The
Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and
the Untimely
by Elizabeth
Grosz
Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2004
336 pp. Trade, $79.95; paper, $22.95
ISBN: 0-8223-3400-3; ISBN: 0-8223-3397-x.
Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia)
harle@dodo.com.au
It is a brave philosopher that dares to
go where many other philosophers have
feared to tread. In her latest bookThe
Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and
the Untimely, Elizabeth Grosz not
only tackles the illusive concept of time
head-on but does so with scholarly rigor
and an engaging confidence.
The book is well written, meticulously
researched and like Elizabeth Wilsons
recent bookPsychosomatic:
Feminism and the Neurological Body
(see Leonardo Reviews, June 2005)
is like a breath of fresh air in the areas
of cultural and feminist studies. Both
these books recognise the importance of
corporeality to feminist critique and
attempt to regain some sort of holistic
balance; Wilson through neurology and
biologyGrosz through evolution,
temporality and corporeality, ". . . we
need to turn again, with careful discernment,
to those discourses, once rejected by
feminists and political activists, that
place the body in the larger cosmological
and biological orders in which it always
finds itself" (p. 3).
Groszs work outlines a new theory
of becoming, ". . . to replace the prevailing
ontologies of being in social, political
and biological discourse". What makes
this book all the more daring and provocative
is her analysis of three of the seemingly
strangest bedfellowsDarwin,
Nietzsche and Bergson. The relationship
of these three major thinkers is not as
disparate as one may first think. Grosz
brings to life some of the more obscure
and little appreciated aspects of their
philosophies and discusses these drawing
on the work of Luce Irigaray and Gilles
Deleuze.
The book has an Introduction, Three Parts
(each with three chapters), Conclusion,
Notes, and an excellent Bibliography and
Index. Part IDarwin and
Evolution looks at Life, Force and
Change; Biological Difference; and Evolution
of Sex and Race. Part IINietzsche
and Overcoming discusses Nietzsches
concerns about Darwinism; History and
the Untimely; and the Eternal Return and
The Overman. Part IIIBergson
and Becoming analyzes Bergsonian Difference;
The Philosophy of Life; and Intuition
and the Virtual.
Grosz insists that this work is ". . .
very much an initial exploration" and
whilst the body is integral to her discussion,
the object of investigation is ". . .
time: its modalities, its forms, its effects
on both inorganic and organic materiality"
(p. 4). To her credit, Grosz admits in
previous work she underestimated the importance
of the biological body. "Without some
reconfigured concept of the biological
body, models of subject-inscription, production,
or constitution lack material force; paradoxically,
they lack corporeality" (p. 4).
This book is very much a critique and
analysis of time from a Western philosophical
perspective or position. That is, time,
whilst not seen perhaps as strictly linear,
still "moves forward" (p. 247) from past
to present to future. There is no detailed
consideration of the Eastern philosophical
notion of time being literally "cyclic".
This is an important omission because
it directly relates to the seemingly
teleological aspect of Darwinian evolution
(which Darwin himself did not endorse).
Whilst material evolution seems to move
from simple to ever more complex forms
this is an illusion of time itself. And
further, it is our human construction
of time in the first place that creates
the illusion.
Grosz discusses the concepts of past,
present and future quite extensively but
fails to mention what the Eastern philosophers
discovered a millennium ago, that the
only time that exists or is real is the
"eternal present". Time, that is, an elapsed
period from one state to another, is very
much a condition of mind. Our contemporary
Western notion of time is heavily influenced
by the introduction of the Town Clock,
invented by monks in the Middle Ages.
Whilst I believe a discussion of time
as cyclic would have enhanced and added
balance to Groszs reappraisal of
time, the body and evolution, it does
not detract from the importance of her
work, especially as it relates to feminist
critique and cultural/political investigation.
This is an important book, written in
a lively, vibrant style, unusual in such
complex philosophical discourse. I recommend
it as essential reading for all interested
in philosophy, feminist critique and the
new wave of holistic humanities studies.