Temporality and the Constitution of Place: Comments on Heidegger, Mircea Eliade, and Wright Morris.

By Frank H. W. Edler
Metropolitan Community College (Omaha, NE)
Copyright © 2003, Frank Edler

On September 30 last year David Wishart gave the Plains Humanities Alliance’s inaugural seminar on Research and Region. His seminar entitled "Preliminary Thoughts on Region and Period" peaked my interest because he mentioned the problem of time in relation to periodization. He touched on the issue of how the acceptance of circular time for periodizing Pawnee history would be "more reflective of Indian historical reality" as opposed to the use of decades and centuries based on Western linear time. (Wishart,  )

I want to explore this dichotomy between linear and circular time and how the meaning of place is constituted differently in each. More importantly, I want to explore Martin Heidegger’s concept of temporality – what he calls ecstatic temporality -- as a possible bridge between the two or at least as another concept of temporality situated between linear and circular time insofar as ecstatic temporality includes elements of both linear and circular time.

As we know, human beings are strange creatures, perhaps the strangest on the face of the earth. Human being participates in all three phases of temporality differently and also threads them together. In the present, things that we perceive are actually there in bodily form; they are presently present as opposed to what we remember of the past. The remembered past is absent, no longer presently present, and yet the absence of the past has a reality of its own. What we envision of the future in terms of possibility is also absent in the sense that it is not yet presently present. It too has its own sense of reality.

In Heidegger’s concept of temporality, past and future cross over into each other and participate in the present. For the linear model of time, this is clearly impossible. An instance or "now" of the past cannot cross over and participate in the future or the present. Each "now" is locked in sequence. Linear time may function well in terms of dating events, but it does not reflect the way human being exists in time. Aristotle who was the first to put forth this view of linear time sacrificed the phenomenology of how human being participates in time for the ability to measure things in motion.

But how does the past cross over into the future and participate in the present? The past participates in the present as manifest absence. When I think towards the last time I saw my father in a hospital room in Germany, I’m sitting here bodily at my desk, but I’m there in the hospital room. My father in the hospital room is present as absent. I’m not there bodily, of course, but I am there in the room with my father in the manifest absence.

What is distinctive about the absence of the past that shows itself in the present like my father in the hospital room is that it can never be presently present again. The future too shows itself in the present as an absence, but this absence is different from the absence of the past. The absence of the future is an absence that can become presently present. The past no longer has this possibility. As opposed to the future, the absence of the past is not an absence that can become presently present again.

But does this mean that the past no longer has any connection to possibility? Carl Sandburg once said that the past is a bucket of ashes. Of course, his statement is profoundly untrue. Although the past cannot become presently present again, it can and does participate in the future. This seems at first contradictory. How can the past participate in the future as possibility?

When I recall my father in his hospital room, I am letting the past show itself again as absent. I could turn away from it and think no more of it, but if I direct my thinking towards the past as something to be thought in the full sense of the word, that is, to be engaged again in thought and explored in emotion, the absent past swings over into the future and shows itself from the future as possibility. When this happens, the past shows itself from the future as something to be discovered again – or perhaps to be discovered for the first time.

Think of an adult who remembers for the first time that he or she had been sexually abused as a child. The event now presences from the future as something to be engaged, felt, and explored. Difficult work. Moreover, the exploration of that past event can totally transform that person’s world. Because the absent past can show itself from the future as possibility, we say, contrary to Carl Sandburg, that the past is alive; it is a living past. This sense of the past is impossible if we stick to the model of linear time.

For linear time, no instance of the past can ever become futural again in terms of possibility. This model helps promote the view that any thinking towards the past can be labeled as nostalgia. The past is dead, done, and over with; therefore, any thinking directed towards the past is wishful thinking and romantic nonsense.

This view confuses two forms of possibility. When I think towards the past -- let’s say I’m interested in the life of Thomas Jefferson -- then the Jefferson of the past swings over into my future as a life to be thought and to be engaged. This Jefferson who presences as absent from my future does so in terms of the possible meanings of his life, not the possibility that he could become presently present again. Just because Jefferson cannot be presently present again does not eliminate the sense of possibility in relation to a range of interpretations of his life.

Whoever the first scholar was to put forth the claim that Jefferson had a long affair with Sally Hemmings had to hold that possibility in the future as a guide to his or her research. Indeed, the research was assembled around that possibility. I don’t think anyone would call this kind of research nostalgia.

For Aristotle, linear time is the "numerical aspect of movement" [Aristotle, Physics, 251b15; Loeb II, 279] and thus "a scale on which something (to wit movement) can be numerically estimated" [Aristotle, Physics, 219b; Loeb I, 387] This may do for the temporal ordering and numbering of events and objects, but linear time does not describe phenomenologically how human being exists in time. The linear model totally eliminates the play of presence and absence which is so distinctive of human temporality insofar as the three phases cross over and through each other without losing their distinctiveness. Simply put, linear time is not the time that human beings live.

But how is ecstatic temporality some sort of bridge between linear and circular time? In order to see this, we need to explicate circular time more clearly. Mircea Eliade has done considerable work on circular time; he tends to use the phrases mythic time, primordial Time, or "the strong time of myth" [Myth, 19] instead of circular time. In his description of what living a myth means, especially in relation to the re=enactment that takes place in ritual, Eliade says

The "religiousness" of this experience is due to

the fact that one re-enacts fabulous, exalting,

       significant events, one again witnesses the creative

      deeds of the Supernaturals; one ceases to exist in

           the everyday world and enters a transfigured, auroral

           world impregnated with the Supernaturals’ presence.

        What is involved is not a commemoration of mythic

         events but a reiteration of them. The protagonists of

         the myth are made present, one becomes their con-

     temporary. This also implies that one is no longer

   living in chronological time, but in the primordial

          Time, the time when the event first took place. This

        is why we use the term the "strong time" of myth; it

           is the prodigious, "sacred’ time when something new,

                  strong, and significant was manifested. To re-experience

            that time, to re-enact it as often as possible, to witness

              again the spectacle of the divine works, to meet with the

                  Supernaturals and relearn their creative lesson is the desire

           that runs like a pattern through all the ritual reiteration

                                                     of myths. [Eliade,Myth,19]

Here we see how circular time directly contradicts linear time: circular time claims that the events of the past can be presently present again. Linear time says that this is impossible.

For circular time, sacred places are different from ordinary places. Sacred places are locations where rituals are carried out in which the past deeds of the Supernaturals are made presently present again. For linear time on the other hand, the present "now" marks all events simultaneously and indifferently wherever they are happening; no place is different from any other place in terms of the sequence of "nows."

Linear time, however, will not tolerate a rupture in its continuous sequence of "nows" and, thus, will not tolerate something like a sacred place insofar as that place is identified as the location where a "now" of the past can become presently present again. This would constitute a rupture or a dislocation in the sequential order of the "nows." Although every "now" is uniform and, thus, indifferent to place, every "now" is also unique in that every "now" has a unique position in the continuous sequence of "nows." A sacred place would disrupt the necessary order in that sequence.

I have emphasized the differences between linear and circular time in order to show that ecstatic temporality shares features of both. One essential feature of linear time that ecstatic temporality retains is the claim that a past event can never be presently present again. Having said that, however, the other aspects of ecstatic temporality are more akin to circular time.

What I’m referring to is the aspect of retrieval inherent in both circular time and ecstatic temporality. Both affirm the importance of retrieving the past for the present and the future. For circular time, the rituals re-enact in the present the originating deeds of the gods. The event of creation, for example, is re-enacted in the present. In circular time, the retrieval of the past as presently present makes the future possible.

For ecstatic temporality, retrieval is important as well; however, it cannot rely on the reiteration of the past as the basis for retrieval. The originating events of the Supernaturals cannot become presently present again in ecstatic temporality. Yet because the absence past can swing over into the future and show itself as possibility, the past can not only be retrieved in its meaningfulness, but also be re-discovered and re-interpreted for the present. Thus, ecstatic temporality is not so much a repeating of the same circle, but more of a circling that becomes a spiral. When the possibility that Jefferson could have had a long affair with Sally Hemmings is confirmed, our past view of Jefferson will change.

One of the other difficulties of linear time is that it provides no place for the gathering of memory. It is a continuous movement of "nows" passing away. Where the "nows" go that have passed away is anybody’s guess. There is no place to gather them. I have that experience on the internet as I see one image after another almost instantaneously with hardly any memory of images that I saw only moments ago.

As the speed of life increases in our society, we are asked to function and respond instantaneously. The danger is two-fold: not only is there no place for memory to gather, but there is also the loss of the practice of memory. Ecstatic temporality does provide for the absence of the past as a real place where memory can gather and for that absent past to presence again from the future as possibility. Memory, of course, must still be practiced, but the interplay of past and future provides the basis for that practice. The old expression "gathering wool" is an indication of this essential aspect of how human being participates in time.

This is a question of how human being establishes meaning in time, and it is the primary theme of an American author whose roots are here in Nebraska. I’m speaking of Wright Morris. Rather than becoming a fiction writer, he could have gone into religion and made a profession of it; however, I do not think he was comfortable with circular time and after his junior year abroad in Europe in 1933-34, he decided to become a writer.

When Morris in his Foreword to The Territory Ahead says that "we cannot, in any case, possess the original – which exists in one time and serves one purpose," it is evident that he has given up the notion of circular time. Morris is one of the few authors I know whose primary theme is to return again and again to the question of what happens to mythic or circular time when it is transposed into ecstatic temporality with all its finitude. Morris states that

                                                Reappraisal is repossession, and this book is an act

                                                of reappraisal. In such a fashion I seek to make my

                                                own what I have inherited as clichés. To make new,

                                                we must reconstruct, as well as resurrect [please note

                                                the language of resurrection]. The destructive element

                                                in this reconstruction is to remove from the object the

                                                encrusted cliché …our reappraisal is an act of re-creation

                                                in which the work of art is the raw material. [Territory,xiv-xv]

Indeed, the photographs that Wright Morris uses in his experimental novel The Home Place function as ways to make the past presently present again in the context of the time of the novel. In many ways, the novel itself serves not only as a place for the gathering of memory, but also serves to show how Clyde Muncy, the protagonist, goes through the practice of discovering memory. Worn artifacts show the gathered absence of a past that is still living and in that gathered absence, Muncy discovers the beauty of their lives, something he had not seen before.

Let me end on a provocative note: places are locations where memory gathers and accumulates, not just in the past but, more importantly, in the future. A past that cannot presence from someone’s future is dead. As T. S. Eliot said,

                                                       We shall not cease from exploration

                                                       And the end of all our exploring

                                                       Will be to arrive where we started

                                                       And know the place for the first time. (Four Quartets, )

Frank H. W. Edler