Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of approaches to ‘unknown time’, outlining historical and philosophical conceptions of time and specifying the connection between unknown time and fascination. Underlining the paradoxical ontological status of time and based on a survey of various attempts to measure, define, and represent time, it foregrounds processes and cultural practices of (de)familiarising time as indications of the on-going fascination with time and the unknown. Drawing on the etymological roots of the term ‘fascination’, the authors argue that the attraction of unknown time derives from the paradoxical dynamics arising from inherent tensions between the desire to arrest time and the anxiety and potential risks associated with filling unknown time. The chapter concludes with a summary of the individual contributions to this volume.
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Notes
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For a critical analysis of the underlying ideas on time and their potential relationship to Buddhist perspectives, see Goodhew and Loy (2002).
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The sustained value of this ‘confession’ can be demonstrated by its iteration in recent analyses of time; see, e.g., Saro Palmeri, “Time and History, from a Singular Perspective Exploring Einstein’s ‘Now’ Conundrum,” in KronoScope 15, no. 2 (2015): 179–190: “Time is the most difficult and elusive concept to grasp. As with the concept of God , time is both everywhere and nowhere to be found” (p. 179).
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Especially Modernist texts questioned and reconceptualised time by exploring its social, historical, and psychoanalytical mechanisms, e.g., H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine: An Invention (2008; orig. 1895). Cf. Tung (2015), see also Wittenberg (2013). For a comprehensive analysis of time travelling, see Nahin (1999).
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Baumbach, S., Henningsen, L., Oschema, K. (2017). Time in the Making: Why All the Fuss About Time? On Time, the Unknown, and Fascination. In: Baumbach, S., Henningsen, L., Oschema, K. (eds) The Fascination with Unknown Time. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66438-5_1
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