Time as the Rhythm of Theoretical Practices

Abstract

Many scholars would agree today that no theory is timeless. But they would probably mean the historicity of theoretical thinking, including the concepts and preconceptions of time propagated by theoretical literary studies. In this paper, I will investigate a usually ignored but unavoidable problem: the rhythmic dimension of theorising. How do those practices, to which different theoretical attempts are linked, influence their orientation in time(s)? Gathering positive data of the past in positivism, revealing the work of formal devices of poetic language in formalism, following a rhetorical change in postmodernism or reducing every kind of change to historical construction are not only ideological patterns but practical rhythms considered as paradigmatic for other – and sometimes for all – happenings. Based on practice-oriented physics, I propose research of time projections by which literary reading and writing are transposed to the kinetic spaces of certain theoretical practices.