Déjà vu, which doubles and confuses our experience of time, is a psychological phenomenon with peculiar relevance to our contemporary historical circumstances. From this starting point, the acclaimed Italian philosopher Paolo Virno examines the construct of memory, the passage of time, and the “end of history.” Through thinkers such as Bergson, Kojève and Nietzsche, Virno shows how our perception of history can become suspended or paralysed, making the distinction between “before” and “after,” cause and effect, seem derisory. In examining the way the experience of time becomes historical, Virno forms a radical new theory of historical temporality.

Most of us have been perplexed by a strange sense of familiarity when doing something for the first time. We feel that we have been here before, or done this before, but know for sure that this is impossible. In fact, according to numerous surveys, about two-thirds of us have experienced déjà vu at least once, and most of us have had multiple experiences. There are a number of credible scientific interpretations of déjà vu, and this book summarizes the broad range of published work from philosophy, religion, neurology, sociology, memory, perception, psychopathology, and psychopharmacology. This book also includes discussion of cognitive functioning in retrieval and familiarity, neuronal transmission, and double perception during the déjà vu experience.

This book places two key notions up against each other to imagine a new way of conceptualizing historical time. How do the experience of dj vu and the idea 'End of History' relate to one another? Through thinkers like Bergson, Kojve and Nietzsche, Virno explores these constructs of memory and the passage of time. In showing how the experience of time becomes historical, Virno considers two fundamental concepts from Western philosophy: Power and The Act, reinterpreting these with respect to time. Through these, he elegantly constructs a radical new theory of historical temporality.

Gabrielle Civil mines black dreams and black time to create a vibrant archive of black feminist experiences and creative expressions. Birthed at the intersection of pandemic and protest uprising, the déjà vu encircles forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, recollection, and essay into memoir. As Civil considers a spectrum of artworks--the poetry of Wanda Coleman, Haitian tourist paintings, her own dance ritual for MLK Day, Montreal street art, the 2019 film Waves--she thinks deeply about expansive black life beyond the white gaze. Full of joyful exuberance, intimacy, and humor, the déjà vu elides the boundaries between memory, dream, grief, and love to imagine the reverberations of a black future.

In Archaism and Actuality eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation of capitalism and fascism in Japan as a prime example of the uneven development of capitalism. He applies his theorization of subsumption to examine how capitalism integrates and redirects preexisting social, cultural, and economic practices to guide the present. This subsumption leads to a global condition in which states and societies all exist within different stages and manifestations of capitalism. Drawing on Japanese philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun, Marxist theory, and Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution, Harootunian shows how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and its program dedicated to transforming the country into a modern society exemplified a unique path to capitalism. Japan’s capitalist expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rise as an imperial power, and subsequent transition to fascism signal a wholly distinct trajectory into modernity that forecloses any notion of a pure or universal development of capitalism. With Archaism and Actuality, Harootunian offers both a retheorization of capitalist development and a reinterpretation of epochal moments in modern Japanese history.

This volume offers a new interpretation of the whole of Godard's career in cinema. Drawing examples from all periods of Godard's filmmaking, it examines the parallels between the director's innovative approach to film form and wider developments in French culture and thought since 1950.

How technology and the politics of attention changed the way we look at art The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance has changed. How are we expectedto engage with today's diverse practice? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has itgiven way to browsing, skimming, and sampling? Across four provocative and insightful essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology. She explores how researched-based exhibitions have proliferated turning the artist into an investigator or archivist with mixed results. Spatial performance can now involve the artist, dancers, or even the audience as participants, often framed with Instagram in mind. The political event is not longer activated without an understanding of the media that will record and distribute it. The proliferation of works that use modernist architecture is noticeable; but has this become a shorthand for something else? Disordered Attention is a vital survey of 21st century art, from one of the leading art thinkers ofour times.