metaphysics of presence

nationality

British

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

university professor

Emory University

innovator in the field of

comparative literature

philosophy

philologist

American

literary critic

is the deep-seated and misplaced illusion that a 'situation' and a presentation of that situation are somehow the same thing.

treating a presentation as a situation. . . 'The complexities of presentation should remove any suspicion of a metaphysics of presence attached to the notion of a sentence. A sentence is never simply present (to itself) split on the one hand between presentation and the universe presented (situation), a sentence is also, constitutively, linked to other sentences. The illusion of seizing the event of a sentence in any or all of its instances is an illusion created retrospectively, by the following sentence: 'metaphysical illusion would consist in treating a presentation as a situation' (Bennington Writing the Event 130).

Geoffrey Bennington

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Geoffrey Bennington