Serving Time for Political Difference: Hegel, Marx, and Phenomenology

• In Event: Serving Hard Time: The Experience of Time in Timeless Places

Abstract

In his Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel starts that truth is the becoming of oneself, the self-movement toward what we are, the circle which has its end at the beginning. The beginning contains the telos. The result is the beginning because the beginning is the goal. This proves contrary to our conventional understanding of time, for Hegel the future is not posterior to the present, but rather anterior to it, so time manifests as an unveiling of what was already present from the beginning. Inmates experience this ontological time of what they fundamentally are, human being who strives to exist with and for others in just institutions. The existing-for-others at times entails conflict, when this being-with conflicts politically with those in power. Even when suffering political persecution, possibilities for transformation remain. Hegelian time calls for a humble attitude of welcoming the unveiling truth of our being, which transfigures our inner self and the world we want to live in, and can account for the experience of those political prisoners who transform and further their existing-for-others in the face of prison time. The solitude of the prison, if it is not invaded by solipsism, could constitute an ideal condition of welcoming the social dialectical the unveiling.

Author

• Patience Kabamba, Utah Valley University