Byung-Chul Han is a German thinker. Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1959, he studied metallurgy in Korea in the 80s before moving to Germany to study philosophy, literature and Catholic theology. In 1994, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg for his dissertation on Heidegger. In 2000, he taught at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 2010 at the Karlsruhe University of Architecture and Arts, and in 2012 at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany. The Spanish newspaper El País hailed him as "a rising star in German philosophy". His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have attracted wide attention around the world.
The end of the grand narrative that has been repeatedly called for is the end of epic time, the end of history as a conspiracy, a history that forces events to move along the narrative trajectory and from which connections and meanings are conceived. The end of the narrative is first and foremost a time crisis. It destroys the gravitational pull of time that unites the past and the future in the present. When the gathering of time disappears, time disintegrates. Postmodernity is not the same as naively jubilating at the end of narrative time. On the contrary, the representatives of postmodernity formulate a variety of temporal and existential strategies to combat the disintegration and detemporization of time. Derrida's messianism does not return to the old model of telling and identity, but it creates the gravitational pull of time again. It stems from a messianic future. Human life always needs to be constructed, and Derrida himself does not dispute this. Narrative is not the only possible way to construct life time. The end of the narrative does not necessarily reduce life to mere counting. It is only outside the telling, that is, beyond the conspiracy (in the pursuit of meaning and conception) that the deep existence and even the existence itself become apparent. Heidegger's turn to being is also a consequence of the crisis of narrative. In addition, telling and counting are not the opposite.
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The Aroma of Time
Written by Han Byung-chul
Translated by Wu Qiong by Mao Zhu
CITIC Publishing Group
May 2024
Narration is a unique mode of counting. It creates suspense and loads up a series of meaningful events. In addition to a simple count, it also strings events together into a single story. However, existence does not disappear in numbers and counts, enumeration and telling.
Faced with a crisis of meaning, Lyotard also turned to being. In the process, he transforms the narrative void of meaning into a special existential experience. The distinction between meaning and being constitutes an ontological distinction. In an age of narrative and history, existence makes way for meaning. However, as meaning retreats due to de-narration, existence slowly emerges. Thus, events no longer indicate their narrative connotation, not their "was", but their "as they are" (Daß). The fact that it happened is not simply a fact for Lyotard. It is more indicative of the occurrence of existence itself. His turn towards being is very similar to Heidegger's. He even looks forward to the "escalation of existence" after the end of the narrative.
The end of the narrative has a temporal consequence, it ends linear time, and events are no longer strung together into a single story. Narrative linking creates meaning, and the way it works is selective. It strictly regulates the sequential occurrence of events. Sentences juxtaposed at complete random don't make sense and don't produce any story. Thus, the narrative concatenation makes things that are not part of a narrative order disappear. In a sense, the narrative is blind because it only looks in one direction. As a result, there are always dead spots in the narrative.
The disintegration of the narrative chain throws events out of a linear trajectory. The disintegration of linear narrative time is not necessarily a disaster. Lyotard also saw in it the possibility of liberation. Perception is liberated from the narrative chain, even from narrative compulsion. It began to float, always in suspense. In this way, it is free for events that are not bound by narrative, and for events in the real sense. It can reach out to things that find no place on the narrative track and thus become non-existent. This float is accompanied by "the joy of welcoming the unknown".
"Angel" is the epigraph at the beginning of Lyotard's essay "Der Augenblick, Newman". Lyotard mystified time by subtly associating angels with the moment (Augenblick). According to Lyotard, the end of the narrative does not deprive time of all gravity. On the contrary, it sets "now" free. The present is not a product of decay, not a particle of time left over after the disintegration of linear time. Although it lacks deep connotation, it has the depth of existence. Its depth, however, relates only to the presence of "this". It doesn't represent anything. It only reminds people that "'something is here', before this thing has any meaning". "Here" is what it's all about. Lyotard's angel declares nothing, nothing to convey. It shines in its mere presence.
Time does not extend horizontally on the narrative track, but deepens vertically. Narrative time is continuous time. An event heralds the next from within. Multiple events followed, and meaning was born. Today, this temporal continuity is interrupted, resulting in a discontinuous, broken time. There is no longer any indication within an event that it will continue, that another event will follow it. It promises nothing but its momentary presence. A time without memories and expectations arises. Its entirety is limited to a naked "here".
Quoting Barnet Newman, Lyotard said, "My paintings are not about spatial manipulation or pictorial expression, but about a sense of time. "This sense of time is not time consciousness. It lacks all the temporal extensibility that builds consciousness. It occurs before the synthesis of consciousness. It's not the time that is meaningful, it's the time that stimulates the senses. In an instant, it rises like a "cloud of emotion" and disappears into nothingness. The event is not a subject that the consciousness has access to (Thema), but a trauma that the consciousness cannot capture, which is completely out of the control of the consciousness or leaves the consciousness helpless.
Time is disintegrating in its richness, and Lyotard's answer to this question is not the usual nihilism, but a special form of animism. Primary sensory perception, although it has no content that can be thematized by consciousness, awakens the soul. If the soul is not stimulated by it, it falls into a stupor, and it frees the soul from its slumber, even from death: "The anima is a sense of existence only when it is moved, and whether it is lovely or hateful, it declares to the living being that it does not exist at all, that it is lifeless, if nothing moves it." This soul is only the awakening of sensibility, but sensibility is still untouched by the lack of sounds, colors, scents, and sensual events that can inspire it. The soul that exists awakened by the primal senses is a "minimal being", a soulless soul that cannot communicate with matter, a soul without continuity and memory that avoids psychoanalysis altogether, or even any hermeneutics.
According to Lyotard, after the end of the narrative, art also empties itself into an art of pure present presence. It is built entirely on the "desire of the soul to escape from death". The meanings that culture imparts to tones, colors, and vocals are emptied. In terms of its cultural significance, art must direct attention to the characteristics of the event. Its task is to witness something happening: "The aistheton is an unexpected event; The soul exists only when it is stimulated; When it disappears, the soul scatters in the lifeless void. The (artistic) work must respect this miraculous yet precarious condition. "The existence of the soul depends on sensory events. Without sensibility, there is only anaesthetic (Anästhesie). Aesthetics is the antidote to the threat of insensibility.
Lyotard argues that it is the end of narrative time that makes it possible to approach the "mystery of existence", and the result is "the enhancement of the sense of being". However, it has too marginalized its nihilistic dimension. The disintegration of the continuity of time makes existence extremely fragile. The soul is constantly exposed to the danger of death and the horror of nothingness, for the events that can bring it back from death have no persistence. The gap between events is the death zone. In the time between events that take place, the soul falls into a slumber. The joy of existence and the fear of death are intertwined. First there is euphoria, then there is depression, even an existential depression.
The depth of existence is at the same time its absolute poverty. It lacks space to inhabit. Here's the biggest difference between Lyotard and Heidegger. The mystery of existence that Lyotard speaks of is only here – Da-sein. The "smallest beings" who participate in the mystery of existence are, in the final analysis, the simplest monad souls, the unconsciousnessed, spiritless vegetative souls. It knows only two states: horror and excitement, the fear of facing the threat of death and the ease or joy of finally escaping. People may not even talk about joy, because that's a function of consciousness. Lyotard's rupture, fracture, discontinuity of "event-time" close to the abyss of existence is not the time of life or dwelling. Life is not just about being alive, simply being awake. The end of narrative time does not necessarily lead to a vegetative time. There is a life time, neither narrative nor vegetative, that settles outside of the subject and trauma (ansiedeln).
—End—
This article is excerpted from "The Aroma of Time", the annotations are omitted, and the title is re-added by the editor.