Present tense forecloses judgment by compressing event and narration into the here-now

Evidence

Mantel makes clear the theological and ethical entailments of this grammatical choice. … Present tense compresses event and narration into one temporal register, an immediate here-now. Autofiction and the perpetual present of the status update (What’s on your mind?) reinforce this grammatical functioning as a metaphysical index, instantaneity, and directness. Moreover, present tense often forecloses conclusiveness, judgment, or resolution, lacking hindsight and favoring openness or even nonsensical, unplotted, impressionistic indeterminacy. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 181

Categorization

• XREF: Mantel’s ‘the author is not claiming superior knowledge’ and present-tense’s foreclosure of resolution directly supports the reader’s core thesis that immediacy is politically dangerous — mediation/judgment is the politically necessary detour she defends. — connects to: Metaphysics privileges the present tense by defining past and future as modifications of presence — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 195
• QUESTION: Is the claim that present tense ‘forecloses conclusiveness’ empirically testable against historical-fiction novels that use present tense while still judging? Worth probing when fighting her Antitheory chapter.