Temporal Contradictions Research Articles

DECLAREd: A Polytime LTLf Fragment

This paper considers a specification rewriting meachanism for a specific fragment of Linear Temporal Logic for Finite traces, DECLAREd, working through an equational logic and rewriting mechanism under customary practitioner assumptions from the Business Process Management literature. By rewriting the specification into an equivalent formula which might be easier to compute, we aim to streamline current state-of-the-art temporal artificial intelligence algorithms working on temporal logic. As this specification rewriting mechanism is ultimately also able to determine with the provided specification is a tautology (always true formula) or a formula containing a temporal contradiction, by detecting the necessity of a specific activity label to be both present and absent within a log, this implies that the proved mechanism is ultimately a SAT-solver for DECLAREd. We prove for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that this fragment is a polytime fragment of LTLf, while all the previously-investigated fragments or extensions of such a language were in polyspace. We test these considerations over formal synthesis (Lydia), SAT-Solvers (AALTAF) and formal verification (KnoBAB) algorithms, where formal verification can be also run on top of a relational database and can be therefore expressed in terms of relational query answering. We show that all these benefit from the aforementioned assumptions, as running their tasks over a rewritten equivalent specification will improve their running times, thus motivating the pressing need of this approach for practical temporal artificial intelligence scenarios. We validate such claims by testing such algorithms over a Cybersecurity dataset.

Formal Metacomics: Practice as Theory

ABSTRACT: A “formal metacomic,” as defined by Roy T. Cook, “is a comic whose plot involves formal manipulations of the conventions of the comic medium.” Such manipulations draw attention to Charles Hatfield’s understanding of comics as an “art of tensions,” specifically “between codes of signification; between the single image and the image-in-series ; between narrative sequence and page surface ; and, more broadly, between reading-as- experience and the text as material object .” These tensions are related to, and possibly unified by, one overarching tension: between the imagined diegetic qualities of an evoked world and the discursive qualities of physical marks on paper that co-produce that world through viewer perception. Such discursive-diegetic tension embodies a range of theoretical concerns, including: the simultaneous discursive presence of multiple images representing a single diegetic subject (recurrence); the ambiguous natures of artistic style and medium materiality as definitively neither diegetic qualities reducible to a depicted subject nor discursive qualities traceable to an artist or to a comic as a physical object (transparency); the connotative influence of image layout on the perception of image content when the two are understood to be unrelated (primary and secondary diegeses); the evoked presence of non-diegetic elements through discursive allusions (intertextual braiding); and the temporal contradictions between a representative image’s implied diegesis and its discursive presence and viewing. While comics generally embody such tensions, formal metacomics directly and literally illustrate them. The following eight comics, developed from my personal artistic practice, are both an application and an analysis of comics theory.

US Asylum Lawyering and Temporal Violence

Research on the temporal dimensions of international migration focuses on how migrants experience time. This study instead turns attention to public interest lawyers, whose work plays a crucial role in ensuring favorable legal outcomes for immigrants, in order to consider time’s salience within the US asylum context. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork with Los Angeles-based public interest asylum attorneys, this article argues that lawyers confront both weaponized efficiency and weaponized inefficiency in the course of representing asylum seekers. Advocates must rush to keep pace, on the one hand, as various state actors accelerate asylum processes and, on the other, find ways to advance clients’ interests even as state agencies selectively slow procedures to a standstill. These findings affirm that temporal contradictions define the US asylum system. Further, they demonstrate that lawyers experience these contradictions not as natural phenomena but, rather, as temporal violence: in a range of contexts, government action mobilizes time—whether actively or passively—in the service of migration control.

Longitudinal QCA: Integrating Time Through Change-Based Intervals (CBIs) and a Flexible Lag Condition (FLC)

In the wake of the methodological developments that aim to render qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) “time sensitive”, I propose a new procedure for carrying out QCA longitudinally. More specifically, I show first why longitudinal case disaggregation should be carried out with change-based intervals (CBIs) rather than with fixed intervals. Second, I develop a flexible lag condition (FLC) that (i) resolves two types of temporal contradictions and outcome redundancies that can result from temporal case disaggregation and (ii) allows to measure the average duration it takes for a combination of conditions to translate to an outcome. Since temporal contradictions and outcome redundancies are most likely with an increasing number of time points and conditions, as well as with CBIs in general, the FLC procedure is most useful in these cases. The fact that the interest of longitudinal analyses increases with the number of disaggregated cases underlines the usefulness of the proposed methodological innovation. Despite its suitability for mid-n and large-n analyses, longitudinal QCA with an FLC preserves a strong case-oriented and qualitative perspective and remains thereby loyal to QCA's original foundations.

Deciding whether it’s too late: How climate activists coordinate alternative futures in a postapocalyptic present

Climate activists are confronted with an increasing tension between the need for urgent climate action and a sense that it could already be too late to prevent ‘dangerous’ or ‘runaway’ climate change. In this context, scholars observe the spread of a postapocalyptic environmentalism that understands climate change as already being locked in beyond ‘safe’ limits. This narrative challenges apocalyptic environmentalism, which presents climate disasters as a future threat to be avoided. We aim to improve our understanding of the profound yet contradictory impact of this shift on climate activism. Specifically, we explain why in some cases, the postapocalyptic narrative is adopted without clearly impacting climate activists’ goals and strategies, which remain informed by an apocalyptic vision based on notions of solution, control and progress. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a British climate movement organization, we explain why apocalyptic strategies can be reproduced despite postapocalyptic visions, and how this can result in a juxtaposition of strategies perceived as most realistic and strategies actually being pursued. We argue that Tavory and Eliasoph’s (2013) theory about the disjuncture and coordination of imagined futures can help us make sense of this situation. We expand this theory by showing the importance of spatialization as a strategy to overcome temporal contradictions.

Is Nuclear Anarchy Sustainable? A Temporal Approach

The article develops a novel temporal approach to the sustainability of nuclear anarchy. The extant literature offers two opposite perspectives on the topic: some scholars argue that nuclear anarchy is unsustainable, since it will inevitably either lead to a catastrophic nuclear war or evolve into a hierarchical world order. Their opponents doubt the inevitability of nuclear war in a system of sovereign states and/or its catastrophic nature. However, the debate, as it stands now, ignores the fact that both technology and social structures are embedded in – and mediated by – cultures and worldviews. In particular, both nuclear weapons and interstate anarchy are embedded in specific temporalities.Taking this fact into account, we identify and compare perceptions of time that are interrelated with nuclear weapons, on one hand, and international anarchy, on the other. The article reveals a temporal contradiction of nuclear anarchy: while nuclear weapons imply a potential finitude of humanity, the system of sovereign states is intrinsically connected with an indefinite temporality. We derive two theoretical implications form the concept of temporal contradiction. First, a realization of finite temporality should subvert the legitimacy of an anarchic world order and encourage limitations on national sovereignty. Second, international anarchy should ‘eternalize’ nuclear weapons, i.e., reinterpret them as compatible with the eternity of human civilization. Familiar events of nuclear history including early attempts to establish international control of nuclear energy, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the evolution of the anti-nuclear movement are interpreted here as empirical evidence in favor of the theoretical implications described above.Thus, the concept of temporal contradiction provides another argument in favor of the idea that nuclear anarchy is unsustainable in the long run, since the proliferation of the finite temporality leads to international hierarchy, whereas persistent indefinite temporality masks the severity of the nuclear threat, making nuclear war more conceivable and probable.

Two-stream spatiotemporal image fusion network based on difference transformation

For satellite imaging instruments, the tradeoff between spatial and temporal resolution leads to the spatial–temporal contradiction of image sequences. Spatiotemporal image fusion (STIF) provides a solution to generate images with both high-spatial and high-temporal resolutions, thus expanding the applications of existing satellite images. Most deep learning-based STIF methods throw the task to network as a whole and construct an end-to-end model without caring about the intermediate physical process. This leads to high complexity, less interpretability, and low accuracy of the fusion model. To address this problem, we propose a two-stream difference transformation spatiotemporal fusion (TSDTSF), which includes transformation and fusion streams. In the transformation stream, an image difference transformation module reduces the pixel distribution difference of images from different sensors with the same spatial resolution, and a feature difference transformation module improves the feature quality of low-resolution images. The fusion stream focuses on feature fusion and image reconstruction. The TSDTSF shows superior performance in accuracy, vision quality, and robustness. The experimental results show that TSDTSF achieves the effect of the average coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.7847) and the root mean square error (RMSE = 0.0266), which is better than the suboptimal method average (R2 = 0.7519) and (RMSE = 0.0289). The quantitative and qualitative experimental results on various datasets demonstrate our superiority over the state-of-the-art methods.

The Catastrophe to Come

Taking its departure from The Differend’s analysis of Auschwitz as a sign for the evental character of history, I argue that the looming ecological disaster we now face reveals both the continuing relevance and limits of Lyotard’s thought. While the form of political agency of the catastrophe to come involves a differend, this differend cannot be attached to a proper name, however problematic its mode of signification. This, however, suggests the even greater relevance of Lyotard’s treatment, in the conclusion of The Differend, of capitalism in terms of temporal contradiction, as well as his theorization of oikos and ecology in subsequent works, where he distinguishes between the economic and the ecological. This distinction, I conclude, is rendered problematic by the catastrophe to come, as indeed is any attempt to draw an absolute distinction between “philosophical politics” and mere technocratic management or even to exclude speculation from the heart of philosophy.

Civilizational Project as Subject of Research: Logic of Meanings and Optics of Analysis

The super-powerful polysemy of discourse about civilization is seen not as a defect in language and speech, but as an objective, irreducible characterization of the subject itself and the discourse about it. This excludes the possibility of universal or consolidated definitions. The solution is offered in a special kind of semantic empathy — in the acceptance of the discourse about civilization in the presumption of its fullness, in the meaningful intuitions of understanding. The principle of "civilizational multiplicity" or "civilization of civilizations" leads to the ideas of the multiplicity of civilizational projects, including the need to understand the Russian project of civilizational development as a "project of projects", that is, not only a mega-, but also a meta-project. Modern times are seen as "times of projects" with corresponding outlets in the problems of postmodernity, postmodern, and postmodernism. The temporal contradictions of the project, the paradoxes of dynamics and statics are considered. Is a project a future in the present and/or a present in the future? The ontological duality of the project is similar: process and thing, life and product, plan and embodiment. The discourse on civilization is considered as a systemic object. Reconstruction of the common problem-thematic space is carried out by the method of contour mapping. The isomorphism of historical time and space of analysis is substantiated: a picture as an image and as a motion picture, as a sequence of frames. A reverse perspective technique is introduced — reverse research and retro analysis, in which the genesis is supplemented by "autopsy" techniques

IS CHRIST REALLY CONTRADICTORY? SOME METHODOLOGICAL CONCERNS FROM THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Two of the most important outcomes of The Contradictory Christ include: (i) identifying Christ as an unproblematically contradictory being as well as (ii) laying the foundations of an investigation of the logical consequences of the existence of Christ, qua contradictory, within a particular 'theory'. In light of the enormous relevance of Beall’s The contradictory Christ for the study of inconsistency, my main concern here is to explore the effect of some methodological choices behind Beall’s proposal -this in order to recognize in more detail the scope of Beall’s contribution. To do so, I will focus on three main questions: 1. What is required for the identification of a contradiction? 2. How can we recognize a true contradiction from either an apparent or a temporal contradiction? 3. If we identify a true contradiction within a theory, where can we actually go from there?

Thinking through Urban Obsolescence: Tinkering, Repair and the Politics of Joona in Bombay/Mumbai's Taxi Trade

AbstractIn this article I use the lens of Bombay/Mumbai's taxi trade from the early twentieth century to the present to examine how obsolescence becomes ingrained in the political and public imagination, and how this can illuminate the contradictory experiences of time in changing cities. Based on a labor‐centric approach to transport infrastructure, I ask what happens when particular technologies and linear understandings of progress rooted in obsolescence pass over or attempt to erase certain urban subjects. How are these temporal contradictions manifested, and what kinds of political and value claims emerge as a result? Further, how do people actively produce other time‐spaces using alternative temporal claims to challenge progress‐oriented development narratives? How, in other words, does obsolescence resist becoming obsolete? Finally, I examine the role that materiality and physical objects such as cars play in mediating these temporal relationships.

Back to the Future? Temporality and Society in Indian Constitutional Law: A Closer Look at Section 377 and Sabarimala Decisions and the Genealogy of Legal Reasoning

‘On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality’. B. R. Ambedkar’s famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949 still resonates within contemporary Indian constitutional law, and even more so his following interrogation: ‘how long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?’ Prima facie societal, the contradiction is however also a temporal one, Indian constitutional law being founded on both the British traditional idea of ‘continuum’ and the American inspired revolutionary principles of ‘pursuance’ of a novel legal and social order. Two recent Indian Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the de-criminalisation of same sex relations ( Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India) and for the right of menstruating women to enter the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala ( Indian Young Lawyers Association v. Union of India) offer through their differing and sometimes dissenting opinions a glimpse at those temporal contradictions. Through an analysis of both decisions and in particular that of Chandrachud J. and Malhotra J.’s judgements, this article seeks to highlight two radically differing conceptions of temporality applied to constitutional issues, which can themselves be linked back to the transposition of the legal positivist discourse in India within the colonial era: on the one hand, an attempt to continue Common law’s empirical-based tradition and on the other hand, an (apparently) a-historical perception of Law drawn from neo-Roman civilian legal discourse and later normative positivism. If both branches of legal reasoning aim at protecting minorities’ rights, the value they inscribe to History within the realm of Law cannot be further apart.

Contradictory time horizons of Durban energy piping in an era of looming climate chaos

The contradictory role of time in urban capital’s uneven development can be observed through the analytical lens of infrastructure investment. The two cases considered below are energy pipelines in Durban, South Africa. On the one hand, urgency is associated with greenhouse-gas emissions mitigation, to slow climate change that is already doing enormous damage in this city. Yet on the other hand, the lengthy payback of mega-project investments made in long-term fossil fuel projects (and hence their reliance upon public subsidisation and guarantees) and the financial difficulty of switching to low-carbon transport, energy and waste disposal systems, together mean that temporal contradictions loom large. In sum, it appears impossible to align socio-ecological survival needs with investors’ profit-driven time horizons. This is the case involving a controversial pipeline for petroleum products from the African continent’s largest refinery complex (South Durban) to its largest market (Johannesburg), constructed at the same time as was piping to redirect methane that is emitted from the continent’s largest landfill, into a new electricity generator (in central Durban). The context, globally and locally, is that the ‘displacements’ of overaccumulated capital into infrastructure finance (and then specifically into piping systems) hit both temporal and spatial barriers, failing to deliver the promised returns on the infrastructure investments. With such insights, critical urban activists can better apply contrary analysis—of time, space, scale, class, race and environmental overlaps—whenever local growth coalitions parrot the slogan used to justify massive public subsidization of this infrastructure on behalf of investors: ‘build it, and they will come.’ The next question: who wins and loses—and when?

Managing the urgency of the disappearance of life: the temporal contradictions of public action. The case of public biodiversity policies in the Hauts- de-France Region

Les temporalites de l’action publique n’integrent pas actuellement les temporalites propres au vivant, dans un contexte preoccupant de crise ecologique. Au travers de l’etude des politiques territoriales de biodiversite du Nord-Pas-de-Calais (aujourd’hui Hauts-de-France), nous analysons ici ces contradictions temporelles. L’action publique demeure en effet dans une perspective anthropocentree qui determine la finalite et les moyens des politiques de biodiversite a partir de contraintes politiques et economiques propres aux societes. Elle reflete ainsi une perspective lineaire du temps avec des objectifs de resultats court-termistes, notamment lies au developpement du New Public Management, a la politique par objectifs et a la contrainte de resultats quantifiables sur le vivant. A l’inverse, le vivant se pense au travers du temps evolutif et indetermine propre aux ecosystemes. Les pressions anthropiques – artificialisation des sols, pollutions, fragmentation du territoire, changement climatique, etc. - menacent toutefois aujourd’hui sa perennite car elles provoquent une acceleration de la disparition irreversible d’especes et la fragilisation des ecosystemes. Cet article appelle a une convergence des temporalites de l’action publique et de la biodiversite, qui pourrait se penser au travers d’un futur ecocentre.

Socially necessary superfluity: Adorno and Marx on the crises of labor and the individual

This article considers Theodor W. Adorno’s thesis of the ‘liquidation of the individual’ as a contribution to the critique of political economy insofar as it links structural economic imperatives of the capitalist order to transformations of consciousness and human conduct. For Adorno, such ‘liquidation’ amounts to not only the superfluity of bourgeois individuality as an anthropological type but also to the objective superfluity of actually living individuals. I develop Adorno's argument that the ‘form and organization of labor’ in capitalism produces these forms of superfluity by turning to Marx’s critique of value with an emphasis on the logic of ‘socially necessary labor-time.’ My argument is that as long as society is enthralled to the ongoing self-valorization of value (i.e. capital), social reproduction makes ‘socially necessary’ the superfluity of individuality as well as actually-living human individuals. In short, the anthropological decomposition of the bourgeois individual and the generation of ‘surplus populations’ are expressions of the same contradiction: the necessity and superfluity of labor in capitalism. After illustrating some current expressions of this contradiction evident in the global ‘crisis of work’ – including the displacement and transformation of labor by automation and the massive growth of the ‘global slums’ – I suggest that further analysis of the temporal contradictions of the law of value evinces the conditions of an emancipated individual in a post-work society.

Metabolic Rifts, Temporal Imperatives, and Geographical Shifts: Logging in the Adirondack Forest in the 1800s

ABSTRACTDistinct land-use patterns can radically transform ecological conditions. In the following historical study, the authors employ Marx’s metabolic approach, nested within a political-economic perspective, to assess the ecological and temporal contradictions that emerged between the capitalist logging industry in New York State and the Adirondack forests in the 1800s. They present the environmental, socioeconomic, and technological changes that accompanied the consolidation and intensification of timber operations, expanding the harvesting of trees and the realm of ecological degradation. The authors highlight how the temporal demands of capital conflict with those of trees in the forest and how the social metabolism of capitalist logging violates the universal metabolism of nature, resulting in distinct ecological rifts and geographical shifts in production.

Темпоральные противоречия возрастных общностей: типологический анализ стратегий преодоления

The purpose of this article is to analyze age communities in the context of the unity and contradiction of their biological, psychological and social time to identify the features of their temporal behavior strategies. Presented are the results of theoretically elaborating the concepts of certain age communities, their temporal contradictions and a typological analysis of strategies for overcoming the latter. Substantiated is the use of interdisciplinary methodology when studying this issue and integrating the achievements of science, social psychology and sociology. Provided is the author’s interpretation of an age community being an association of people connected and interacting with each other on the basis of similar biological, psychological and social ages, the features and contradictions of which are formed in a specific social and historical context. Revealed is the concept of dyschronosis as a mismatch of the three types of time for an age community — biological, psychological and social. One of the possible approaches towards constructing a typology of strategies for overcoming age-related dyschronosis is suggested. It is shown to be based on the use of such a criterion as choosing ways and forms of overcoming temporal contradictions. The article’s empirical basis consists of results from a study conducted by the authors using qualitative methods — in-depth interviews with representatives of different age communities, analyzing the content of websites, forums, blogs and social networks related to the research problem. The results of the research can be reflected in the recommendations for educational, cultural, leisure organizations, social institutions working with different age communities, public authorities and local self-government in order to optimize social, economic, cultural and educational policies.

Lucia’s Ghosts: Sonic, Gothic and Postmodern

AbstractIn this article, I use an intertextual interference – the spectral presence of Norma Desmond in a performance of Donizetti’sLucia di Lammermoor– as a locus through which to explore the consequences of the ‘open’ text in theatrical spectatorship, criticism and historical study. Norma’s ghosting of Lucia reveals how spectral effects function in musical and dramatic contexts, particularly in Gothic works. These effects replace illusions of linear teleology with temporal synchronicity and destabilise the boundaries that separate the critic or spectator from the work. Though examiningLuciathrough the lens ofSunset Boulevardinverts chronological sequence, it acknowledges the temporal contradictions inherent in historical work and assigns productive meaning to nostalgic impulses that engage a reflective mode of thought.

The Art of Social Reproduction

This article considers how the museum produces knowledge about the past and present of feminist politics through its framing of marginal, activist artworks that have engaged the sphere of social reproduction or care labour. It is contended that neoliberalism’s assault on social reproduction in our current ‘age of austerity’ – which sees responsibility displaced from the state onto individuals – has sparked a reengagement with earlier socialist–feminist discourse and, as a result, we are perceptibly enmeshed within a new age of social reproduction debates. The Hackney Flashers’ germinal photographic project Who’s Holding the Baby? (1976–1978), acquired by Madrid’s Reina Sofia in 2010, is taken as a case study to explore a range of contextual, temporal and historical contradictions in further detail. Examining the ambiguous relocation of this photographic project provokes vital questions about the contribution of culture to the troubled terrains of art, property and care labour in the 21st century.

Jorge Isaacs’s María and the Space-Time of Global Capitalism

This essay examines Jorge Isaacs’s María (1867), arguably Spanish America’s most famous nineteenth-century novel, as a literary treatise on the spatial and temporal contradictions arising from the expansion of global markets, as experienced from within peripheral nodes in that system. More specifically, I examine the novel’s staging of the irreducible difficulties of properly managing the temporal and spatial relations that link remote locales such as the Cauca Valley in Colombia to imperial centers of accumulation such as London. In this manner, I argue that the novel, though written from a peripheral locale, offers a timely reflection on an expanding world-system centered in nineteenth-century England.