Dr Conrad Russell

I am concerned here with an analysis of time and memory as human creations. Drawing on the work of Bachelard, but also on Guyau and Janet, I argue that time and memory can be thought of as "fictive", as a work of human imagination and creativity. Temporal rhythms are not simple repetitions, but acts of will, marked by an attempt to perfect earlier repetitions. Memory is not simply a photographic record of the past accessed by intuition, but rather a cinematic act of narration. Time is a human creative act, as is the self, with which it is closely bound up. The very nature of reasoning and of our engagement with the world, imply that both time and the self are discontinuous and open. Thought and creation involve negations and ruptures. As such, Bachelardian time is at odds with Bergsonian duration. This paper follows Bachelard as he develops his own understanding of time and memory through a "subversive" critique of Bergson's thought.

The use of constructionism by climate change deniers and ‘9-11 truthers’ to support ‘post-fact’ arguments in recent political and social debates has created controversy within science studies. Here, I seek to re-evaluate what constructionists actually say about facts in science. Through revisiting Gaston Bachelard – a key influence on scientific constructionism – I argue that science can penetrate to the ‘noumenal core’ of the phenomena it studies because it constructs them. This, however, need not imply that facts can be whatever we want them to be.

This article connects Virilio's critique of speed with Surrealist and Situationist writings attacking the homogeneous time of the commodity, which themselves echo Benjamin and Bergson. I suggest here that these authors can all be seen as taking a Romantic stance against the perceived reification and abstraction inherent in modernity and its dominant time. Further, they share a concern with interrupting modernity's homogeneous time, to usher in more authentic forms of duration. I suggest, however, that the displacement of Newtonian time by other times, increasingly homogeneous and abstract, but constituted precisely by interruption, poses a problem for this strategy.

Sociologija. Mintis ir veiksmas (Sociology: Thought and Action) is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published in Lithuania and dedicated to the critical study of contemporary social and cultural change – including the shifting status of sociology itself – from a variety of perspectives. It covers subjects such as social theory, social research and research methodology, political sociology, gender issues, nationalism, sociology of art, social stratification and social identities. In addition, the journal is open to contributions that engage with wider debates within and across social psychology, philosophy, history, political science and anthropology, and provides a forum for reviews of recently published or translated sociological texts.