Time depth: Jean Epstein, Michel Serres and operational model time

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/Report › Chapter in book/Anthology/Report › Contributed › peer-review

Contributors

  • Christoph Rosol - , Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, House of World Cultures (Author)

Abstract

This chapter makes a case for unscaling the times of Anthropocene phenomena, such as geological vastness, human agency and past, present and future climate disaster, through the conceptual liquefaction and blending of different time regimes provided by the works of Jean Epstein and Michel Serres. It does so by relating their intellectual concepts and reflections to the rise of electronics and computer-aided simulation. A scene in Epstein's late film Le Tempestaire (1947), commingling mythical and modern practices of weather control, is analyzed as a primeval scene for the medial handover between time manipulating cinema and the model time of computer simulations. Instead of placing one knowledge practice over the other (the indigenous and local over the dominant and global, the scientific over the mythical, the human over the digital, etc.) the chapter argues for ways of seeing correspondence and continuity between them. It thereby follows the invitation extended by Serres and Epstein, who both theorized and celebrated what this chapter calls "time depth": not a clash but a compositum of temporal scales that feeds off the abundance and thickness of variable, interconnected times that saturate the geosphere and anthroposphere. Today, when dangerously rapid climate change catapults the planet back into climates last seen millions of years ago, such time depth becomes a prerequisite, not just for sharpening our sensibilities for "deep time," but also for acknowledging the generous productivity of myth, science and simulation in situating the human amid hybrid temporalities.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNarratives of Scale in the Anthropocene
EditorsGabriele Dürbeck, Philip Hüpkes
PublisherTaylor and Francis A.S.
Pages55-72
Number of pages18
ISBN (electronic)9781000432480
ISBN (print)9781003136989, 9780367683382, 9781032065397
Publication statusPublished - 27 Jul 2021
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-0159-4392/work/230069064