Animal time. On the biodiversity of Modern Knowledge of Time

• Applicant: Dr. Gisela Lena Kugler
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 244506995

When the geological deep time and also the age of men is identified and ascertained by fossils; when natural history gets its praxis and at the same time its aesthetics through animal preparations; when both production processes and slaughter cattle are deconstructed and accelerated on assembly lines or when the ‘autonomic’ internal clock is discovered with the sleeping behavior of birds – the specific knowledge of time is always made and representated with concrete animals and in various technics and methods. The project wants to explore the poetologically and epistemologically striking biodiversity of modern time-knowledge with the investigation of various animal arte- and biofacts. By analyzing five time-formations – deep time, dissected/stuffed time, physiology of time, production time and the future of animals – the project aims to make a contribution to the history of the constitution of a ‘polychronical modernity’.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1688: Proper Times of the Aesthetic. Time and Representation in Polychronic Modernity