thought

thoughts on Nick of Time

Grosz three authors at the fringes of philosophy, & reinserts them into the center. Darwin (more a scientist), Nietzsche (more a madman) & Bergson (more a French man) are never enough of the philosophies of their time. In doing so she creates a great benefit into challenging those little biases that define what is read & what is not; what is believed & what is dismissed. Grosz does what she does best - she gets into the heart of what these authors are saying, and finds something that can be related to, that is useful for now. She finds a concept of time that has use for politics, and a concept of evolution that is worth living up to.

While she spends all this time spent on avoiding the big names of philosophy (for those more unassuming or simply eccentric minds) she does surprisingly miss mentioning one name who may have said something on this topic. (And before i get to that name i can kind of understand the avoidance in a book about the not to big names). I grudgingly say - why not mention Mr Marx himself. In the world of philosophy he is the one labeled 'more a politician' than a philosopher. So in a book with m ore than a sutler political edge why not? Marx was German, & so was Nietzsche; Marx wanted to dedicate Das Capital to Darwin, but the offer was not well received; and of course Marx & Bergson found them selves strange bedfellows after both coming under attack by who else but Mr Wittgenstein.

Lets now be clear. Its not the evolution of capital (the social/economic system) that fits so perfectly into the book. But rather his notion of the development of consciousness that needs to be integrated into her work. If we can find time in evolution, time in history & time in duration, then surely we can find time in consciousness? And much like her book - it is the movement of time only know by the untimely that is important.

Marx presents class consciousness as the 'class for itself' as opposed to the class in itself' - isn't this another nick in time? a necessary cleavage, that allows the movement forward? But unlike the other movements consciousness preconceives the change that is to occur into the world. It makes the world of its mind - and the mind requires consciousness for this to happen. Consciousness is a mental system that had evolved itself through time, and generated the possibility for history. So i would like to see her take on Marx & his untimeliness - which it appears she does so briefly in the sequel :)