produced an expanded awareness of present time. My problem in making such an
argument is that contemplation and mysticism are not practices much associated
with an enhanced grasp of the modern world; they are more usually associated
with figures from times of yore like hermits and monks. How can such practices
of slowness make sense to an increasingly frantic capitalist world, a ferocious jumble
of signals, journeys and screens which has squeezed out or is likely to squeeze out
such sedate activity once and for all (see just most recently, Bertman 1998; Brand
1999; Flaherty 1998; Kovach and Rosenstiel 1999; Speak 1999)? Surely it is all
quick, quick and no slow.
In order to refute such easy characterization, I will therefore make an argument
in six stages, each of which corresponds to a particular part of the article. The first
part of the article therefore begins by setting out some theoretical aspirations,
aspirations which all attempt to escape the traps of representational thinking
of the kind that wants, for example, to understand nature as simply a project of
cultural inscription (as in many writings on ‘landscape’) in favour of the kind
of thinking that understands nature as a complex virtuality (Cache 1995; Rajchman
1998). With an account distilled from these thoughts, in the second part of the
article I will argue that a go-faster world, in which time takes on an increasingly
frenetic future-oriented quality, has been balanced by a series of contemplative
practices – many of them to do with a heightened awareness of movement – which
have, in fact, produced an expansion of awareness of the present. The third part
of the article follows on. It concerns the classical idea that the world has been
disenchanted. My argument here is to the contrary. In fact, the mystical qualities
of the world remain in place. Assured by a whole series of body practices, some
old and some new, these practices have produced an expansion of awareness of
present time. The fourth part of the article then argues that the experience of these
two sets of immersive body practices accounts for a large part of what we attend
to as ‘nature’; they define much of what we cleave to as a ‘natural’ experience by
setting up a background of expectation. The fifth part of the article suggests that
these body practices can be seen as part of a larger biopolitical project which is
an attempt to renovate and value ‘bare life’. But ‘bare life’ is not bare. It is most
of what there is. Then, the sixth part of the article offers some words of warning.
Another such project of renovation of bare life is already in motion, but it is being
undertaken by business and its goal is a narrow one. The article concludes with
some further clarifications.
Becoming there
My thinking on nature, the body and time in this article is based upon four
different but quite clearly associated sources of inspiration which, when taken
together, make it possible to construct an emergent account of emergent body
practice which is the base of the rest of the article. The first of these is the work
of biological philosophers and philosophical biologists like A. Clark (199 7 ),
Deleuze (1988), Margulis (1998), Margulis et al. (1999) and Ansell Pearson
(199 7 , 1999) who want to argue for a reconfigured ethology in which bodies
Still life in nearly present time 57