Time: Responding to Barad's Derrida with T. S. Eliot

The quotes I will put here are meant to be put in conversation with themselves and each other. Uncredited quotes are pieces from a final paper on T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, which is a set of four poems: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding. I believe the Four Quartets respond directly to Barad's reading of time and the importance of the past in regards to not trying to return to the past.

"The concern is 'not with horizons of modified--past or future--presents, but with a "past" that has never been present, and which never will be, whose future to come will never be a production or reproduction in the form of presence." - Derrida, as quoted by Barad

"Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future, / and time future contained in time past. / If all time is eternally present, / all time is unredeemable." - T. S. Eliot (Burnt Norton)

"Time past and time future / what might have been and what has been / point to one end, which is always present." - T. S. Eliot (Burnt Norton)

"Time is represented as something spherical in which every moment in time is connected in every other moment in time. Time serves to move and regulate everything within its jurisdiction. However, some things that cannot be regulated are ... possibilities of things that could have happened in the past, but never did."

"However, according to East Coker (part II of the Four Quartets), time is not only circular, but spherical as well. Every moment in time (past, present, and future) is connected to every other moment in time. No moment stands alone. There is 'a lifetime burning in every moment.'"

“The way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.” - T. S. Eliot (Dry Salvages)

"Eliot reworks this phrase in a way that seems more relatable to time, in that there is a past and a future. However, ...[the intention] is that there is no difference between the two, thus that there is no past and no future because no matter what it is called, they lead in the same direction. Because all time is interconnected, all time occurs in the present. The present consists of everything we have done and everything we will do, as well as the things we have not done because all factors affect what decisions we might make in the present."

(Barad) ....as if the past was already there as something we could return to.....

We can't change the past later on. By trying to return to the past in the present, we are messing up past, present, and future, due to the fact that all time is eternally present.

The past is not a definite thing that can be returned to, no matter how ideal it might seem to us now. As Barad said in her lecture, the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone was supposed to be successful. Why? Because there were wolves in the past and that was how things were supposed to be. All it really did was cause issues with all the change that has occurred since then. Using the past to set standards for the future is dangerous. This commonly comes up in regards to the Constitution--what was the original intent of the founding fathers? What did they see for this country?

Does it even matter? We are here now, the past is present in the present, so effectively they are here now. By idealizing and idolizing the past, we slow progress, defined not as movement to the better, but simply movement itself. By idolizing the past, time becomes stagnant.

Why can't time become stagnant?

If time becomes stagnant, how are movements supposed to progress? (for better or for worse)

Feminist movement, queer rights movement, protection/health care for sex workers....do I need to go on?

By the way, Judith Butler mentioned Karen Barad at the coffee hour briefly and said she was brilliant, and it made me giggle in joy.

To read the Four Quartets in their entirety: http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

Picture pulled from here: http://www.makefive.com/categories/debate/religion/protest-signs-that-stand-out