

Iris Schröder (Gotha/Erfurt): When Science meets Art: Wissenschaftliche Praktiken und ästhetische Prinzipien in der Kartografie des 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Werkstattbericht

Kathrin Schär (Neuchâtel): ZeitRäume als Archiv: (Erd-) Geschichte und Archivpoetik im 19. Jahrhundert

Kommentar: Dietmar Mieth (MWK Erfurt)

                                    Kaffeepause

15.30 – 17.00 Uhr:  Sektion 4: Photographie – Film

Silvan Niedermeier (Erfurt): Philippine Belles: Orientalismus und Exotik in privaten Fotosammlungen US-amerikanischer Soldaten aus dem Philippinisch-Amerikanischen Krieg (1898-1913)

Silke Martin (Weimar): Kreisen, Rasen, Kippen – Zur Ästhetik filmischer Berglandschaft im gegenwärtigen Film: Nanga Parbat (Vilsmaier, D 2010)

Kommentar: Sabine Zubarik (Erfurt)

ab 17.00 Uhr            Abschlussdiskussion

Anmeldung bis zum 19. Juni erbeten unter:

Sebastian Dorsch (ERZ, Universität Erfurt): sebastian.dorsch@uni-erfurt.de

Jutta Vinzent (University of Birmingham / Max-Weber-Kolleg): j.vinzent@bham.ac.uk

Wir danken der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, dem Forschungszentrums Gotha und dem Max-Weber-Kollegs der Universität Erfurt für die freundliche Unterstützung.