Thirteen expert historians and
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on... more Thirteen expert historians and
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on the distinctions
between past, present and future. Their
contributions are organised around
four themes: the relation between time
and modernity; the issue of ruptures in
time and the influence of catastrophic
events such as revolutions and wars on
temporal distinctions; the philosophical
analysis of historical time and temporal
distinctions; and the construction of
time outside Europe through processes
of colonialism, imperialism, and
globalisation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz: Breaking up Time –
Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
1. Time and Modernity: Critical Approaches to Koselleck’s Legacy
Aleida Assmann: Transformations of the Modern Time Regime
Peter Fritzsche: The Ruins of Modernity
Peter Osborne: Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time
2. Ruptures in Time: Revolutions and Wars
Sanja Perovic: Year 1 and Year 61 of the French Revolution: The Revolutionary Calendar and Auguste Comte
Claudia Verhoeven: Wormholes in Russian History: Events ‘Outside of Time’
François Hartog: The Modern Régime of Historicity in the Face of
Two World Wars
Lucian Hölscher: Mysteries of Historical Order: Ruptures, Simultaneity and the Relationship of the Past, the Present and the Future
3. Thinking about Time: Analytical Approaches
Jonathan Gorman: The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions
Constantin Fasolt: Breaking up Time – Escaping from Time: Self-Assertion and Knowledge of the Past
4. Time outside Europe: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalisation
Lynn Hunt: Globalisation and Time
Stefan Tanaka: Unification of Time and the Fragmentation of Pasts in Meiji Japan
Axel Schneider: Temporal Hierarchies and Moral Leadership:
China’s Engagement with Modern Views of History
William Gallois: The War for Time in Early Colonial Algeria"
What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism con... more What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism connected to earlier moments, for example, in the 20th century? What can be the role of radical art and scholarship under the conditions of late capitalism? More generally, how can art and artists serve the ongoing struggle for social justice and the agendas of emancipatory social change? Finally, what kinds of art criticism and art historical scholarship are necessary to address the great challenges of our uncertain future?
The simple possibility that things might proceed otherwise is something in which there is depress... more The simple possibility that things might proceed otherwise is something in which there is depressingly little belief at present. * For all the enthusiasm for change manifest in the debates about postmodernism, there is probably currently less of a sense that 'things might proceed otherwise' in Western capitalist societies than at any time since the early 1950s. At a theoretical level, this situation has been depicted in a number of ways: from the 'realisation of nihilism' of Fukuyama' send of hi story , via the 'realisation of positivism' of J ameson' s postmodernism, to a series of more diffuse analyses of the end of politics and the crisis of the future. 1 One thing which is distinctive about all these scenarios is their fulsome embrace of that hitherto discredited nineteenth century genre, the philosophy of history; albeit, more often than not, in negative or inverted forms.2 Indeed, the mere fact that Fukuyama crafts his argument at this level has...
Jeff wall It’s changed. In the early 1970s, when I wasn’t able to make any work – and that includ... more Jeff wall It’s changed. In the early 1970s, when I wasn’t able to make any work – and that includes the time I was here in London – I was very open to what was being written and talked about – in art, culture, politics – that ensemble of related discourses. Because I was frustrated and unable to have any sort of studio practice, or any kind of practice whatsoever, studio or post-studio, I was probably even more susceptible or receptive to critical theory than I might have been if I’d had a viable métier, because a métier tends to absorb influences and manages them. But I was probably fortunate about that, because I was freer to get involved in the critical theory and philosophy that was just beginning to become available in English at that moment. I was always a studious kid, so getting involved with all that didn’t pose any serious challenge. I was able to enjoy it, and still do. I’d like to think that it doesn’t have any direct relation to my pictures because it would be better if...
The question of the possibility, form, and validity of a 'critical' social science, of it... more The question of the possibility, form, and validity of a 'critical' social science, of its relation to Marxism and to the ideas of dialectic and contradiction, received considerable attention on the pages of Radical Philosophy in the late 1970s, in a series of articles beginning with Roy Edgley's 'Reason as Dialectic: Science, Social Science and Socialist Science' (RPI5, Autumn 1976) and ending, somewhat abruptly, with-]oseph McCarney's 'The Trouble with Contradictions' (RP23, Winter, 1979) [1]. A striking feature of this debate-;-ln retrospect, is the total absence of any reference to the work of the Frankfurt School that group of thinkers who, as McCarney has recently pointed out ('What Makes Critical Theory "Critical"?', RP42, Winter/Spring 1986), have, more than anyone else, made the idea of a criticial theory of society their own. McCarney's recent survey of this work is thus to be welcomed not only for its intrinsic interes...
time v. concrete time/ time of events In its function as a general social mediation, socially nec... more time v. concrete time/ time of events In its function as a general social mediation, socially necessary labour (measured in abstract time) expresses ‘a general temporal norm’.16 There are a number of problems with this analogical extension of Marx’s terminology, the identification of which throws some light on the dialectical character of Marx’s temporal ontology. First, the time of abstract labour was, for Marx, itself ‘historical’ and hence not ‘absolute’, however much it might posit itself as such. Rather, ‘absolute’ is the term Marx reserves for the more radically temporalizing time, not of ‘living labour’, but of free activity. Second, and consequently, Postone is equivocal (at worst, simply contradictory) about historical time. On the one hand, it is on occasion treated synonymously with concrete time, as the time of events; on the other hand, it is considered the result of the dynamic relationship between abstract time (as the universalizing time of capital) and concrete time...
Este artigo considera os efeitos sobre os museus de arte da condição histórica de uma contemporan... more Este artigo considera os efeitos sobre os museus de arte da condição histórica de uma contemporaneidade global, à qual estão hoje sujeitos. A principal diferença, argumenta-se, diz respeito às formas de universalidade que os museus de arte articulam e às quais aspiram. O artigo parte de uma breve revisão da cada vez mais comum "crítica do museu" empreendida nas últimas décadas, que é uma crítica da concepção de um "museu universal" do século XIX. Ele procede refletindo sobre o caráter duplo e homólogo do projeto de totalidade desta concepção – a obra de arte como uma totalidade e a história como uma totalidade – em contraste com a heterogeneidade teórica das formas de unidade das categorias de periodização que são desenvolvidas pela história da arte hoje. As formas de totalidade herdadas revelaram-se projeções ilusórias ou fictícias. Entretanto, argumenta-se, em vez de representar uma dissolução da aspiração à universalidade do museu, como tal, essas formas heter...
If, as Walter Benjamin claimed, “it is the function of artistic form … to make historical content... more If, as Walter Benjamin claimed, “it is the function of artistic form … to make historical content into a philosophical truth,” then it is the function of criticism to recover and to complete that truth. Never has this been more necessary or more difficult than with respect to contemporary art. Contemporary art is a point of condensation of a vast array of social and historical forces, economic and political forms and technologies of image production. Contemporary art expresses this condition, Osborne maintains, through its distinctively postconceptual form. These essays—extending the scope and arguments of Osborne’s Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art—move from philosophical consideration of the changing temporal conditions of capitalist modernity, via problems of formalism, the politics of art and the changing shape of art institutions, to interpretation and analysis of particular works by Akram Zataari, Xavier Le Roy and Ilya Kabakov, and the postconceptual situ...
Thirteen expert historians and
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on... more Thirteen expert historians and
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on the distinctions
between past, present and future. Their
contributions are organised around
four themes: the relation between time
and modernity; the issue of ruptures in
time and the influence of catastrophic
events such as revolutions and wars on
temporal distinctions; the philosophical
analysis of historical time and temporal
distinctions; and the construction of
time outside Europe through processes
of colonialism, imperialism, and
globalisation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz: Breaking up Time –
Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
1. Time and Modernity: Critical Approaches to Koselleck’s Legacy
Aleida Assmann: Transformations of the Modern Time Regime
Peter Fritzsche: The Ruins of Modernity
Peter Osborne: Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time
2. Ruptures in Time: Revolutions and Wars
Sanja Perovic: Year 1 and Year 61 of the French Revolution: The Revolutionary Calendar and Auguste Comte
Claudia Verhoeven: Wormholes in Russian History: Events ‘Outside of Time’
François Hartog: The Modern Régime of Historicity in the Face of
Two World Wars
Lucian Hölscher: Mysteries of Historical Order: Ruptures, Simultaneity and the Relationship of the Past, the Present and the Future
3. Thinking about Time: Analytical Approaches
Jonathan Gorman: The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions
Constantin Fasolt: Breaking up Time – Escaping from Time: Self-Assertion and Knowledge of the Past
4. Time outside Europe: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalisation
Lynn Hunt: Globalisation and Time
Stefan Tanaka: Unification of Time and the Fragmentation of Pasts in Meiji Japan
Axel Schneider: Temporal Hierarchies and Moral Leadership:
China’s Engagement with Modern Views of History
William Gallois: The War for Time in Early Colonial Algeria"
What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism con... more What does it mean to think and act radically, and how does this relate to forms of radicalism connected to earlier moments, for example, in the 20th century? What can be the role of radical art and scholarship under the conditions of late capitalism? More generally, how can art and artists serve the ongoing struggle for social justice and the agendas of emancipatory social change? Finally, what kinds of art criticism and art historical scholarship are necessary to address the great challenges of our uncertain future?
The simple possibility that things might proceed otherwise is something in which there is depress... more The simple possibility that things might proceed otherwise is something in which there is depressingly little belief at present. * For all the enthusiasm for change manifest in the debates about postmodernism, there is probably currently less of a sense that 'things might proceed otherwise' in Western capitalist societies than at any time since the early 1950s. At a theoretical level, this situation has been depicted in a number of ways: from the 'realisation of nihilism' of Fukuyama' send of hi story , via the 'realisation of positivism' of J ameson' s postmodernism, to a series of more diffuse analyses of the end of politics and the crisis of the future. 1 One thing which is distinctive about all these scenarios is their fulsome embrace of that hitherto discredited nineteenth century genre, the philosophy of history; albeit, more often than not, in negative or inverted forms.2 Indeed, the mere fact that Fukuyama crafts his argument at this level has...
Jeff wall It’s changed. In the early 1970s, when I wasn’t able to make any work – and that includ... more Jeff wall It’s changed. In the early 1970s, when I wasn’t able to make any work – and that includes the time I was here in London – I was very open to what was being written and talked about – in art, culture, politics – that ensemble of related discourses. Because I was frustrated and unable to have any sort of studio practice, or any kind of practice whatsoever, studio or post-studio, I was probably even more susceptible or receptive to critical theory than I might have been if I’d had a viable métier, because a métier tends to absorb influences and manages them. But I was probably fortunate about that, because I was freer to get involved in the critical theory and philosophy that was just beginning to become available in English at that moment. I was always a studious kid, so getting involved with all that didn’t pose any serious challenge. I was able to enjoy it, and still do. I’d like to think that it doesn’t have any direct relation to my pictures because it would be better if...
The question of the possibility, form, and validity of a 'critical' social science, of it... more The question of the possibility, form, and validity of a 'critical' social science, of its relation to Marxism and to the ideas of dialectic and contradiction, received considerable attention on the pages of Radical Philosophy in the late 1970s, in a series of articles beginning with Roy Edgley's 'Reason as Dialectic: Science, Social Science and Socialist Science' (RPI5, Autumn 1976) and ending, somewhat abruptly, with-]oseph McCarney's 'The Trouble with Contradictions' (RP23, Winter, 1979) [1]. A striking feature of this debate-;-ln retrospect, is the total absence of any reference to the work of the Frankfurt School that group of thinkers who, as McCarney has recently pointed out ('What Makes Critical Theory "Critical"?', RP42, Winter/Spring 1986), have, more than anyone else, made the idea of a criticial theory of society their own. McCarney's recent survey of this work is thus to be welcomed not only for its intrinsic interes...
time v. concrete time/ time of events In its function as a general social mediation, socially nec... more time v. concrete time/ time of events In its function as a general social mediation, socially necessary labour (measured in abstract time) expresses ‘a general temporal norm’.16 There are a number of problems with this analogical extension of Marx’s terminology, the identification of which throws some light on the dialectical character of Marx’s temporal ontology. First, the time of abstract labour was, for Marx, itself ‘historical’ and hence not ‘absolute’, however much it might posit itself as such. Rather, ‘absolute’ is the term Marx reserves for the more radically temporalizing time, not of ‘living labour’, but of free activity. Second, and consequently, Postone is equivocal (at worst, simply contradictory) about historical time. On the one hand, it is on occasion treated synonymously with concrete time, as the time of events; on the other hand, it is considered the result of the dynamic relationship between abstract time (as the universalizing time of capital) and concrete time...
Este artigo considera os efeitos sobre os museus de arte da condição histórica de uma contemporan... more Este artigo considera os efeitos sobre os museus de arte da condição histórica de uma contemporaneidade global, à qual estão hoje sujeitos. A principal diferença, argumenta-se, diz respeito às formas de universalidade que os museus de arte articulam e às quais aspiram. O artigo parte de uma breve revisão da cada vez mais comum "crítica do museu" empreendida nas últimas décadas, que é uma crítica da concepção de um "museu universal" do século XIX. Ele procede refletindo sobre o caráter duplo e homólogo do projeto de totalidade desta concepção – a obra de arte como uma totalidade e a história como uma totalidade – em contraste com a heterogeneidade teórica das formas de unidade das categorias de periodização que são desenvolvidas pela história da arte hoje. As formas de totalidade herdadas revelaram-se projeções ilusórias ou fictícias. Entretanto, argumenta-se, em vez de representar uma dissolução da aspiração à universalidade do museu, como tal, essas formas heter...
If, as Walter Benjamin claimed, “it is the function of artistic form … to make historical content... more If, as Walter Benjamin claimed, “it is the function of artistic form … to make historical content into a philosophical truth,” then it is the function of criticism to recover and to complete that truth. Never has this been more necessary or more difficult than with respect to contemporary art. Contemporary art is a point of condensation of a vast array of social and historical forces, economic and political forms and technologies of image production. Contemporary art expresses this condition, Osborne maintains, through its distinctively postconceptual form. These essays—extending the scope and arguments of Osborne’s Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art—move from philosophical consideration of the changing temporal conditions of capitalist modernity, via problems of formalism, the politics of art and the changing shape of art institutions, to interpretation and analysis of particular works by Akram Zataari, Xavier Le Roy and Ilya Kabakov, and the postconceptual situ...
Drawn from a conference held to mark the 150th anniversary of the first volume of Karl Marx's... more Drawn from a conference held to mark the 150th anniversary of the first volume of Karl Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, these essays from a range of internationally established contributors offer readers a snapshot of debates about the book's current relevance across a variety of fields and contexts. The volume approaches Marx's Capital as an exemplary text in the continuation of the tradition of post-Kantian European Philosophy through transdisciplinary practices of critique and concept construction. The essays are grouped into four sections: Value-Form, Ontology & Politics; Capitalism, Feminism and Social Reproduction; Freedom, Democracy and War; The Poetics of Capital/Capital. Each section is accompanied by an image from the 2008 film by Alexander Kluge, News From Ideological Antiquity: Marx - Eisenstein - Capital.
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Books by peter osborne
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on the distinctions
between past, present and future. Their
contributions are organised around
four themes: the relation between time
and modernity; the issue of ruptures in
time and the influence of catastrophic
events such as revolutions and wars on
temporal distinctions; the philosophical
analysis of historical time and temporal
distinctions; and the construction of
time outside Europe through processes
of colonialism, imperialism, and
globalisation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz: Breaking up Time –
Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
1. Time and Modernity: Critical Approaches to Koselleck’s Legacy
Aleida Assmann: Transformations of the Modern Time Regime
Peter Fritzsche: The Ruins of Modernity
Peter Osborne: Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time
2. Ruptures in Time: Revolutions and Wars
Sanja Perovic: Year 1 and Year 61 of the French Revolution: The Revolutionary Calendar and Auguste Comte
Claudia Verhoeven: Wormholes in Russian History: Events ‘Outside of Time’
François Hartog: The Modern Régime of Historicity in the Face of
Two World Wars
Lucian Hölscher: Mysteries of Historical Order: Ruptures, Simultaneity and the Relationship of the Past, the Present and the Future
3. Thinking about Time: Analytical Approaches
Jonathan Gorman: The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions
Constantin Fasolt: Breaking up Time – Escaping from Time: Self-Assertion and Knowledge of the Past
4. Time outside Europe: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalisation
Lynn Hunt: Globalisation and Time
Stefan Tanaka: Unification of Time and the Fragmentation of Pasts in Meiji Japan
Axel Schneider: Temporal Hierarchies and Moral Leadership:
China’s Engagement with Modern Views of History
William Gallois: The War for Time in Early Colonial Algeria"
Papers by peter osborne
philosophers address basic questions on
historical time and on the distinctions
between past, present and future. Their
contributions are organised around
four themes: the relation between time
and modernity; the issue of ruptures in
time and the influence of catastrophic
events such as revolutions and wars on
temporal distinctions; the philosophical
analysis of historical time and temporal
distinctions; and the construction of
time outside Europe through processes
of colonialism, imperialism, and
globalisation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz: Breaking up Time –
Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future
1. Time and Modernity: Critical Approaches to Koselleck’s Legacy
Aleida Assmann: Transformations of the Modern Time Regime
Peter Fritzsche: The Ruins of Modernity
Peter Osborne: Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time
2. Ruptures in Time: Revolutions and Wars
Sanja Perovic: Year 1 and Year 61 of the French Revolution: The Revolutionary Calendar and Auguste Comte
Claudia Verhoeven: Wormholes in Russian History: Events ‘Outside of Time’
François Hartog: The Modern Régime of Historicity in the Face of
Two World Wars
Lucian Hölscher: Mysteries of Historical Order: Ruptures, Simultaneity and the Relationship of the Past, the Present and the Future
3. Thinking about Time: Analytical Approaches
Jonathan Gorman: The Limits of Historiographical Choice in Temporal Distinctions
Constantin Fasolt: Breaking up Time – Escaping from Time: Self-Assertion and Knowledge of the Past
4. Time outside Europe: Imperialism, Colonialism and Globalisation
Lynn Hunt: Globalisation and Time
Stefan Tanaka: Unification of Time and the Fragmentation of Pasts in Meiji Japan
Axel Schneider: Temporal Hierarchies and Moral Leadership:
China’s Engagement with Modern Views of History
William Gallois: The War for Time in Early Colonial Algeria"