Time at a Standstill

Some Remarks on Acceleration and Subjectivity

Authors

  • Pablo Oyarzún R. Department of Theory of Arts and of Philosophy, and center for interdisciplinary studies in Philosophy, Arts, and Humanities, University of Chile https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8396-2517

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v1i1.127075

Keywords:

experience of the present, acceleration, history, modernity

Abstract

From an experiential point of view, acceleration is a space-shrinking and a time-stressing phenomenon. Assuming that this phenomenon has reached a decisive pervasiveness in late modernity, so that it has become determinative of social relations in general, a question about its impact on the structure of experience and of the subject of experience bears a double signification: on the one hand, it concerns temporality, i.e., the structure of the experience of time, and, on the other hand, it concerns historicity, that is, the structure of the experience of historical time. I suppose that the development of this question requires examining the structure of the experience of the present, given that acceleration may be considered at first sight as an intensive experience of the present. But, then, an examination of the structure of the experience of the present is deeply rooted in the structure of the present itself. So, my argument relates three concepts: experience, present, and acceleration, the latter according to the double effect in which this phenomenon appears (space shrinking and time-stressing).

Author Biography

Pablo Oyarzún R., Department of Theory of Arts and of Philosophy, and center for interdisciplinary studies in Philosophy, Arts, and Humanities, University of Chile

Pablo Oyarzun R. is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics, Director of the Bicentennial Initiative, a project for the development of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, of the Doctorate in Philosophy (Aesthetics and Theory of Arts), and of the Interdisciplinary Center of Studies in Philosophy, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Chile. His research revolves around metaphysics, ethics, epistemology and philosophy of language, aesthetics and the theory of art and literature, culture, education, and politics. To mention among his recent books are Doing Justice (2020), Devaneo sobre la estupidez y otros textos (2018), Baudelaire: la modernidad y el destino del poema (2016), and Una especie de espejo. Swift: cuatro ensayos y una nota (2014). In the near future other two books will be published in the United States: Literature and Skepticism and the English translation of Between Celan and Heidegger. His translations include Epicurus, Pseudo-Longinus, Jonathan Swift, Immanuel Kant, Heinrich von Kleist, Charles Baudelaire, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan. Oyarzun has served as visiting professor in diverse universities and centers. He has received various prizes and awards.

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Published

2021-10-11

How to Cite

Oyarzún R., P. (2021). Time at a Standstill: Some Remarks on Acceleration and Subjectivity. International Review of Theoretical Psychologies, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v1i1.127075

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2021): Measured Lives - Theoretical Psychology in an Era of Acceleration.

Section

Keynote Addresses

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Pablo Oyarzun R.

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