Abstract
This chapter is principally concerned with how the abstract body takes on typologies of internal and external temporality that establish the subject as variously Elemental, Abject, or Exalted. An essential intervention here is to reframe canonical Hegelian dialectics as a relationship between three actors; the Abject and Exalted that stand in as analogous to Hegel’s Slave and Master but are mediated by the presence of a third subject, the Elemental. In addition to Hegel, a close reading of Derrida’s Beast and Sovereign is an essential component of this section.
si nemo a me quaerat, scio, si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
Saint Augustine , Confessions
I know it won’t be very long
till I receive my starry crown
it won’t be very long
till all of my burdens I lay down
Sam Cooke , It Won’t Be Very Long
The concept of time is therefore not an arbitrarily posited concept but is linked to the basic question of philosophy, if indeed this asks about the being of entities, the actuality of the actual, the reality of the real.
Martin Heidegger , Prolegomena: History of the Concept of Time
Some people will argue that the situation has a double meaning. Not at all.
Frantz Fanon , Black Skin, White Masks
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Notes
- 1.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Corpus. Fordham University: 2008. p. 15.
- 2.
Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1991. pp. 3–4.
- 3.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative: Volume 1. University of Chicago: 1983. p. 12.
- 4.
Augustine. Confessions. Oxford: 2008. p. 236.
- 5.
Ibid. p. 239.
- 6.
Ricoeur. p. 13.
- 7.
Ibid. p. 7.
- 8.
Ibid. p. 5.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Augustine. p. 235.
- 11.
Ibid. p. 239.
- 12.
Freeburg. p. 141.
- 13.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Hackett: 1996. p. 194.
- 14.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: 1966. p. 483.
- 15.
Augustine. p. 230.
- 16.
Ricoeur. p. 8.
- 17.
Augustine. p. 243.
- 18.
Ricoeur. p. 11.
- 19.
Ibid. p. 243.
- 20.
Augustine. p. 221.
- 21.
Ibid. p. 245.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Augustine. p. 221.
- 24.
Kant. p. 190.
- 25.
Ibid. p. 191.
- 26.
Ibid. p. 47.
- 27.
Patterson, Orlando. Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. Basic Books, 1991. p. xiii.
- 28.
Ricoeur, Paul. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Northwestern: 2007. p. 5.
- 29.
Ibid. p. 245.
- 30.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Penguin Classics: 1987. p. 59.
- 31.
Ibid. p. 60.
- 32.
Ibid. p. 72.
- 33.
Ibid. p. 84.
- 34.
Ibid. p. 62.
- 35.
Ibid. pp. 64.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid. p. 65.
- 39.
Ibid. p. 69.
- 40.
Ibid. p. 70.
- 41.
Ibid. p. 69.
- 42.
Ibid. p. 77.
- 43.
Ibid. p. 81.
- 44.
Ibid. p. 84.
- 45.
In spite of closing the first paragraph of this chapter with the statement: “Gods would be needed to give men laws” (The Social Contract Book II, Chapter 7, p. 84), it is clear that the lawgiver is not divine.
- 46.
Ibid. p. 85.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid. p. 79.
- 49.
Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence”. p. 236.
- 50.
Ibid. p. 243.
- 51.
Ibid. p. 248.
- 52.
Ibid. p. 250.
- 53.
Alter. pp. 763–764.
- 54.
Alter. p. 694.
- 55.
Unlike the other tribes, whose census is the vehicle of an explicit military conscription and hence based on the age of the 20 and over, the Levites are dedicated to God for their whole lives. The count begins not from birth but from one month because given the prevalence of infant mortality, only after one month is the child regarded a viable person (an explanation duly noted by several medieval commentators).
- 56.
Ibid. p. 695.
- 57.
Ibid. p. 762.
- 58.
Ibid. p. 763.
- 59.
Ibid. p. 463.
- 60.
Ibid. p. 483.
- 61.
Ibid. p. 687.
- 62.
Ibid. p. 767.
- 63.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Norton Critical Edition: 1999. pp. 9–10.
- 64.
Ibid. pp. 10–11.
- 65.
I owe this insight to a series of conversations with Professor Kenneth Haynes of the Brown University Departments of Comparative Literature and Classics.
- 66.
Blumenberg, Hans. The Genesis of the Copernican World. MIT: 1987. p. 4.
- 67.
Kant. p. 194.
- 68.
Guyer, Paul. Kant. Routledge: 2006. pp. 53–54.
- 69.
Ibid. p. 10f7.
- 70.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Vintage: 1995. p. 174.
- 71.
Ibid. p. 176.
- 72.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880. Free Press: 1999. p. 14.
- 73.
Ibid. p. 5.
- 74.
Ibid. p. 10.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Ibid.
- 77.
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard: 1982. p. 13.
- 78.
Ibid. pp. 5–10.
- 79.
Ibid. p. 5.
- 80.
Ibid. p. 27.
- 81.
Ibid. p. 132.
- 82.
Ibid. p. 39.
- 83.
Ibid. pp. 39, 41.
- 84.
Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Chicago: 2005. p. 40.
- 85.
Ibid.
- 86.
Ibid. p. 80.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. Penguin Classics: 2004. p. 101.
- 89.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge: 2012. p. 127.
- 90.
Ibid. pp. 102–103.
- 91.
Ibid. p. 141.
- 92.
Rousseau. p. 99.
- 93.
Miller, Jacques-Alain (editor). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953–1954. Norton: 1988. p. 167.
- 94.
Hegel, G.W.F. System of Science: First Part the Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Terry Pinkard. Bamberg and Würzberd: 1807
- 95.
Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit.
- 96.
Ibid. p. 9.
- 97.
Hegel. Phenomenology. p. 161.
- 98.
Ibid. p. 163.
- 99.
Ibid.
- 100.
Ibid. p. 166.
- 101.
Ibid. p. 167.
- 102.
Ibid.
- 103.
Ibid.
- 104.
Ibid. p. 168.
- 105.
Ibid. p. 171.
- 106.
Ibid. p. 165.
- 107.
Ruda, Frank. Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Continuum: 2011. p. 5.
- 108.
Ibid. p. 13.
Bibliography
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———. 1999b. Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880. New York: Free Press.
Ellison, Ralph. 1995. Invisible Man. Vintage.
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Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 1991. Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. New York: Basic Books.
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———. 2007. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Chicago: Northwestern.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1987. The Social Contract. Penguin Classics.
Ruda, Frank. 2011. Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. London: Continuum.
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Sawyer, M.E. (2018). It’s About Time. In: An Africana Philosophy of Temporality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98575-6_3
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