Deep VIEW
Seeing time , fragment
Georges Didi-Huberman Philosopher and art historian , lecturer at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales ( EHESS )
How do we see time ? How does time become sensitive ? These are questions that we could never stop asking , as each time , each answer is called into question in the specific duration and condition of visibility of each new experience . It would be too easy to address this question at a metaphysical level , where time would be elevated to some all-too-ideal “ transcendental condition ” and where seeing it would be reduced to some excessively concrete and down-toearth experience , that of a simple immanent , even illusory condition of sensitivity . Let us not create artificial ontological hierarchies too quickly : this is the trap into which generalist philosophers or hurried theoreticians often fall . We grasp time only through our experience of the psyche , the body and the space around us ; we only identify ourselves in the visible through a certain perception of duration , memory , desire , before and after — a certain “ tremor of time ”. Separating the visible from time might make certain words clearer and less ambiguous ; but in reality that would make things — and especially relationships — incomprehensible and disembodied . We would therefore have to understand how seeing and being in time are inseparable and even mutually understand each other .
Seeing time — an experience that particularly engages all the necessary contribution of images to the knowledge of history , including political history — is really doubling one ’ s experience of time , if it is true that seeing already “ takes time ”. For seeing is time , whatever you do : time
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Observing Memories Issue 7