Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary

In "Marking Time", Paul Rabinow presents his most recent reflections on the anthropology of the contemporary. Drawing richly on the work of Michel Foucault, John Dewey, Niklas Luhmann, and, most interestingly, German painter Gerhard Richter, Rabinow offers a set of conceptual tools for scholars examining cutting-edge practices in the life sciences, security, new media and art practices, and other emergent phenomena. Taking up topics that include bioethics, anger and competition among molecular biologists, the lessons of the Drosophila genome, the nature of ethnographic observation in radically new settings, and the moral landscape shared by scientists and anthropologists, Rabinow shows how anthropology remains relevant to contemporary debates. By turning abstract philosophical problems into real-world explorations and offering original insights, "Marking Time" is a landmark contribution to the continuing re-invention of anthropology and the human sciences.

Table of Contents:
Preface vii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction On the Anthropology of the Contemporary 1 Inquiry 6 Elements 7 The Legitimacy of the Contemporary 2000: Drosophila Lessons 14 The Future of Human Nature 20 Bio-ethics: The Question Concerning Humanism 22 Nature 25 Security, Danger, Risk 26 Contemporary Formations 28 Conclusion 29 Adjacency Timing 35 Situating: Tolerance and Benevolence 36 Telos: A Zone of Discomfort 44 Untimely Work 48 Observation Bildung 54 Observing the Future 57 Responsibility to Ignorance 60 Observing Observers Observing 62 Observing First-order Observers 64 Chronicling Observation 66 Original History 67 Writing Things: Deictic Not Epideictic 69 Vehement Contemporaries Rugged Terrain 78 Elements of a Contemporary Moral Landscape 80 Genomics as Ethical Terrain 81 Agon in the Genomic Terrain 84 Thumos: Appropriate Anger 90 Vehement Contemporaries 98 Marking Time: Gerhard Richter Contemporary Modern 101 Biotechnical Forms 103 Richter: Double Negations 106 Art Critics and Others 106 Our Contemporary 108 Nature 109 Photography 112 Marking Time 116 Abstract Images 119 Remediation 122 Objects 124 Remedation 127 Notes 129 Bibliography 141 Index 147

About the Author :
Paul Rabinow is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author, most recently, of "A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles" (Princeton).

Review :
This essay is an intellectual pause in an active scholarly career... Rabinow contemplates the automation of science and art, where art becomes nature and nature art. -- C.S. Peebles Choice [T]his book deserves a readership beyond anthropologists and scholars in science and technology studies. Read more generously, Rabinow's conversations with historians and philosophers (both ancient and modern), critics of art and literature, and artists and scientists could shed light on the problems of designing inquiry into the ethos and logos of any time. -- Natasha Myers Isis