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ABSTRACT
This article draws on the presentist strand of contemporary philosophy of history to expand on the idea of the presence of the past, attuning it to the spectral and traumatic approach to history. I take the case of Inara Verzemnieks’ memoir Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming to demonstrate how the experience of the multitemporal present can be accessed by the narrator through three main forms of presence, namely, figurative, affective and real. Presentist philosophy has focused mostly on the real presence of the past, available through concrete objects and places, despite the fact that the non-linear experience of time also includes metaphorical and traumatic tropes that are equally capable of bringing back past realities and constituting our identities. This expanded account of presence is based on Eelco Runia’s philosophy of metonymy and creates a dialogue with autobiographical writing.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Runia, Moved by the Past, 53.
2. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 5.
3. Tamm and Olivier, “Introduction,” 13.
4. Ahlskog, “R. G. Collingwood and the Presence of the Past,” 191.
5. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4.
6. Runia, Moved by the Past, 52.
7. Jay, Songs of Experience, 4.
8. Hellerma, “Negotiating Presentism,” 442–443.
9. Schmitt, The Phenomenology of Autobiography, 44.
10. Herman, Basic Elements of Narrative, 106.
11. Herman, 14.
12. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 38.
13. Kleinberg, “Presence in Absentia,” 11.
14. See note 1 above.
15. Runia, Moved by the Past, 54.
16. Runia, 100.
17. Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” 18.
18. Freud, “Moses and Monotheism,” 85.
19. Froeyman, “Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia,” 405.
20. Runia, Moved by the Past, 67.
21. The reason for this indifference is the fact that Runia’s understanding of metonymy relies on Giambattista Vico: “My own theorizing about ‘presence’ is nothing more than an attempt to connect Vico’s topics with my ideas about the metonymical structure of historical knowledge. In the chapter ‘presence’ in Moved by the Past, I show that Vico’s ‘places’ can very well be conceived as metonymies. And because … places are how Vico conceives institutions, and because, as I have also indicated, these institutions constitute the world we live in, my theory about presence can be regarded as a proposal to interpret our world as a surface consisting of innumerable metonymical ‘spots of time.’ These spots of time may look perfectly inconspicuous, but they contain—in much the same way as our genome contains our complete evolutionary ancestry—all the pasts that went into their making” (Runia and Tamm, 423).
22. Runia, Moved by the Past, 67.
23. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 164.
24. Hoffman, After Such Knowledge, 12.
25. Hoffman, 34.
26. Bennett, Empathic Vision, 43.
27. Seigworth and Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” 11.
28. Derrida, “The Deconstruction of Actuality,” 110.
29. Derrida, ”The Deconstruction of Actuality,” 99.
30. Derrida, Specters of Marx, 10.
31. Bevernage, “Time, Presence, and Historical Injustice,” 166.
32. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 243.
33. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 14.
34. Verzemnieks, 18–19.
35. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 19.
36. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, xvi.
37. Frosh, Hauntings, 44.
38. Aarons and Berger, Third-Generation Holocaust Representation, 42.
39. Appignanesi, Losing the Dead, 237.
40. Hoffman, After Such Knowledge, 103.
41. Bennett, Empathic Vision, 34.
42. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 146.
43. Bennett, Empathic Vision, 22.
44. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 49.
45. Andrews, “Beyond Narrative,” 161.
46. van Alphen, “Second-Generation Testimony,” 482.
47. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 155.
48. Leys, “The Turn to Affect,” 443.
49. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 24.
50. Runia, Moved by the Past, 66.
51. Domanska, “The Material Presence of the Past,” 339.
52. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 46.
53. Runia, Moved by the Past, 68.
54. Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 38.
55. Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 6.
56. Runia, Moved by the Past, 61.
57. Runia, 63.
58. Verzemnieks, Among the Living and the Dead, 102.
59. Verzemnieks, 104.
60. Runia, Moved by the Past, 57.
61. Lorenz, “Blurred Lines,” 46.
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Artis Ostups
Artis Ostups is a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia, and a doctoral student at the University of Tartu, where he is also a member of the Narrative, Culture, Cognition research group. He previously studied philosophy at the University of Latvia and Charles University in Prague. His dissertation examines the presence of the past in contemporary Eastern European fiction and non-fiction.