Description
Book SynopsisMichael Jackson demonstrates the significance of a phenomenology of time through a multifaceted consideration of the gap between our cultural representations of temporality and our experience. Jackson juxtaposes philosophy, history, and ethnography in an attempt to do justice to the bewildering multiplicity of temporal experience.
Trade ReviewThe Varieties of Temporal Experience is a gripping, challenging work that brings a unique voice to questions about how we experience time. To enable the reader to dwell in experiences of time in its variety and to experience firstness, providing gentle nudges but not overwhelming the reader with a heavy apparatus, is no small achievement. -- Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University
This is a rich and highly important work of anthropological thought and creative writing. Through a deft combination of creative nonfiction, ethnographic fieldwork, and autobiographical reflections, Michael Jackson explores the ways that human beings engage with processes of time, history (both personal and collective), memory, and relationships in dynamic, multiple, and pragmatic ways. -- Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College
In his latest work, Michael Jackson explores enigmas of the past and how stories help us to make our lives easier to live. Jackson’s anthropology draws out the vivid particularities of human experience and spins them into webs of connectivity across time, space, and culture. Like everything else Jackson has written,
The Varieties of Temporal Experience juxtaposes philosophy and everyday knowledge in precise and compassionate ways. And the writing is so good, it aches to put this book down. -- Dominic Boyer, Rice University
This remarkable book traces how a complex tapestry of interlocking temporalities configures our experience. Taking us on a journey across a breathtaking range of moments as a story unfolds, and drawing on a diverse anthropological, literary, and philosophical archive, Jackson sheds light on what it means to live with stories of different times—from the historical to the mythological, the mundane to the fantastic. These stories remind us that life is often uncannily stitched across various temporalities and selves.
The Varieties of Temporal Experience is an insightful contribution from one of the humanities’ most sophisticated and original voices. -- Andrew Brandel, Harvard University
The Varieties of Temporal Experience is at once ethnographic and biographical. It is about story-telling as a way of repairing the past, but also about the burden of stories and the possibility to live from the present. * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
The Blind ImpressPart OnePrologue
That Green Evening
The Blind Impress
The Other Side of the Tracks
Of the Woe That Is in Marriage
Manawatu
Fires of No Return
Fugue
Shots in the Dark
Recaptured
No Quarter
Escape
Starting Over
Part TwoBeyond the Call of Duty
Talking to Jack Hansen
Passing Strange
Still Life with Lading Lists
Part ThreeThe Remaining Pieces
Guilt and Shame
Death’s Secretary
Stories Happen
Time and Space
The Enigma of AnteriorityFirst Things First
Braided Rivers
Against the Grain
No Direction Home
Crossing Cook Strait
Metaphor of the Table
Destruction and Hope
Distance Looks Our Way
The Illusion of Corsica
Return to the Manawatu
Burned Places
Revenant
Te Ãti Awa
Symbolic Landscape
Two Women
The Road to Karuna Falls
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
Taking a Line for a Walk
Afterword
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
