ICI
Fellowships for 2016-18
Fellowships for 2016-18
The
ICI Berlin announces ten post-doctoral fellowships for the Academic Years
2016-18
ICI Berlin announces ten post-doctoral fellowships for the Academic Years
2016-18
Conceptions
of time and varied modes of temporal experience seem more at odds now than
ever. Hamlet’s hunch – that ‘the time is out of joint’ – has turned into an
evergreen of critical discourse. Admittedly, ideas of physical, social,
revolutionary time, internal time consciousn
of time and varied modes of temporal experience seem more at odds now than
ever. Hamlet’s hunch – that ‘the time is out of joint’ – has turned into an
evergreen of critical discourse. Admittedly, ideas of physical, social,
revolutionary time, internal time consciousn
ess, or historical experience are
far from settled in their respective discourses and practices. Yet attempts to
harmonize or correlate the understanding of time and temporal phenomena
generated in different disciplines all-too quickly – and largely with violent
effect – resort to normative, if not teleological ideas of progress,
efficiency, narrative sense-making, or experiential plenitude.
The
rich traditions of critical thinking about time that challenge such normative
ideas can, however, appear complicit with the new temporal regimes of
capitalism. For example, they are marked by the increase of flexitime in the
workplace, celebrations of discontinued employment, even obsolescence as
‘reinventions of the self’. Additionally, the fact that the time of cyclical
crises proper to capitalism has been rendered opaque by the proliferation of
hedging and speculating on ‘futures’ or that high-frequency trade algorithms
enable transactions at posthuman speeds. With acceleration having reached the
point of evoking no longer progress but ideas of a ‘frenetic standstill’
(Virilio, Rosa) or the end of history, it would indeed seem that radical
opposition to a particular temporal mode – such as linearly progressing time –
is neither sufficient nor necessary, but, rather, risks proving
counter-productive.
rich traditions of critical thinking about time that challenge such normative
ideas can, however, appear complicit with the new temporal regimes of
capitalism. For example, they are marked by the increase of flexitime in the
workplace, celebrations of discontinued employment, even obsolescence as
‘reinventions of the self’. Additionally, the fact that the time of cyclical
crises proper to capitalism has been rendered opaque by the proliferation of
hedging and speculating on ‘futures’ or that high-frequency trade algorithms
enable transactions at posthuman speeds. With acceleration having reached the
point of evoking no longer progress but ideas of a ‘frenetic standstill’
(Virilio, Rosa) or the end of history, it would indeed seem that radical
opposition to a particular temporal mode – such as linearly progressing time –
is neither sufficient nor necessary, but, rather, risks proving
counter-productive.
In
this second instalment of the CoreProject ERRANS, we ask whether the heterogeneous relations between
discordant conceptions of time and temporality can be understood as being
‘erratically’ structured, that is, as marked by inherent misapprehensions, a
dissonance that defies regulation, and an unexpected variability. For example,
boredom or suspense challenges our confidence in the homogeneity of the flow of
time; for Fanon, decolonial struggle creates a new human being, but can only do
so by reworking the entire past from its very beginning; involuntary memory
undermines the supposedly cumulative experience of time throughout a lifetime;
Kristeva’s notion of ‘women’s time’ and queer temporalities reveal the
(hetero)normative investments in the naturalized time of reproduction;
psychotic experiences of homogeneous time unsettle our confidence that linear
time is intelligible at all, as do the divergent modifications of Newtonian
time by statistical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics; and the explosive
potential of temporal standstill undoes the dynamist model for ‘revolution’ inherited from premodern theories of planetary motion.
this second instalment of the CoreProject ERRANS, we ask whether the heterogeneous relations between
discordant conceptions of time and temporality can be understood as being
‘erratically’ structured, that is, as marked by inherent misapprehensions, a
dissonance that defies regulation, and an unexpected variability. For example,
boredom or suspense challenges our confidence in the homogeneity of the flow of
time; for Fanon, decolonial struggle creates a new human being, but can only do
so by reworking the entire past from its very beginning; involuntary memory
undermines the supposedly cumulative experience of time throughout a lifetime;
Kristeva’s notion of ‘women’s time’ and queer temporalities reveal the
(hetero)normative investments in the naturalized time of reproduction;
psychotic experiences of homogeneous time unsettle our confidence that linear
time is intelligible at all, as do the divergent modifications of Newtonian
time by statistical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics; and the explosive
potential of temporal standstill undoes the dynamist model for ‘revolution’ inherited from premodern theories of planetary motion.
The
different temporal forms of erring provide a possible point of departure. Thus,
Homer’s Odyssey juxtaposes its hero’s classical errantry – frequently
seen as anticipating bourgeois, enlightened, or capitalist subjectivity – with
the errant ruse of Penelope’s nocturnal unravelling of the burial shroud she is
weaving during the day. These modes of erring also need to be considered as
gendered, as one could argue for many temporal categories. Penelope’s gesture
presents a paradigm for radical, that is, ‘wilful’ resistance to the narrative
strongholds on temporal experience and, by extension, to the dictates of the
exploitation of labour time that only intensified with the creation of inactive
leisure or ‘down’ time. Penelope’s unravelling, hence, is akin to the radically
negative temporalities experienced in melancholia, obsessive-compulsive
disorders, lethargy, or traumatic rupture, ultimately raising the possibility
of an ‘empty’ or even ‘dead’ time. Similarly, neither the time that can only be
killed nor the time buckling before the deadline, neither the crawl of monotony
or tedium nor the unlimited expandability of imminence can be discounted as
mere limit cases or pathological experiences, but would have to be taken
seriously as errant misalignments of irreconcilable aspects of time.
different temporal forms of erring provide a possible point of departure. Thus,
Homer’s Odyssey juxtaposes its hero’s classical errantry – frequently
seen as anticipating bourgeois, enlightened, or capitalist subjectivity – with
the errant ruse of Penelope’s nocturnal unravelling of the burial shroud she is
weaving during the day. These modes of erring also need to be considered as
gendered, as one could argue for many temporal categories. Penelope’s gesture
presents a paradigm for radical, that is, ‘wilful’ resistance to the narrative
strongholds on temporal experience and, by extension, to the dictates of the
exploitation of labour time that only intensified with the creation of inactive
leisure or ‘down’ time. Penelope’s unravelling, hence, is akin to the radically
negative temporalities experienced in melancholia, obsessive-compulsive
disorders, lethargy, or traumatic rupture, ultimately raising the possibility
of an ‘empty’ or even ‘dead’ time. Similarly, neither the time that can only be
killed nor the time buckling before the deadline, neither the crawl of monotony
or tedium nor the unlimited expandability of imminence can be discounted as
mere limit cases or pathological experiences, but would have to be taken
seriously as errant misalignments of irreconcilable aspects of time.
A
radical discordance of Euro-American time becomes most blatantly manifest in
what Johannes Fabian has termed ‘the schizogenic use of time’ by
well-intentioned anthropologists: interacting with indigenous peoples in one
time and writing about them in another, they perpetuate a systematic temporal
relegation that in colonial regimes was based on assumptions about non-Western
peoples living outside of time and needing to be brought up to date or
‘civilized’. These vast lingering temporal injustices, but also the most modest
temporal complications of affective experience remain linked to the peculiar
afterlife of history – past the closed gardens of salvation and redemption,
past (post-)Hegelian mobilizations, past other narrative closures. Much recent
work on the temporal structures and textures of the everyday – changing
dramatically in a media culture going ‘live’ 24/7 –, the monotonous, boredom,
but also the event, trauma, catastrophe, or end, draws its power from a
confrontation with the frames of history, enlarged, crooked, manipulated, or
broken as they may be.
radical discordance of Euro-American time becomes most blatantly manifest in
what Johannes Fabian has termed ‘the schizogenic use of time’ by
well-intentioned anthropologists: interacting with indigenous peoples in one
time and writing about them in another, they perpetuate a systematic temporal
relegation that in colonial regimes was based on assumptions about non-Western
peoples living outside of time and needing to be brought up to date or
‘civilized’. These vast lingering temporal injustices, but also the most modest
temporal complications of affective experience remain linked to the peculiar
afterlife of history – past the closed gardens of salvation and redemption,
past (post-)Hegelian mobilizations, past other narrative closures. Much recent
work on the temporal structures and textures of the everyday – changing
dramatically in a media culture going ‘live’ 24/7 –, the monotonous, boredom,
but also the event, trauma, catastrophe, or end, draws its power from a
confrontation with the frames of history, enlarged, crooked, manipulated, or
broken as they may be.
We
welcome contributions from a wide variety of fields and disciplines,
pertaining, for example, to:
welcome contributions from a wide variety of fields and disciplines,
pertaining, for example, to:
- Incompatible
temporalities conjured up in aesthetic conceptions of vitality and
vitalist legacies of the life sciences - Decolonizing
metropolitan time, both questioning claims of belatedness at the
periphery, and embracing indigenous epistemologies of time - A
queer cultivation of nostalgia, complicating the relation to futurity - The
relation of physics and philosophy regarding the complementarity of being
and becoming, reversibility and irreversibility, or the entanglement of
past, present, and future - The
paradoxical mobilization and political value of an aesthetics of
untimeliness - Media-specific
temporalities in the constitution of the archive - The
shifting valences of age and ageing beyond a teleology of deathbound
decline - Temporal
antinomies and narratological deviations in literature and other media - Controversies
in psychoanalysis and theories of cultural memory revolving around the
concept of belatedness/retroaction (Nachträglichkeit) - The
importance of anachronism as a critical category but also as a deliberate
strategy - Fashion
as an ambivalent model of disjunctive temporalities - Ideas
of survival, afterlife, and revenants beyond standard conceptions of
tradition or genealogy
The
ICI Berlin invites scholars from all disciplines to engage in a joint
exploration of ERRANS, in Time. We especially welcome applications from
individuals who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in scholarly
research.
ICI Berlin invites scholars from all disciplines to engage in a joint
exploration of ERRANS, in Time. We especially welcome applications from
individuals who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in scholarly
research.
The
committed exchange between fellows is a central aim of the Institute.
Applicants should be interested in a theoretical reflection upon the conceptual
and intellectual basis of their projects and in discussing it with fellows from
other disciplines. In particular, fellows will be expected to participate in
the weekly colloquia, bi-weekly informal meetings, and other activities of the
Institute, to contribute to a common publication, and to be resident in Berlin
for the duration of the fellowship.
committed exchange between fellows is a central aim of the Institute.
Applicants should be interested in a theoretical reflection upon the conceptual
and intellectual basis of their projects and in discussing it with fellows from
other disciplines. In particular, fellows will be expected to participate in
the weekly colloquia, bi-weekly informal meetings, and other activities of the
Institute, to contribute to a common publication, and to be resident in Berlin
for the duration of the fellowship.
The
fellowships announced are for the academic years 2016-18 (12 September 2016 –
13 July 2018). There is no age limit, but applicants should have obtained their
PhD within ten years of the date of appointment or have fulfilled all
requirements for receiving their PhD by 1 July 2016. Stipends range from EUR
1800 to 2000 per month.
fellowships announced are for the academic years 2016-18 (12 September 2016 –
13 July 2018). There is no age limit, but applicants should have obtained their
PhD within ten years of the date of appointment or have fulfilled all
requirements for receiving their PhD by 1 July 2016. Stipends range from EUR
1800 to 2000 per month.
Interested
applicants should read also the description of the CoreProject ERRANS and follow the application instructions.
applicants should read also the description of the CoreProject ERRANS and follow the application instructions.
Application
deadline: 6 January 2016
deadline: 6 January 2016
