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This article shows that 'tension' cannot be conceived as a specific object of an analysis for which one could determine a precise field of enquiry. Instead, it establishes tension as a specific mode or angle of approach with which any given contingent object or set of objects can be explored. The wideness of its applicability and the specificity of its angle suggest that research on tension can help to unfold a better understanding of a classical ontological question concerning the essential value of actions and relations in the definition of what a thing is. The text follows this line of argumentation by pairing contemporary philosophical sources and specific aesthetic and political examples. Suggesting the possibility of an open classification of different modes of tension, it clarifies the extent to which the essential definition of a thing is bound to the contingent analysis of its transformations.
The aim of this introductory article [to the volume of the same title], firstly, is to recapitulate the basic principles of Bakhtin’s initial theory as formulated in “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics” (henceforth FTC) and “The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historic Typology of the Novel)” (henceforth BSHR). Subsequently, we present some relevant elaborations of Bakhtin’s initial concept and a number of applications of chronotopic analysis, closing our state of the art by outlining two perspectives for further investigation. Some of the issues which we touch upon receive more detailed treatment in other contributions to this volume. Others may offer perspectives for future Bakhtin scholarship.
A different take on knowledge, history, and totalization is presented in Jamila Mascat's essay 'Hegel and the Ad-venture of the Totality', which aims at exploring the controversial notion of the Hegelian totality. Countering Louis Althusser's critique of Hegel's 'expressive totality', where every part is thought to expresses the whole, it proposes to consider such a speculative figure as a temporalizing instance situated at the entanglement of Knowing and History. Firstly, it illustrates the paradoxical inclination of Hegel's totality to being both complete and a never-ending task. Secondly, it analyses the accomplishment of totality at the peak of the Science of Logic, focusing on the temporal circularity of the Concept ('Begriff'). Thirdly, drawing on the readings of Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojève, and Jean Hyppolite, the essay illustrates the peculiar relation between becoming and eternity that is located at the heart of Hegel's conception of time. Finally, it approaches the last section of the "Phenomenology of Spirit" devoted to Absolute Knowing in order to highlight the twofold movement of seizure ('Begreifen') and release ('Entlassen') that characterizes the activity of the Spirit and that is constitutive of the contingent ad-venture of the totality as a philosophical achievement. In other words, it is by embracing contingency as its limit that Absolute Knowing reaffirms the status of its absoluteness precisely because of its capacity to sacrifice itself and let it go. Critically engaging with Catherine Malabou's reading of plasticity in Hegel, Mascat highlights that Absolute Knowing is a process of totalization that entails cuts and interruptions. The essay shows that the Hegelian totality may be interpreted and actualized as a theoretical construct densely charged with temporal and historical implications: on the one hand, totality expresses a timely standpoint for thought - the standpoint of Hegel's age, which is, as claimed by the philosopher at the end of his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy", 'for the time being completed', as well as the standpoint of the present time to be speculatively accomplished; on the other hand, Hegel's idea of a speculative totalization sets for the philosophies yet to come the never-ending task of constituting and re-constituting wholes.
Resistance
(2019)
The term 'resistance', as it appears in the writings of Walter Benjamin, marks the attempt to think a politics that emerges out of a certain experience of history and time. This entry shows that 'Widerstand' is conceived here principally as a resistance against the course of a catastrophic history - a desire for time to cease its flow and come to a standstill.
Repetition
(2019)
Serial texts must repeat, so that they can be recognized, but they must also change, so that they can remain interesting. Unusual temporal manipulations can emerge in such texts in order to balance these contradictory demands. This essay studies two serial texts whose need for self-extension produces a suspension of historical time: the contemporary animated sitcom "The Simpsons", and medieval romance as theorized by the twelfth-century poet Wace. I suggest that we might name this temporal constraint fiction.
Resolution
(2019)
Many parodies operate through temporal strategies that distort the narrative proportions of their targets. This essay discusses two texts that manipulate time for parodic purposes: the contemporary animated sitcom "Bojack Horseman" and the twelfth-century romance "Ipomedon". Their shared method involves the absurd prolongation of narrative structures of resolution and satisfaction in order to reveal these structures' arbitrary nature. But this method, in turn, shows that resolution - a retrospective determination of shape and meaning - can never be avoided entirely, even if it can be deferred.
Recitation : lyric time(s) I
(2019)
What is the time of the lyric? For Augustine, the recitation of a hymn illustrates the workings of time in the human mind; for Giorgio Agamben, the poem itself exemplifies the structure of what he defines as 'messianic time'. By focusing on Dante's sonnet 'Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare' and looking at the double act of the recitation of the poem and the "re-citation" of prior gestures, the temporality of both the single poem and lyric discourse will come into focus.
Recherche II : anamnesis
(2019)
The temporal loop of Proust's "Recherche" complicates the unidirectional understanding of anamnesis in psychoanalysis, which, in turn, allows for a renewed reading of the temporality of the "Recherche", highlighting the intrinsic link between artistic 'research' and unconscious affect - at the same time origin, motif, and destination.
Recherche I
(2019)
Recherche, (re-)search: do I research to find something not yet found or do I re-search back to find something that has been lost? These two directionalities structure Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu" and are reflected in its reception. But what if they only seem mutually exclusive, yet really are one and the same thing?
What is the relationship between reenactment and repetition compulsion? By shedding light upon the different levels of reenactment at stake in "Yella" by Christian Petzold, I analyse the 'transitional spaces' where the German filmmaker places his wandering characters who have 'slipped out of history'. In "Yella" Petzold mixes up past, present, future, and oneiric re-elaboration to question the memory of the past of GDR, which in his view has never really been constituted as history. The characters that populate this movie move in a setting constructed at the crossroad between a protected environment where the reenacted events are sheltered by the time and the space of the plot and a place weathered by the unpredictable atmospheric agents of the present. How and to which extent can the clash between different temporalities produce a minimal variation?