Return to search

Artifice and witness : representation judgement and accountability within a non-transcendent framework

This thesis considers the notion that it is the future which judges the present and that judgement is always guilty. In effect to understand modernity on its own terms one would have to inquire if we have any more right to affirm a given future than to deny one? / The question arises as follows. If a subject exists prior to the process which is its being, an uncomfortable aporia ensues. / Firstly, if being human is understood as "becoming", i.e. humans can and do appear through the enactment of change, then "being" itself is temporal. How then does this self secure its appearance other than through the very process it assumes itself to be prior to? Such a securing would imply an absolute uniformity and homogeneity not predicated on human-enacted change. If securing is in fact the aim of appearance, and therefore the operative term in judgement, what then are the consequences of action in terms of created results? / In other words, what are the consequences of the temporality of "being"? It continues to produce a world. The second question then is: how does one judge, make and act, toward a future which properly speaking, cannot be our rightful concern? / The question is approached initially through a discussion of the integral terms. In the final chapters, an attempt is made to understand the premise of Marcel Duchamp's Etant Donnes. Duchamp's work is taken as paradigmatic of making circumventing the aporia of self-revelation through becoming.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.69583
Date January 1993
CreatorsBerns, Torben
ContributorsPerez-Gomez, A. (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Architecture (School of Architecture.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001342265, proquestno: AAIMM87926, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

Page generated in 0.108 seconds