Time and transcendence: The corporeal conditions of time and social synchronisation [thesis]

Will Johncock
2013
Are humans born into a phenomenon, time, that has an eternally anterior origin and whose source is outside humanity? A permanently preexisting,external time-source can explain the objectivity which conditions social synchronisation. If time inaccessibly transcends human interference, then humans co-synchronise by collectively adhering to clocked and calendared representations of an objectively separate rhythm. Human bodies seemingly also exemplify an objectively transcendent time-source if
more » ... al change, such as ageing, is an unavoidable ramification, and corporeal registration, of time's omnipresent force. These interpretations inform the conception that time is an opponent which controls and restricts our everyday endeavours. Time looms large, yet there is often not enough of it. This positions time combatively against humanity, with a transcendent source and origin. Given that the realm in which time manifests is spatial, however, it can be asked whether the source and the origin of time are spatial. This question engenders reconsiderations of the relation of spatially embodied humans to a supposedly objectively transcendent, adversarial time-source. This thesis opens these inquiries by exploring the collective temporalities of objective, social rhythms through the structural sociology of Émile Durkheim. The relation between human subjects and these collective social temporalities is extensively examined via the context of body modification practices, questioning whether what is collectively social pre-exists individual subjects. Jacques Derrida's deconstruction frames consequent considerations concerning the timing of subjectivity and bodies. Is all such incarnation and modification an inescapably structural, spatial and intersubjective (social) phenomenon, and could such ontological origination be time's source? By engaging the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty it is asked if all spatialities share intersubjective, social origins. Investigating the potentially synchronous origins of spatial intersubjec [...]
doi:10.26190/unsworks/16679 fatcat:tb3rskjxkrd3xahjt7jg5rh4ba