Enduring Time

by Lisa Baraitser

We are currently seeing dramatic changes in the ways we imagine and experience time. Permanent debt, unending violent conflict, climate change, economic instability, and widening social inequalities have led to suggestions that we are now living in the time of the 'end times'. In the shadow of a foreshortened future, the present is increasingly experienced as a form of 'non-stop inertia', resulting in experiences of time as both frenetic but also stuck - revving up, as Ivor Southwood puts it, to go nowhere.

So, where do we go and how when all options seem to have run their course and time is now longer moving forward? Enduring Time proposes some alternative relations of time which provide hopeful alternatives to the dominating models of oppression, limitation and exploitation.

A strikingly original philosophy of time which also provides students and scholars with a rigorous and detailed survey of contemporary theories of time, Enduring time is an indispensable read for those attempting to live meaningfully in the current age.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2017

Reviews

[Amber Dickinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book, and the whole idea behind it. The cultural examples used to highlight the passing of time through care were so interesting and pertinent. The book was however extremely difficult to read and follow. Definitely for a more advanced philosophical audience.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far-reaching study of times that don’t pass.

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ultimately found her vision of queering motherhood unconvincing (and remain influenced and convinced by Edelman's No Future on this point), but I do appreciate that Baraitser has her finger on a serious issue. That is, as much as I wish for a pure negativity akin to Edelman's, there is a need for a normative force that guides questions of birthing, raising children, and social reproduction. It is these normative questions that Baraitser connects (again, I'd ultimately say unsuccessfully) with issues raised by psychoanalysis of a distinctly British variety.

[Beatrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

the next person to say freud's name in my company gets it. also vlebooks i hope you die a painful death when your time comes