§
What Is the Contem p orary ?
I.
The question that I would l ike t o inscribe on
the t h reshold of t hi s seminar is: "Of whom and of
what are we contemporaries?" A nd, fi rst and fore­
most, "What does it mean to be contemporary?" I n
the course o f this sem inar, we shall have occasion to
read texts whose authors are many centuries removed
from us, as well as mhers (hat are more recent, or even
very recent. At all events, it is essential that we man­
a ge to be in some: way contemporaries of t hese texts.
The "ti me" of our sem i n a r is contem p orari ness, and
as such it demands lesigel to be contemporary with the
texts and the authors it examines. To a great degree,
the success of this seminar may be evaluated by its­
by our c apac i t y to meas ure up to this exigency.
A n i n itial, provisiona l i ndication that may ori
-
­
ent
our search for an answer to the above questions
40
Wlt Is th� Contnnporary?
comes from Nietzsche. Roland B a r thes s ummarizes this answer i n a n Ole from his lectures at t h e
College de France: "The contempora ry is the u n­
t i mely." I n 18]4, Friedrich Nietzsche, a yo ung phi lolo­
g i s t who had worked up t o that point on G reek texts
and had two years earlier achieved an u ne x p ec ted ce­
lebrity with The Birth of Tragedy, pu blished the Un­
zeitgemiise Betrachtungen, the Untimely Meditation s, a
work in which he tries to come (0 terms with h is t i me
a nd take a pos i t io n w i t h rega rd s (0 th e present. "Th is
med itation is itself u ntimely," we read at the begin­
ning of the second m ed i tat i o n , " b ecause it seeks (0 u n ­
derstand as a n ill ness, a di sa b i l i t y. and a defect some­
t hin g which t h is e poc h is qu ite right ly p ro ud of. that
is to s ay, its h istorical culture, because I bel ieve that we
are all consumed by the fe ve r of h i story a nd we should
at least realize it:" In o t he r words, Nietzsche situates
his own cla i m for "releva nce" [ atiU alita] , his "contem­
pora ri ness" with respect to the p rese nt . in a disconn ec­
tion and o ut- o f-j o i n t n ess . Those who are tru ly contem­
porary. who truly belong to their time, are those who
nei t her perfect ly coincide with it nor adj ust themselves
to its dem a nds. They are thus in ( h is sense irreleva nt
[inattuale]. But prec i sely because of this c ond i t io n ,
prec i se l y t h ro u gh this d i scon n ection and t h is a nach ro ­
n i sm , they are more c a p abl e than others of perceiving
and graspi ng their own time.
What Is the Contemponlry?
41
Naturally, this n o nco i n c i de n ce , t h i s " dys- c h ro n y,"
does not mean that the contemporary is a person who
lives in another time, a nostalgic who feels more at
home i n the Athens of Pericles or in t he Paris of
Robespierre and t h e marquis de Sade than in the ci t y
and the time in which he l ives. An i n tell igent man
can despise his time. while knowing that he neverthe­
less i rrevoc a b ly belongs to it, that he can not escape his
own time.
Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship
with one's own time, wh ich adheres to it a nd . at t h e
same t i me, keeps a distance from it. More precisely, it
is that relationship with time that adheres to it through
a disjunction and an anachronism. Those who coincide
too wel l with the epoch, those who are perfectly tied
to it in every respect. are not con te mporaries , pre c isely
beca u se t hey do n o t ma n a ge to see it; t hey are not able
to fi rm ly hold the i r gaze on it.
2.
I n 1923 , Os i p Mandelsta m writes
a
p oe m e n tit l ed
" Th e C e n t u ry" (th o ugh the Russian word vek also
means "epoch" or "age"). It does not contain a reflec­
tion on the century, but rather a reflection on the rela­
t i on between the poet and his time, that is to say, on
c o nte mp o rari n e ss . Not "the century," but. ac co rd i n g
What Is th( Conumporary?
42
to the words that open the fi rst verse. "my century· or
"my age" (v�k mOl):
My century. my b eas t who will manage
to look inside you r eyes
and wel d together with his own blood
the vertebrae of two centuries?
.
The poet. who must pay for
h is
contemporariness
with his life. is he who must firmly lock his gaze onto
the eyes of his century-beast. who must weld with his
ow n blood the shattered backbone of ti me. The two
centuries. the two t i mes. are not only. as has be e n sug­
gested. t he n i neteenth a nd twentieth. but also. more
to the po i nt . the length of a sin g l e i ndividual 's l i fe (re­
member that sd(culum originally means the period of
a person's l i fe) and the colleclive historical period that
we call in this case the twentieth century. As we shall
learn in the las t strophe o f the p o e m the backbone of
this age is shattered. The poet. i nsofar as he is con­
tem p o ra r y. is lhis fract u re. is at once that which i m­
pedes time from composing itself and the blood that
.
must suture th is break or this wound. The para l l e l­
ism between the time and the verte b rae of the crea­
ture. on the one hand. and the time a nd the vertebrae
of the age. 011 the other. conslitules o n e of the essential
themes of the po e m:
S o long a s t h e creature lives
it
m us t
carry forth its verrebrae.
Whllt Is the ContempoTflry?
as
43
the waves play along
with an invisible spine.
Like
a
child's tender ca rt i lage
is the century of the newborn earth .
The o t he r great theme-and this, l i ke the preced
­
ing one, is also an image of contemporariness-is that
of the shattering, as well as of the welding, of the age's
vertebrae, both of wh ich a re the work of a single i ndi
vidual (in this case the po et):
­
"10 wrest the century away from bondage
so as to start the world anew
one must tic together with a Rute
the knees of all the kno tted days.
That this is an impossible task-or at a ny rate a par­
dox ical one-is proven by the fol lowing strophe with
a
which the poem concludes. Not only does the epoch­
beast have broken vertebrae, but vek, t he newborn age,
wants ro t u r n aroll nd (a n impossible ges tu re for a per­
son with a broken backbone) in order to contemplate
its own tracks and, in this way, to display its demented
face :
But your backbone has been shattered
o my won d rous wretched century.
With a senseless smile
like a beast [hat was once l imber
you look back. weak and c rue l
,
.
to contemplate you r own tracks.
44
What Is thf Conrnnporary?
3·
The poet-the contemporary-must fi rmly hold his
gaze on h is own time. But what does he who sees his
r i me actua l ly see? What is this demented grin on the
face of his age? I
w
ould like at this poi nt to propose a
second defin ition of contemporariness: The contempo­
rary is he who fi rm ly holds his gaze on h is own time
so as to perceive not its light, but rather its darkness.
All eras, for those who ex perienc e contemporariness,
are obscure. The contemporary is precisely the person
who knows how to see this obscurity, who is able to
wr i te by d ippi ng his pen in the obscurity of the pres­
ent. But what does it mean, "to see a n obscurity," "to
perce i ve the darkness"?
The neurophysiology of vision suggests an i n itial answer. What happens when we find ourselves i n
a place de p ri ved o f l i gh t , or when we close o u r eyes?
What is the darkness that we see then ? Neurophysiol­
og i s t s tell us that the absence of l ight activates a series
of peripheral cells in the reti na called "off-cells." When
activated, these ce l l s produc e the particular k i nd of vi­
sion that we call dark ness. Da rk ness is not, therefore, a
privative notion (the s imple absence of l ight , or some­
thing li ke nonvision) but rather the result of the acdv­
i ty of the "off-cells," a pro d uc t of our own retina. This
means, if we now re t u rn to our thesis on th e dark ness
What Is the Contemponzry?
45
of con te mp ora r i n ess that to perceive this darkness is
,
not a fo rm of inertia or of passivity, bu t ra t h e r imp l ies
a n activit y and a singu l a r ab ilit y. In our case, t h is ab i l
ity amounts to a ne u t ra l izati on of the l ights t hat come
from the ep och in order to d i scover its obscurity, its
s pecia l darkness, which is n o t however, separable from
­
,
those lights.
The ones who can call themselves contemporary a re
o n l y those who do not al low themselves to be bl i nded
by the l ights of the century, and so m a n a ge to get a
gl i mpse of the shadows i n t hose li gh ts, of their i nti­
mate obscurity. Having sa id this much, we have nev­
ertheless sti ll not addressed our qu es t i o n. W h y should
we be a t a l l i n te res ted in p e rceiv i ng t h e ob sc u rit y that
emanates from t he epoc h ? Is d a rk n ess no t p rec i se l y an
a nonymous ex pe r ienc e that is by defin ition i m p e n e t ra
ble; something that is no t di rected at us and thus ca n­
no t concern us? On the co nt r a r y the contemporary is
the person wh o p e rcei ve s the dark ness of his t i me as
some th i n g that concerns h i m, as so m e th in g that neve r
ceases to engage h i m Darkness is so m e t h i n g that­
more than any l ight-turns di rect l y and si n gul a rly to­
wa rd h i m . The contem p ora ry is the o n e whose eyes
are struck by the beam of darkness that comes from
his own time.
­
,
.
What Is the Contemporary?
46
4·
I n the fi rma ment that we o bser ve at ni ght the stars
,
shine b ri gh t ly su rrou nded by a t h i c k dark ness. Since
,
the number of gala xies a nd l u m i nous bod ies in the
u n iverse is al most i n fi n ite, the darkness that we see in
t he sky is somethi ng that, accord ing to sc i e nt i sts, de­
mands an expla nation. It is precisely the explanation
t hat contempora ry astrophysics gives for t h i s darkness
that I would now l i ke to d iscuss. In an ex pan d i n g u n i­
verse, the most remote galax ies move away from us at
a sp eed so great that thei r l ight
is never able to reach
us. What we perceive as the dark ness of the heavens
is this l ight th a t , though t ravel i n g toward us, can not
re a c h li S , si nce the ga la x ies from wh ich the l ight origi­
nates move away from us at a velocity greater than the
speed of l i g ht .
To perceive, in the darkness of the p resent, this l ig h t
that st rives to re ac h us but ca n n o t
-
th i s is what it
mea ns to be contemporary. As such, contempora ries
are rare. And for t h is
reason, [0 be contemporary is,
fi rst and foremost , a question of cou rage because it
,
mea ns bei ng able not only to fi rmly fix you r gaze on
th e darkness of the e p o c h but a lso [0 pe rce ive in t h is
.
d a rk n ess a l ight ( hat, wh i le d i rected toward us, i n fi­
n itely d ista nces itself from us. I n other words, it is l i ke
being on ti me for an a ppoi nt mem that one cannot but
mIss.
What Is the Conumporary?
47
This is the reason why the present that contempo­
rari ness perceives has broken vertebrae. Our t i me, the
present, is in fact not on ly the most d istant: it ca n not
in any way reach us. Its backbone is broken and we
fi nd ou rselves in the exact point of this fractu re. This
is why we a re, despite every thing, contemporaries.
It is important to real ize that the appoint ment that
is i n question in contemporariness does not si mply
rake place in chronological ti me: it is somet h i ng that,
working with i n ch ronologica l t i me, u rges, presses, and
transforms it. A nd t h is u rgency is the untimeliness,
the a nach ron ism that perm its us to grasp our time in
the form of a "too soon" that is also a "too late"; of an
"already" that is also a "not yet." Moreover. it al lows
us (0 recogn ize in the obscu rity of the present the l ight
that, without ever being able to reach us, is perpetually
voyaging toward us.
5·
A good example o f t h is special experience o f time
that we call comempora ri ness is fashion. Fashion can
be defi ned as the introduction i nto t i me of a peculiar
d isconti n u ity that d ivides it according to its relevance
or irrelevance, its being-i n-fash ion or no-Ionger-bei ng­
i n-fash ion. This caesura, as subtle as it may be,
is
re­
markable i n [he sense that t hose who need to make
What Is the C(}ntemporary?
48
note of it do so infall ibly; and in so doing they attest to thei r own being in fash ion. But i f we try to ob­
jectify and fix this caesu ra with i n
ch ronologic a l time,
it reveals itsel f as ungraspable. I n the first place, the
"now" of fashion , the instant in wh ich it comes into
being. is not ident i fi able via any k i nd of ch ronometer.
Is t h i s "now" perhaps t he moment in which the fash­
ion designer conceives of t he genera l concep t, the nu­
ance that wil l defi ne the new style of the clothes? Or is
i t t he
m
o m e nt when r he fash ion designer conveys the
concept to h i s assistants, a nd then to t he ta i lor who
wi l l sew the prototype? Or. rat her, is it the moment
of the fash ion show, when the clothes
a re
wor n by t he
only people who a re a lways and only i n fashion, the
mannequins, or models; those who nonetheless, pre­
c i sely for t h i s reason , a re never truly in fash ion? Be­
cause in this last i nsta nce, the being i n fash ion of the
"st yle" will depend on (he fac t t h a t the people of fl es h
a nd blood, rather tha n the mannequins «(hose sacri fi­
cial vict i ms of a faceless god), will recogn i ze it as such
a nd choose that s tyle fi)r their own ward robe.
The t i me of fashion , therefore, constitutively a n t ic­
ipates itsel f and con sequently is also a lways roo late. It
always takes t he form of an ungraspable th reshold be­
tween
a
"not yet" and a "no more." It is quite prob­
able that, as the theologians suggest , t h is constel la­
t ion dep en d s on the fact that fash ion , at least i n our
What Is th( C01lttmporary?
49
culture, is a theologica l sign a t u r e of clot h i ng, which
de r i ve s from the fi rst pi e c e of clmhing that
was
sew n
by Adam and Eve after the Original Sin, in (he form
of a loi ncloth woven from fi g leaves. (To be preci se,
the clothes that we wea r de r ive not fro m this vege,
tal loi nclot h , but from th e tunicae pel/iceae, the cl o t h e s
made from a n i ma ls' skin that God. accord i ng to G en­
esis 3 : 21, gave to our progenitors as a tangible symbol
of si n and death i n the moment he expel led them from
Pa rad ise.) In any case, whatever [he reason may be, the
"now," t he kairo$ of fash ion is u ngraspable: the ph rase,
"I am in this instant in fashion" is contradictory, be­
cause the momen t in which the
subject
pronou nces it,
he is a l ready o u t of fashion. So, bei ng i n fa s h i on, like
contcmp ora ri ness, enta i ls
a
certa i n "ease," a certain
qual ity of being out-of-phase or out-of-date, in which
one's relevance includes with i n itsel f a small pa rt of
what I ies outside of itself,
a
shade of dhnodt, of be-
ing out of fashion. It is in this sense that it was sa id of
an elega nt lady in nineteenth-centu ry Pa ris,
"
E l le est
contempora ine de tout Ie monde," "She is everybody's
contempora ry."
Bur the te m po ra l i t y of fash ion has another character
that relates it
(0 contem p orari ness. Fol low i n g the
same
gesture by which the present d ivides time accord i n g to
a "no more" and a "nm yet," it a l s o establ ishes a peCll­
l i a r relationship with these o t h e r t i mes"-certa i n ly
"
50
What Is the Conumporary?
with the past. and perhaps also with the future. Fash­
ion can therefore "cite." and in this way make rele­
vam again, any moment from the past (the 1920S, the
1970s, but also the neoclassica l or empire style). It can
therefore tie together that which it has inexorably di­
vided-recall, re-evoke, and rev ital ize that w hich it
had declared dead.
6.
There is al so another aspect to this spec i al re l ation­
ship with the past.
Contemporariness i n scri bes itself in the presem by
m a rk ing it above all as arch a ic . Only he wh o perceives
the indices and signatures of the archaic in the m ost
modern and recem can be contemporary. "Archaic"
means close to the arkhi, t hat is to say. the o rigin . But
the origin is not on ly situated in a ch rono lo gical past:
it is contempo ra ry with historical becoming and does
nor cease to operate within it. just as the embryo con­
tinues to be active in the tissues of the mature or­
ganism . and the child in the psychic life of the adult.
B o th this distancing and nearness. which define con­
tempo rar in ess. have their foundation in this proxim­
ity to the o ri g i n that nowhere pulses with more force
than in the presem. Whoever has seen the skysc rapers
of New York for the first time arriving from the o cean
What Is the contemporary?
51
at dawn has immediately p erc eived this archaic facies
of the present, this c ontiguousness with the ruin that
t he atemporal images of S eptem ber lIth have made ev­
ide nt to all.
Historians of literature and of art know that there is
a secret affinity b e twe en the archaic and the modern,
not so much because the archaic forms seem to exer­
cise a pa r ticul a r charm on t he present, but rather be­
cause the key to the modern is hidden in t he imme­
morial and t he preh i storic Thus. the ancient world in
.
its decline turns to the p ri m ordi al so as to rediscover
itself. The avant-garde, which has lost itself over time,
also pursues the pr i mi tive and the archaic. It is in this
sense that one can say that the entry point to the pres­
ent ne cessarily takes the form of an a rc h eolog y ; an ar­
ch eology that does not, however. regress to a historical
past, but returns to that part within the present that
we are absolutely incapable of living. What remains
unlived there fore is incessa ntly sucked back toward the
origin, without ever being able to reach it. The present
i s no thin g other than this unlived element in every­
t h ing that is lived. T hat wh ich impedes access to the
present is precisely the mass of what for some reason
(its traumatic character, its ex cess i ve nearness) we have
not managed to live. The attention to this "unlived"
is the life of the contemporary. And to be contem p o
-
52
What !J th� Contemporary?
rary means in this se ns e to ret urn to a present where
we have never been .
7·
Those who have tried to thi n k about comempora r­
i ness have been able
[0 do so only by spl itti ng it up
i nto several t i mes, by introducing into t i me an essen­
"
tial d ishomogeneity. Those who say my time" actually
d ivide t i me-they i n scribe i n to it a caesura and a dis­
continuity. But precisely by means of this caesu ra, t h i s
interpolation o f the present i nto the i nert homogeneity
of l inear ti me, the comempora ry puts
to
work a special
relationship between the d ifferent t i mes. I f, as we have
seen, it is the contem p orary who has broken t he verte­
brae of ll is l i me (or, at a ny rate, who has perceived i n it
a fau l t l i ne or a break i ng poi nt), t hen he also makes of
t h is fract u re
a
mee l i ng place, or a n encounter between
t i mes a nd generarions. There is
n ot
h i ng more exem­
pla ry, i n t h i s sense, t h an Paul 's gesture at the poi nt
in which he experiences and
a n no u nces
to his broth­
ers rhe contemporari ness par excellence that is messi­
a n ic ti me, the bei n g-contemporary with (he Messia h,
wh ich he calls preci sely t h e "ti me o f the now"
kairos). NOI
(ho nyn
on ly i s t h i s ti me ch ronologically indeter­
m i nate (t he parousia, the ret u rn of Christ that signals
the end is cenain and near, though not at a calculable
What Is tht Conttmporary?
point), but it
53
also has the singular c a pac i t y of pun i ng
every i nstant of the paSt in d i rec t relationship
w
i t h it­
s el f, of m a k i ng every mo me n t o r e pisode
h is tory a prophecy or a prefiguration
term typos,
of bibl ic a l
(Paul prefe rs t he
fi g ure) of the present (t h us Adam,
th rough
whom huma n ity received death a nd sin, is a "type" or
figure of (he Messiah, who bri ngs about
and l ife to men).
This
means
redemption
that the comem porar y is not only the
o n e who, perceiving the darkness of the p res e n t . grasps
a l ight t h at can
never reach
its des ti ny ; he is
also the
one who, d ivid ing a nd i nterpolating ti me , is capable of transform i ng it and putti ng it in relation with
other t i mes. He is a b le (0 read h istory in u n fo reseen
ways, to "cite it" accord i n g (0
a rise in
a ny way from
a
necessity that does not
his will, but from an ex igency
to which he ca n not not respond. It is
as
if this i nvis­
i ble l ight that is the d a rk ness of the p re s en t cast its
s h adow on the past. so that the past, touched by this
shadow. acqui red the abi l i ty to respond to t he dark­
ness of the now. It
is someth ing alo ng
these l i nes t ha t
M ichel Foucault probably had i n m i nd when he w rote
that h is h istorical i n vest igat ions of t he past a re only
the shadow c a st by his theoret ica l i nrerrogation of t h e
present. Similarly. Wa lter Benj a m i n writes t h at the
historical i n dex
contained
d icates that these i mages
of the p as t in­
m ay ac h i eve l eg i b i l i t y o n ly
in
the
i m a ge s
What Is th� Contemporary?
54
in
a
determined
moment
of thei r h istory. It is on our
abi l ity to respond to th is exigency and to this shadow,
[0
be contemporaries not only of our century and the
"now," but also of its figures in the tex ts a nd docu­
ments of the past, that the
seminar depends .
success
or failu re of o u r