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Everyday Transcendence: Contemporary Art Film And The Return To Right Now, Aaron Pellerin

Wayne State University Dissertations

“Everyday transcendence” names a style of filmmaking exemplified in recent works by Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Richard Linklater (the Before series and Boyhood), Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir), and Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait). In each of these films, time operates on two interrelated levels: time as we experience it and understand it in our daily lives, and time as an overarching big picture. This big-picture temporality varies from film to film and is often ambiguous: for Malick, it appears as divine eternity; for Linklater, as a secular concept of an eternal Now; …

How To Understand The Debate Over Presentism And Eternalism, Travis Matthew Figg

Wayne State University Dissertations

Presentism is the view that, with the possible exception of things outside of time, everything that exists, exists at the present time. It is contrasted with eternalism, the view that everything which ever did exist or ever will exist, exists. Some philosophers argue that presentism and eternalism are not really substantive, opposed metaphysical theses. I consider some attempts in the literature to rebut this skeptical position, and argue that they are unsatisfactory. Then I make my own case for the conclusion that presentism and eternalism are substantive metaphysical theses by drawing a distinction between two ways of talking about what …

Time In American High Modernism: Reading Fitzgerald, Hemingway, And Faulkner, Masahiko Seki

Wayne State University Dissertations

There were important changes about understanding of time in the early 20th century. Newtonian view of time that supports linearity and irreversibility of time was challenged in various fields. This trend promoted high modernists to seek new representations of time.

On the whole, high modernists denied Newtonian view of time and tried to describe merging of the past, the present, and the future. They often envisioned a romantic moment, in which this merging is perfectly achieved. But unlike European high modernists, American high modernists were more attracted to a traditional understanding of time that emphasizes a decisive difference between the …

“Life Is A Luminous Halo”: Gender And Androgynous Time In Virginia Woolf, Ashley Whitmore

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of representations of time in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, Orlando: A Biography, and The Waves to illustrate the development of an androgynous time that is located between the inner subjective time of each individual, inspired by Henri Bergson’s durée, and the stunted measured time of society.

The Introduction provides an overview of my argument and critical approach, as well as illustrates the background in which Woolf was writing. The Introduction also introduces the ideas of French philosopher Bergson, whose theories on time will be instrumental in forming Woolf’s androgynous time.

The remainder of the dissertation …