Skip to content
1981

Absurd Temporalities

image of Absurd Temporalities

This essay works to develop a specifically temporal understanding of the absurd. Rejecting the idea that the absurd should be primarily discussed in spatial terms—as a cosmological divorce between and individual and the world—it instead works to define the absurd as a particular orientation towards an undefined and indeterminate future. It does this through a juxtaposition with three positions with which the absurd is often related: optimism, pessimism, and nihilism.

Keywords: Agency ; Alienation ; Historicity ; Narration ; Nihilism ; Ontology ; Optimism ; Pessimism ; Sequence ; Time

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

Absurd Temporalities
Intellect , 162 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389067_11
/content/books/9781789389067.c09
/content/books/9781789389067.c09
Loading

Data & Media loading...

References

  1. Bastani, Aaron (2018), Fully Automated Luxury Communism, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Benjamin, Walter (2003), ‘On the concept of history’, in H. Eiland and M. W. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 4, 1938–1940 (trans. H. Zohn), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 389–400.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bennett, Jane (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bollmer, Grant (2011), ‘Virtuality in systems of memory: Toward an ontology of collective memory, ritual, and the technological’, Memory Studies, 4:4, pp. 450–64.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Bollmer, Grant (2016), Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection, New York: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2017), ‘Phenomenology for the selfie’, Cultural Politics, 13:2, pp. 156–76.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2018), ‘“Do you really want to live forever?”: Animism, death, and digital images’, Cultural Studies Review, 24:2, pp. 79–96.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2020), ‘“Empathy and nausea: Virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence’, Journal of Visual Culture, 19:1, pp. 28–46.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Buckley, William F., Jr. (1955), ‘Our mission statement’, National Review, 19 November, https://www.nationalreview.com/1955/11/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr/. Accessed 24 November 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Camatte, Jacques (2011), Capital and Community (trans. D. Brown), New York: Prism Key Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Camus, Albert (1955), The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. J. O'Brien), New York: Vintage Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Cross, Stephen (2013), Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought: Representation and Will and Their Indian Parallels, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Dekeyser, Thomas (2020), ‘Pessimism, Futuility and Extinction: An Interview with Eugene Thacker’, Theory, Culture & Society, n.pag., https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420907127.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Deleuze, Gilles (1983), Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. H. Tomlinson), New York: Columbia University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Derrida, Jacques (1994), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (trans. P. Kamuf), New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Dupont (2009), Nihilist Communism: A Critique of Optimism in the Far Left, San Francisco: Ardent Press.180
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Edelman, Lee (2004), No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Esslin, Martin (1961), The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed., New York: Vintage Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gertz, Nolen (2019), Nihilism, Cambridge: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Guinness, Katherine (2019), Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Guinness, Katherine and Bollmer, Grant (2015), ‘Marina Abramović doesn't feel like you’, Feral Feminisms, 3, pp. 40–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Hacking, Ian (2002), Historical Ontology, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio (2001), Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Heidegger, Martin (1979–87), Nietzsche, 4 vols. (ed. and trans. D. Farrell Krell), San Francisco: Harper Collins.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Houellebecq, Michel (2020), In the Presence of Schopenhauer (trans. A. Brown), Cambridge: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Husserl, Edmund (1991), On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1983–1917) (trans. J. B. Brough), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Kant, Immanuel (1998), Critique of Pure Reason (eds and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood), New York: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Leibniz, G. W. (1985), Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil (ed. A. Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard), La Salle, IL: Open Court Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Marx, Karl (1976), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (trans. B. Fowkes), vol. 1, New York: Penguin Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1995), Unfashionable Observations (trans. R. T. Gray), Stanford: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017), Beyond Good and Evil: On the Genealogy of Morality (trans. A. Del Caro), Stanford: Stanford University.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017), The Will to Power (ed. R. Kevin Hill, trans. R. K. Hill and M. A. Scarpitti), New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Pinker, Steven (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, New York: Viking.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Pinker, Steven (2018), Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Possenti, Vittorio (2014), Nihilism and Metaphysics: The Third Voyage (trans. D. B. Gallagher), Albany: SUNY Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1958), The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2 (trans. E. F. J. Payne), New York: Dover Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Schopenhauer, Arthur (2015), Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, vol. 2 (ed. and trans. A. Del Caro and C. Janaway), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Scruton, Roger (2010), The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope, Oxford: Oxford University Press.181
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Severino, Emanuele (2016), Nihilism and Destiny (ed. N. Cusano, trans. K. W. Molìn), Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis International.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Severino, Emanuele (2016), The Essence of Nihilism (ed. I. Testoni and A. Carrera, trans. G. Donis), London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Sharma, Sarah (2014), In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Spillers, Hortense J. (1987), ‘Mama's baby, Papa's maybe: An American grammar book’, Diacritics, 17:2, n.pag.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Wendling, Amy E. (2009), Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Wilderson III, Frank B. (2020), Afropessimism, New York: Liveright.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Williams, Alex and Srnicek, Nick (2015), Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]

References

  1. Bastani, Aaron (2018), Fully Automated Luxury Communism, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Benjamin, Walter (2003), ‘On the concept of history’, in H. Eiland and M. W. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 4, 1938–1940 (trans. H. Zohn), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 389–400.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bennett, Jane (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bollmer, Grant (2011), ‘Virtuality in systems of memory: Toward an ontology of collective memory, ritual, and the technological’, Memory Studies, 4:4, pp. 450–64.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Bollmer, Grant (2016), Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection, New York: Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2017), ‘Phenomenology for the selfie’, Cultural Politics, 13:2, pp. 156–76.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2018), ‘“Do you really want to live forever?”: Animism, death, and digital images’, Cultural Studies Review, 24:2, pp. 79–96.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bollmer, Grant and Katherine Guinness (2020), ‘“Empathy and nausea: Virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence’, Journal of Visual Culture, 19:1, pp. 28–46.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Buckley, William F., Jr. (1955), ‘Our mission statement’, National Review, 19 November, https://www.nationalreview.com/1955/11/our-mission-statement-william-f-buckley-jr/. Accessed 24 November 2023.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Camatte, Jacques (2011), Capital and Community (trans. D. Brown), New York: Prism Key Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Camus, Albert (1955), The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. J. O'Brien), New York: Vintage Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Cross, Stephen (2013), Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought: Representation and Will and Their Indian Parallels, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Dekeyser, Thomas (2020), ‘Pessimism, Futuility and Extinction: An Interview with Eugene Thacker’, Theory, Culture & Society, n.pag., https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420907127.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Deleuze, Gilles (1983), Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. H. Tomlinson), New York: Columbia University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Derrida, Jacques (1994), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (trans. P. Kamuf), New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Dupont (2009), Nihilist Communism: A Critique of Optimism in the Far Left, San Francisco: Ardent Press.180
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Edelman, Lee (2004), No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Esslin, Martin (1961), The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd ed., New York: Vintage Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gertz, Nolen (2019), Nihilism, Cambridge: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Guinness, Katherine (2019), Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Guinness, Katherine and Bollmer, Grant (2015), ‘Marina Abramović doesn't feel like you’, Feral Feminisms, 3, pp. 40–55.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Hacking, Ian (2002), Historical Ontology, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio (2001), Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Heidegger, Martin (1979–87), Nietzsche, 4 vols. (ed. and trans. D. Farrell Krell), San Francisco: Harper Collins.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Houellebecq, Michel (2020), In the Presence of Schopenhauer (trans. A. Brown), Cambridge: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Husserl, Edmund (1991), On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1983–1917) (trans. J. B. Brough), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Kant, Immanuel (1998), Critique of Pure Reason (eds and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood), New York: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Leibniz, G. W. (1985), Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil (ed. A. Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard), La Salle, IL: Open Court Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Marx, Karl (1976), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (trans. B. Fowkes), vol. 1, New York: Penguin Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1995), Unfashionable Observations (trans. R. T. Gray), Stanford: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017), Beyond Good and Evil: On the Genealogy of Morality (trans. A. Del Caro), Stanford: Stanford University.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017), The Will to Power (ed. R. Kevin Hill, trans. R. K. Hill and M. A. Scarpitti), New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Pinker, Steven (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, New York: Viking.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Pinker, Steven (2018), Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, New York: Penguin.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Possenti, Vittorio (2014), Nihilism and Metaphysics: The Third Voyage (trans. D. B. Gallagher), Albany: SUNY Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1958), The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2 (trans. E. F. J. Payne), New York: Dover Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Schopenhauer, Arthur (2015), Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, vol. 2 (ed. and trans. A. Del Caro and C. Janaway), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Scruton, Roger (2010), The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope, Oxford: Oxford University Press.181
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Severino, Emanuele (2016), Nihilism and Destiny (ed. N. Cusano, trans. K. W. Molìn), Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis International.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Severino, Emanuele (2016), The Essence of Nihilism (ed. I. Testoni and A. Carrera, trans. G. Donis), London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Sharma, Sarah (2014), In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics, Durham: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Spillers, Hortense J. (1987), ‘Mama's baby, Papa's maybe: An American grammar book’, Diacritics, 17:2, n.pag.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Wendling, Amy E. (2009), Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Wilderson III, Frank B. (2020), Afropessimism, New York: Liveright.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Williams, Alex and Srnicek, Nick (2015), Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]

  • From This Site

    /content/books/9781789389067.c09
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
/content/books/9781789389067.c09
dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
-contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
10
5
Chapter
content/books/9781789389067
Book
false
en
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test