Our Broad Present - Time and Contemporary Culture by Hans Gumbrecht (2014) [PDF] {VTS}

Title: Our Broad Present - Time And Contemporary Culture
Author: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Category: Academic/Philosophy
Series: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Publisher: Columbia University Press (May 27, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231163614
ISBN-13: 978-0231163613



Promotional info/Publisher's summary - "Considering a range of present-day phenomena, from the immediacy effects of literature to the impact of hypercommunication, globalization, and sports, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht notes an important shift in our relationship to history and the passage of time. Although we continue to use concepts inherited from a "historicist" viewpoint, a notion of time articulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the actual construction of time in which we live in today, which shapes our perceptions, experiences, and actions, is no longer historicist. Without fully realizing it, we now inhabit a new, unnamed space in which the "closed future" and "ever-available past" (a past we have not managed to leave behind) converge to produce an "ever-broadening present of simultaneities."

This profound change to a key dimension of our existence has complex consequences for the way in which we think about ourselves and our relation to the material world. At the same time, the ubiquity of digital media has eliminated our tactile sense of physical space, altering our perception of our world. Gumbrecht draws on his mastery of the philosophy of language to enrich his everyday observations, traveling to Disneyland, a small town in Louisiana, and the center of Vienna to produce striking sketches of our broad presence in the world."

Reviews:
"Gumbrecht's writing crackles with ideas. In this collection of essays, he continues his explorations of "presence" and looks at everything from classical literature to globalization, spectator sports to hypercommunication, each time with an exacting insight and engaging style all his own. The focus here is on the temporal aspects of presence as lived today. Gumbrecht sees the profound in the everyday; his descriptions of our shared experiences bring these to light as though for the first time. The essays assembled here provide a kaleidoscopic look into our "broad present," as Gumbrecht terms it, and teach us much about the times, and time, in which we live." -Andrew Mitchell, Emory University

"Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the most imaginative and innovative critic to have emerged from the German philological tradition since the great generation of Auerbach and Spitzer. His brilliant books have expanded our concept of critical inquiry. Theoretical virtuosity, staggering breadth of learning, and sustained engagement with the texture and aliveness of cultural artifacts and practices characterize his work throughout. But Gumbrecht's intellectual signature is recognizable above all in two features: keen diagnostic sensitivity and the courage of unprotected, first-personal judgment. Both are amply in evidence in Our Broad Present." -David Wellbery, University of Chicago

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