Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies)

"What does it mean to introduce time into thought? Bergson formulated this question in the nineteenth century; Deleuze took it up again in postwar France. In her philosophical travels through legal studies, new technologies, and debates in Darwinism, Elizabeth Grosz brilliantly pursues its punch for us today: What would it mean for feminism to include an evolutionary materialism of time, and what would it mean for it to become an ineliminable part of a `new Bergsonism' of the twenty-first century?"-John Rajchman, author of The Deleuze Connections "Elizabeth Grosz has long been recognized as one of the most astute commentators on feminism, continental philosophy, and cultural studies. Renowned for her clarity and rigor, she has a well-deserved reputation as a major feminist philosopher. In Time Travels Grosz manages to surpass her already magisterial standards and produce a tour de force of originality. Here, Grosz finds her own voice and argues for a new theory of time and life. This is an exciting, inspired, and inspiring book."-Claire Colebrook, author of Gilles Deleuze

Recently the distinguished feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz has turned her critical acumen toward rethinking time and duration. Time Travels brings her trailblazing essays together to show how reconceptualizing temporality transforms and revitalizes key scholarly and political projects. In these essays, Grosz demonstrates how imagining different relations between the past, present, and future alters understandings of social and scientific projects ranging from theories of justice to evolutionary biology, and she explores the radical implications of the reordering of these projects for feminist, queer, and critical race theories.Grosz's reflections on how rethinking time might generate new understandings of nature, culture, subjectivity, and politics are wide ranging. She moves from a compelling argument that Charles Darwin's notion of biological and cultural evolution can potentially benefit feminist, queer, and antiracist agendas to an exploration of modern jurisprudence's reliance on the notion that justice is only immanent in the future and thus is always beyond reach. She examines Henri Bergson's philosophy of duration in light of the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and William James, and she discusses issues of sexual difference, identity, pleasure, and desire in relation to the thought of Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Luce Irigaray. Together these essays demonstrate the broad scope and applicability of Grosz's thinking about time as an undertheorized but uniquely productive force.