Unfolding presence
By Jonathan Martineau
Jonathan Martineau teaches at Concordia University. His work explores the history of ideas, technology, political economy and social time. A participant in our second conversation on presence, he extends his reflections with a trilogy that decomposes presence as in a prism. This is the first of his three short texts.
I’m getting ready for work. I teach at 10am this morning. It is the dead of winter, but I feel like riding my bike. I went over my notes, gathered everything, I’m good to go. I climb down the stairs, jump on my bike and head downtown. I take this route so often, I could make it with my eyes closed. Saint-Denis then Sherbrooke all the way to Mackay. But this morning I am attentive to many details along the way. The wind is cold and invigorating, the opaline reflection of light in the snow, the sound of music in my earphone, the ambient smell of winter; I feel present and connected to the world.
These moments of plenitude, of presence to the world, are few and far between. They constantly slip through our fingers in this world of busyness and acceleration. Work, errands, domestic chores, we seldom pause to breathe. Do moments exist in which we may simply linger? Routine itself is full-speed racing just to keep up, multitasking while our lives pass us by. We’re in quest of a presence more attentive to the world, better attuned to our lives and to ourselves, a fuller grasp of the now. According to some, this requires training and discipline, we need to learn to “live in the moment,” and block off distractions. Leave the past behind and let tomorrow take care of itself, focus all attention on the present moment, welcome it with neither preconceptions nor expectations, “without judgment.” The path to “mindfulness.”
I can’t seem to wrap my head around this. Is true presence really to be found in the present tense? After all, my moment of presence, biking this morning, is not solely a present. No present is only a present. It is always temporalized as we, temporal beings, always weave together past, present and future in an inextricable web.
Anchored in my experience, this present moment actualizes a past constituted by different kinds of memories: genetic, lived, cultural. It is also a present that mobilizes a network of entities and meanings: helmet, bike, street furniture, snow, road signalling. It is also a future, an understanding of myself and my aims that projects meaning back onto my acting. I live this moment as a cycling professor going to work, and while on the bike path, I also follow the traces laid before me by this horizon of meaning. I anticipate the morning unfolding according to this understanding and the expectations it creates, the projects it launches. I act according to the proper goals, norms and codes as so many furrows in which my practices unfold. The present is nothing without the past and the future. I am memories, a meaningful network, and an anticipation on its way to work. Past, present and future are all at once.
« I am memories, a meaningful network, and an anticipation on its way to work. Past, present and future are all at once. »
Past-memories
My past is not merely what happened before this morning, before this present moment. Of course, my past precedes me, but it is also present with me at every moment my acting merges with my surroundings. My past and memories also run ahead of me, stretching in the future in many ways. My genetic memory determines in advance the potentialities of my body, those muscles, nerves and bones that can pedal. My lived memory constructs the identity I project in the future: I am, among other things, a trained professor. My present experience tends toward it, it is the anticipation illuminating my morning, projected from my education, formation, and past experience. I’m also cycling to lecture at the University in virtue of a cultural and technical memory going back to Plato’s Academy and the invention of the wheel. This past precedes me chronologically, but runs ahead of my decisions and projects in establishing paths I can follow, possibilities in which I can find myself. As such, my past is also present and future. It occurs before, now, and after. In these past-memories I am enclosed and released, tied up and freed. They enter and exit my body, anchor me in time and time in me, project my experience in a network of meaning illuminating my presence to the world.
« In these past-memories I am enclosed and released, tied up and freed. They enter and exit my body, anchor me in time and time in me, project my experience in a network of meaning illuminating my presence to the world. »
Present-unfoldings
Similarly, the present always weaves together future and past. This morning surrounding me is a network of useful objects and constructed meanings, a panoply of exteriorized human abilities, accumulated memories, know-hows, acts of labour, with which I osmose. My vision is at once with my glasses, my memory is in my notes, my body heat reverberates in my clothes, my mobility extends in the street. The present unfolds in a technical and meaningful network, product of an accumulation of past actings which have folded temporalities into objects, institutions, know-hows. The labor that made my bike occurred at a time that is now past, yet it remains present, folded in the wheels and frame. It unfolds and joins with every other folded time released by my practice, making the present as I cycle to work.
I arrive at the office and revise my notes. In writing, I make the pencil present, my acting unfolds its temporalities and folds them anew in the text. Writing has unfolded pasts, and folded a present of thought in my notes, which I will unfold again later during lecture.
Light-future
While the present unfolds accumulated pasts, it does so according to meaning coming from the future. Our acting always implies a projection, anticipation of the future, expectation, intention: a telos coming back towards the present, infusing it with meaning and orientation. As such, the future is the origin of human temporality, the axis of our time consciousness, the light that refracts through our experience giving it its singular texture and iridescent tones. Our acting deploys a temporal structure of anticipation, a future deploying meaning and attracting us towards it.
The entities accompanying us in the present get their purpose and meaning from the future. They carry an “in order to,” a “for which” imparted them by the meaning of our acting: the book is for reading, the wine for drinking, the shoes for running, the path for going, the cupboard to put away the pot. These “for” and “to” construct a network of polysemic reference, a tapestry of meaning, a world in which I bike to move forward to make it to the university to lecture to be a prof. Our practices mobilize networks of “for” and “to” according to our intentions, anticipations, and understanding of ourselves. Some things are relevant to my present acting, and revealing aspects of who I am at this moment: a cycling prof. I am my future illuminating my present through unfolding elements of my past: genes, lived memories, shared culture. The meaning of life comes back from the future. The future is not “later,” it precedes and makes the present.
I wonder then. Aren’t we led astray when we represent time as a continuous and linear flow from the future to the past? And if we do not experience time as a mere succession of present moments, wouldn’t it be a stillborn project to seek to isolate “presents” as independent realities, to live those stroboscopic moments “mindfully?” True presence is deployed in a horizon of meaning, illuminated by a telos. The dynamic play of reference between a future illuminating a present in a past, means that any present is relational. True presence is fully temporal, it is one that actualizes a project, freely undertaken, coming back from the future to infuse meaning in our experience and our history.
But who projects? Who makes time and history? Who has the privilege of true presence? Presence is also a political question. And this thought keeps me company across Montreal in the morning light.
Jonathan Martineau, february 2025
The second part of this text will be available on June 8.
Illustrations: Fatou Dravé
Editing: Judith Oliver
