For Bloch the present moment is structurally unknowable, a blind spot in experience

Evidence

In the old days, abstraction was surely one of the strategic ways in which phenomena, particularly historical phenomena, could be estranged and defamiliarized. When one is immersed in the immediate — the year-by-year experience of cultural and informational messages, of successive events, of urgent priorities -the abrupt distance afforded by an abstract concept, a more global characterization of the secret affinities between those apparently autonomous and unrelated domains, and of the rhythms and hidden sequences of things we normally remember only in isolation and one by one, is a unique resource, particularly since the history of the preceding few years is always what is least accessible to us. Historical reconstruction, then, the positing of global characterizations and hypotheses, the abstraction from the “blooming, buzzing confusion” of immediacy, was always a radical intervention in the here and now and the promise of resistance to its blind fatalities. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 856 (#expands, via linked claim)

Does this cluster of concepts refer to aspects of the same thing? (Incidentally, I nearly said when David had finished his wonderful paper that we can go home now, because we now know all we ever need to know about the thought of Stuart Hall!) David said that the question I am addressing is what he called the “contingency of the present.” Now, actually, I would not quite put it that way myself, although I understand perfectly well why he did. … The question of the contingency of the history of the present is critically important because this is what I want to say about the present—that it is the product of “many determinations” but that it remains an open horizon, fundamentally unresolved, and in that sense open to “the play of contingency.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1196 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bloch’s philosophy remains unread because it anticipates a hermeneutic not yet born; The recent past is the least accessible period to direct understanding — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 856; The present is overdetermined yet fundamentally open to contingency — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1196

Broader Connections

• Bloch’s philosophy remains unread because it anticipates a hermeneutic not yet born #expands (0.80)
• The recent past is the least accessible period to direct understanding #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 856
• The present is overdetermined yet fundamentally open to contingency #qualifies (0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1196