The Memory of the World

Advancing a phenomenological approach to deep time

The Memory of the World argues for a new philosophy of time that takes seriously the multiple, pleated, and entangled temporal events spanning cosmic, geological, evolutionary, and human durations. Ted Toadvine contends that our obsession with the world’s precarity relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects the past and present with the goal of managing the future, misleading sustainability efforts and diminishing our encounters with the world and with human and nonhuman others.

The Memory of the World brings philosophy down to Earth in a book bursting with profound insights for our times and future life on this planet. Ted Toadvine first digs down through phenomenological strata of everyday perception to show how our evolved bodies mesh with and dredge up the deep time past of our planet; he then burrows sideways through deep time, now, to offer an innovative ‘biodiacritical’ account of our kinship with other animals; finally, he tunnels back up through the immense scales of deep time to show how they haunt our apocalyptic imaginings of future planetary crises. This is a superb and daring book, one that makes important contributions to phenomenology and philosophy of nature and life—but also to work on climate, the Anthropocene, animal studies, environmental humanities, and more.

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David Morris, author of Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology

Tags

Theory and Philosophy, Environment, Continental, Critical Theory

Our imagination today is dominated by the end of the world, from sci-fi and climate fiction to actual predictions of biodiversity collapse, climate disruption, and the emergence of the Anthropocene. This obsession with the world’s precarity, The Memory of the World contends, relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects the past and present with the goal of managing the future. Not only does this mislead sustainability efforts, it diminishes our encounters with the world and with human and nonhuman others.

Ted Toadvine takes a phenomenological approach to deep time to show how our apocalyptic imagination forgets the sublime and uncanny dimensions of the geological past and far future. Guided by original readings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and others, he suggests that reconciling our embodied lives with the memory of the earth transforms our relationship with materiality, other forms of life, and the unprecedented future.

Integrating insights from phenomenology, deconstruction, critical animal studies, and new materialism, The Memory of the World argues for a new philosophy of time that takes seriously the multiple, pleated, and entangled temporal events spanning cosmic, geological, evolutionary, and human durations.

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Ted Toadvine is Nancy Tuana Director of the Rock Ethics Institute and associate professor of philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University. He is author of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature and editor or translator of six books, including The Merleau-Ponty Reader and Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself.

The Memory of the World brings philosophy down to Earth in a book bursting with profound insights for our times and future life on this planet. Ted Toadvine first digs down through phenomenological strata of everyday perception to show how our evolved bodies mesh with and dredge up the deep time past of our planet; he then burrows sideways through deep time, now, to offer an innovative ‘biodiacritical’ account of our kinship with other animals; finally, he tunnels back up through the immense scales of deep time to show how they haunt our apocalyptic imaginings of future planetary crises. This is a superb and daring book, one that makes important contributions to phenomenology and philosophy of nature and life—but also to work on climate, the Anthropocene, animal studies, environmental humanities, and more.

—

David Morris, author of Merleau-Ponty’s Developmental Ontology

The Memory of the World achieves two important things: it steers our understanding of Merleau-Ponty toward a temporal interpretation of his thought and, at the same time, it uses that reading to make a critical intervention amongst theories of environmental apocalypse. Ted Toadvine’s concept of ‘biodiacritics’ should lead to a reorientation of the ‘eschatological imagination,’ producing effects in knowledge that are as insightful as they are impactful. This is a wonderful book that is a pleasure to think alongside.

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John Ó Maoilearca, author of Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I. Deep Time

1. Chronopoiesis: A Phenomenology of Natural Time

2. The Elemental Past

3. Recursive Reflection and the Music of Nature

Part II. Animality

4. Beyond Biologism: Evolution as Alteraffection