Exploring the complexities of time, this book delves into various philosophical perspectives on temporal shifts, including mutation, epoch changes, and the unsettling notion of a time marked by geocide. Through the lenses of thinkers like Nancy, Blanchot, Stiegler, and Deguy, it examines how these concepts challenge our understanding of existence and history, highlighting the profound implications of a world where time is in flux and reality is redefined.
First published in 2015 in Great Britain by SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS -- Verso title page.
"Who are our contemporaries today? From among the thinkers of the last "great generation" of the past century, who are the precursors whose voice is strong enough to speak to our present today? Or again, is it not philosophy but rather art that measures up to the intensity of the forces pressing against us in the present? These are some of the questions that animate two volumes of critical essays written in the aftermath of Agamben's influential essay "What is the contemporary?" ... re-opening the question of contemporaneity today"--Page 4 of cover.
Those familiar with the work of Derrida will recognize the double term in the title as variations, in translation, of Derrida's untimely essay Survivre. To survive in this infinite mood and indefinite form that sets no limit to number, person, or time is at once the theme and the undercurrent that runs through the diverse texts gathered together in this volume. To survive, for such is our exceptional situation, also animates the act of to shelter a personal existence and actualize the promise writing holds for saving something more than (bare) life. Derrida termed it sur-vie or living on. The texts date from different times and phases of the mutating epidemic. In chronological order, they register the progressive evolution and complication of the sense of this novel crisis. The first is contemporaneous with the immediate virus outbreak and with Agamben's provocative dismissal of the health crisis. The Two Transcripts are of video interventions that appeared on JeromeLebre's YouTube channel