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Rethinking time's arrow

Bergson, Deleuze and the anthropology of time

University of Exeter, UK, m.hodges{at}ex.ac.uk

Since the early 1970s, time has come to the fore as a constitutive element of social analysis in the guise of what I term here 'fluid time'. Anthropologists of multiple theoretical persuasions now take for granted that social life exists in 'time', 'flow', or 'flux', and this temporal ontology is commonly accepted as a universal, if habitually unquestioned, attribute of human experience. Similarly, it underpins today's dominant paradigm of 'processual' analysis, in its many forms. Yet this concept is notably under-theorized, in keeping with a history of uneven study by social scientists of time. In this article I draw on anthropological approaches by Gell and Munn, and philosophical work by Bergson and Deleuze, to put forward a critical theorization. I then discuss its ramifications. Ultimately, I argue that this model points to a rapprochement between the anthropological study of time and history, sociality and temporality, and an enhanced role for temporal analysis in anthropological theory.

Key Words: Bergson • Deleuze • emergence • fluid time • history • la durée • processual analysis • temporal ontology • time

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4, 399-429 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499608096646


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