Deja Vu and the End of History

by Paolo Virno, David S. Broder (Translator)

Overview

Déjà vu, which doubles and confuses our experience of time, is a psychological phenomenon with peculiar relevance to our contemporary historical circumstances. From this starting point, the acclaimed Italian philosopher Paolo Virno examines the construct of memory, the passage of time, and the “end of history.” Through thinkers such as Bergson, Kojève and Nietzsche, Virno shows how our perception of history can become suspended or paralysed, making the distinction between “before” and “after,” cause and effect, seem derisory. In examining the way the experience of time becomes historical, Virno forms a radical new theory of historical temporality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781686126
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	02/03/2015
Series:	Futures
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	889,932
Product dimensions:	5.11(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Paolo Virno teaches Philosophy at the University of Rome. His recent books include A Grammar of the Multitude and Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation.

Table of Contents

Part I Déjá Vu and the End of History 1

Premise 3

1 Watching Themselves Live 7

2 The Memory of the Present 10

3 Actual and Virtual 14

4 The Temporality of the Possible 19

5 Language as the Indefinite Past 23

6 Two Types of Anachronism 26

7 The Snobbery of Memory 33

8 On the Utility and Liability of Memory for History 40

9 The Modernariat 46

Part II Temporality of Potential, Potentiality of Time 57

Premise 59

1 Chronological Progression, Temporal Order 63

2 Presence and the Never-Actual 66

3 'Eternal things are prior in substance to perishable things' 72

4 Unrealisable Potential 80

5 The Incompleteness of Time 91

6 Kant's Stove 97

7 The Simultaneity of 'Not-Now' and 'Now' 104

8 The Anteriority of Potential 109

9 A Double Game 132

10 What Is a Historical Moment? 136

11 Death and History 146

Part III Historical Materialism 157

Premise 159

1 On the Concept of Labour-Power: Body and Potential 161

2 'In illo tempore': The Ambivalence of Religious Symbols 173

3 Contemporary Pre-History 183

Index of Names 191

Editorial Reviews

Paolo Virno is one of the most radical and lucid thinkers.” —Meditations Journal

From the Publisher