Fabian's treatment of time is very compelling, he skillfully demonstrates that our notion of time, what Benjamin terms "homogeneous empty time," was not the way in which it was treated before. Fabian's claim that the "topos of travel...secularized time" shows how time became to be regarded abstractly, much like the way space is thought of, rather than just the relationship among events of places (6). However I was struck with his use of Darwin:
"The mere lapse of time does nothing either for or against natural selection. I state this because it has been erroneously asserted that element of time is assumed by me to play an all important part in natural selection (14)." I was wondering how we can reconcile this idea with the fact of entropy, the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Arguably, time can simply be represented as the marker of entropy in a closed system, so then with this guaranteed disorder entropy implies, how is time not an all encompassing factor in natural selection, which priviliges effective adaptation to a changing (chaotic) environment.
thanks for your post atilio -- but how is the anthropological construction of time as argued by fabian different from benjamin's notion of homogeneous empty time? i don't think fabian would agree that they are the same thing. and he's making an argument about anthropology, not nationalism.
ReplyDeletewhat do you make of his argument regarding the temporality of fieldwork and his notion of intersubjective time? what is at stake in fabian and marcus/cushman wanting to hold on to fieldwork as what makes anthropology distinctive? i encourage you to attempt to deal with the first question posted by alfredo/tran/coral last week. feel free to respond in a post, or to come by and talk with me about the fabian + the screenings last week, since that is what we spent the bulk of our time on.