The ups and downs of space and time: topography in Yupno language, culture, and cognition

Much prior research has investigated how humans understand time using body-based contrasts like front/back and left/right. It has recently come to light, however, that some communities instead understand time using environment-based contrasts. Here, we present the richest portrait yet of one such case: the topographic system used by the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, in which the past is construed as downhill and the future as uphill. We first survey topographic concepts in Yupno language and culture, showing how they constitute a privileged resource for communicating about space. Next, we survey time concepts in Yupno, focusing on how topographic concepts are used to construe past, present, and future. We then illustrate how this topographic understanding of time comes to life in the words, hands, and minds of Yupno speakers. Drawing on informal interviews, we offer a view of the topographic system that goes beyond a community-level summary, and offers a glimpse of its individual-level and moment-to-moment texture. Finally, we step back to account for how this topographic understanding of time is embedded within a rich cognitive ecology of linguistic, cultural, gestural, and architectural practices. We close by discussing an elusive question: Why is the future uphill?

Occupying Maori Architectural Time: Reconstructing the architectural process through Maori interpretations of space

<p>This thesis investigates the occupation of an alternative Maori Architecture within Maori space/time constructions. The design research questions how to articulate a Maori architectural process in resisting lost identity within the colonised New Zealand landscape. The architectural programme addresses disconnections of Maori relationships to traditional landscape functions. A commercial paua farm, posed as a 'Maori gang business front', is designed as a testing ground for the Maori narrative framework. The programme adopts existing aquaculture methods within Maori space/time concepts to question possibilities of continual, cyclic architecture. The design research questions how Maori architectural typologies are governed by natural cyclic functions of continual change. The thesis is politicised through the narration of 'The Warrior', used as a framework for resisting colonised methodologies, consistently applied across writing, process and design.</p>

Occupying Maori Architectural Time: Reconstructing the architectural process through Maori interpretations of space

<p>This thesis investigates the occupation of an alternative Maori Architecture within Maori space/time constructions. The design research questions how to articulate a Maori architectural process in resisting lost identity within the colonised New Zealand landscape. The architectural programme addresses disconnections of Maori relationships to traditional landscape functions. A commercial paua farm, posed as a 'Maori gang business front', is designed as a testing ground for the Maori narrative framework. The programme adopts existing aquaculture methods within Maori space/time concepts to question possibilities of continual, cyclic architecture. The design research questions how Maori architectural typologies are governed by natural cyclic functions of continual change. The thesis is politicised through the narration of 'The Warrior', used as a framework for resisting colonised methodologies, consistently applied across writing, process and design.</p>

Nagaraeba – Hegel und Fujiwara no Kiyosuke

Although there is a dispute among grammarians as to whether Japanese is a tense or aspect language, time expressions tend to be made from the perspective of the speaker, i.e. under the aspect of an event that is “now, in this moment already completed, just happening, or not yet happening.” Evidently, the notion of a threefoldedness of time perception is predominant. A comparison of different time concepts and philosophies points towards a transcultural circulation of this notion. Hegel’s philosophy exemplifies the effectiveness and shaping function of this notion of threefold time concepts. Using Fujiwara no Kiyosuke’s poem Nagaraeba, I aim to show how the thesis of the threefoldedness also of the traditional Japanese experience of time, together with the thesis of the aspect orientation of the Japanese language, may help us to interpret and understand classical waka, along the lines of the so-called “fusion of horizons” (Horizontverschmelzung) described by Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Documenting multiple temporalities

PurposeThis article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate or entrain their activities to those of others.Design/methodology/approachWe interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces or other locations and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants' broader contexts.FindingsParticipants' documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some embedded in the templates they used, and others added by document creators and users. Participants' documentary time work involved creating and using a variety of tools and strategies to reconcile and manage multiple temporalities and indexical time concepts that held multiple meanings. Their work employed both standard “off the shelf” and individualized “do-it-yourself” approaches.Originality/valueThis article combines several concepts of invisible work (document work, time work, articulation work) to show both how individuals engage in documentary time work and how that work is situated within broader social and temporal contexts and standards.

Auf der Suche nach der Zeit als narratologische Analysekategorie. Mit Beispielen aus der setsuwa-Literatur

There are three levels on which time is constitutive for narrative discourse: a) without time events as well as the story world cannot be conceived; b) time is needed to tell a story; c) the recipient of a narrative text makes temporal connections by recalling something that happened earlier in the story or the way in which something has been told, or by wondering how the narrative will continue. An examination of these levels shows, however, that the underlying time concepts or temporalities differ significantly. In most narratological studies, the focus lies on the relationship between ‘narrated time’ and ‘narrating time’ (Günther Müller, “Die Bedeutung der Zeit in der Erzählkunst,” 1947), pertaining to what Gérard Genette (“Discours du récit,” 1972) has systematized under the categories of ‘order,’ ‘duration,’ and ‘frequency.’ While a textual analysis based on these concepts may lead to promising results, there are also limitations to this approach. Using examples from Japanese twelfth- to thirteenth-century setsuwa literature, I demonstrate that Meir Sternberg’s (“Telling in Time (II): Chronology, Teleology, Narrativity,” 1992) cognitive theory based on reception and centered around the temporal dynamics of suspense, curiosity, and surprise provides a useful toolkit to make sense of narratives where ‘classical’ theory fails. The application on a tale from Konjaku monogatari shū (24:11) has implications for our understanding of the transmission of the story and allows us to reject one existing theory of the historical development of the tale.

«От автора» к читателю «Братьев Карамазовых» Тайна, чудо и авторитет – герменевтическая перспектива в предисловии романа

“From the Author” to the Reader of The Brothers Karamazov. Mystery, Miracle and Authority – Hermeneutic Perspectives in the Preface to the Novel. The paper offers new aspects to the critical reading of the widely interpreted preface “From the Author” in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. Giving a synthesis of the historical, narratological and rethorical perspectives in the interpretation of the given text, this new approach enters a systematic metapoetic explanation. The semantic units examined lead to the triple motif construction, familiar from “The Grand Inqusitor” – mystery, miracle and authority. It is mystery that stands at the focus of the examination within the problem context of cognition, understanding, interpretation. The internally contradictory idea of elucidating something which is still unclear is projected upon such time concepts as pred – post, beginning – end, the actual moment and processuality. These motifs make reference both to the modelled reality and the modelling literary discourse, metapoetically setting a reading strategy for the recipient.

Temporality in Renga

This paper highlights time concepts and the organisation and structure of time in the practice of renga, Japanese ‘linked poetry’. As renga is a genre of poetry created in groups, the study will not only focus on the poems themselves (the texts produced), but on the meetings that bring forth the texts (the performance), the manuscripts that are written there (the material) and the social environment in which the performances take place (the setting). By analysing the main features of each of these four areas and focusing on time, change and persistence, I aim to show how closely they are interconnected and also provide the reader with the knowledge necessary to appreciate the complexity of renga as an integral Gesamtkunstwerk. While my focus is on contemporary renga poetry here, I will also consider aspects of its history, which is a vital key to understanding this art.

Playthings

This article proposes the concept of “plaything” as an instrument to inquire on the ontology and epistemology of the things we play with. Extending Barad’s (2007) onto-epistemology and Ingold’s (2012) concepts of “things” and “objects,” this article intends to provide a theoretical contribution to the materialist turn in game studies (Apperley, T. H., & Jayemane, D. (2012). The main argument of the article is as follows: the ontology of the things we play with is separate from its epistemology. The concept of playthings provides a materialistic ontology that accounts for the technologies we play with. At the same time, concepts like video games, toys, or games are understood as being epistemological concepts, used to create situated knowledge (Haraway, D. (1987) about playthings. Playthings help describe how a technology is shaped for and through play, while other concepts place the experience of playthings in culture and society.