Afterness and Empty Space
Afterness and Empty Space
No Longer and Not Yet
This chapter tackles the question of whether afterness can be thought to have a space, a Zeitraum, in which its movements can be thought. The German word Zeitraum, idiomatically translated, indicates a period of time but literally means “time-space”; it suggests that time not merely is related to space but also can be thought, somewhat curiously, as having a space. This chapter asks if the after is situated not only temporally but also spatially. More specifically, it considers whether afterness can have a space, and if so, how its space could be thought. Focusing on Hannah Arendt’s notion of “empty space,” a historical and experiential no-man’s-land in which what lies between the after and the before cannot be reduced to the presence of a “now,” the chapter explains how we may interpret afterness as both an openness and a form of traumatic survival.
Keywords: afterness, Zeitraum, time-space, time, space, Hannah Arendt, empty space, after, before, openness
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