The Varieties of Temporal Experience

Reviews / Votes

The Varieties of Temporal Experience is a gripping, challenging work that brings a unique voice to questions about how we experience time. To enable the reader to dwell in experiences of time in its variety and to experience firstness, providing gentle nudges but not overwhelming the reader with a heavy apparatus, is no small achievement. -- Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University This is a rich and highly important work of anthropological thought and creative writing. Through a deft combination of creative nonfiction, ethnographic fieldwork, and autobiographical reflections, Michael Jackson explores the ways that human beings engage with processes of time, history (both personal and collective), memory, and relationships in dynamic, multiple, and pragmatic ways. -- Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College In his latest work, Michael Jackson explores enigmas of the past and how stories help us to make our lives easier to live. Jackson's anthropology draws out the vivid particularities of human experience and spins them into webs of connectivity across time, space, and culture. Like everything else Jackson has written, The Varieties of Temporal Experience juxtaposes philosophy and everyday knowledge in precise and compassionate ways. And the writing is so good, it aches to put this book down. -- Dominic Boyer, Rice University This remarkable book traces how a complex tapestry of interlocking temporalities configures our experience. Taking us on a journey across a breathtaking range of moments as a story unfolds, and drawing on a diverse anthropological, literary, and philosophical archive, Jackson sheds light on what it means to live with stories of different times-from the historical to the mythological, the mundane to the fantastic. These stories remind us that life is often uncannily stitched across various temporalities and selves. The Varieties of Temporal Experience is an insightful contribution from one of the humanities' most sophisticated and original voices. -- Andrew Brandel, Harvard University The Varieties of Temporal Experience is at once ethnographic and biographical. It is about story-telling as a way of repairing the past, but also about the burden of stories and the possibility to live from the present. * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *