Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

We need a new way to approach time in education. In order to understand the relationship that we have with the concept of time I will identify genealogical connections that structured conceptual time by questioning the way conceptual time was historically shaped alongside ideal notions of dualism and correctness that remain in educational pedagogy. I want to know how ancient expressions of temporality were lost as Western culture instituted a fixed framework for objective time. In this paper, I contend that a belief in time as a linear succession sends human awareness toward external objects because linearity is directed by the next object or minute. A mechanical system separates objects into successive states, which forces humanity to efficiently and logically predict outcomes. To disrupt a strict objective framework, I will study the ideas and artwork of John Cage. Essentially, his sound experiments will inform my investigation regarding temporality, which I will relate to philosophers including Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Mikhail Bakhtin, among others. Further, I will relate the former philosophers to Cage’s process that explores unpredictability and compare Cage’s process to Heidegger’s proposal that poietics or poiesis breaks our everyday reference to meaning.