A Cultural Exploration of Time

Abstract

Every understanding of reality that takes account of time is necessarily involved in a cultural practice of making sense. This article, by theorizing time in relation to cultural practices, provides a cultural exploration of the argument that no event is ever `present' as itself to itself, but rather, is always in mediation. This takes place in two ways. On the one hand, mediation delays the making present of the event by intervening in processes of interaction; on the other hand, mediation dissolves the present/presence of the event by displacing it to a `third domain' that is constitutive of the `time of the event'. The aim of this article is to assert that any theory of time needs to take into account the time of theory - i.e. the temporality of writing - as a principal entry for constituting an agenda for the future.