Lines are not groovyWe should add another word to Harman's collection of adjectives used only to scare the skittish, such as folk and naive: linear.
Heaven knows why, but we are supposed to have an instant reaction against such a notion. Linear, why the very thought of it! Not me. No fear. I'm non-linear. Do I know what that means? Not sure. But I'm all for it. Non-linearity for all!
I've been to countless talks where this term is thrown around and everyone nods sagely as if to say: You wouldn't catch me within a million miles of that stoopid linearity!
Like a lot of things, the linear is really only aesthetic. It has to do with lines. We aren't told whether these lines are straight or curvy, but we suspect that they are straight. Wouldn't want to be caught looking straight, of all things. Curvy all the way.
Linear bundles an instant attitude of superiority and smugness. We're not one of those silly fools who believe in something as naive as lines. And if we do, why the lines we believe in, you probably couldn't even draw them, man. They're complicated!
I'm afraid Hägglund uses “linear” in precisely this way:
Succession should here not be conflated with the chronology of linear time (which is a recurrent misunderstanding of my argument). Rather, succession accounts for a constitutive delay and a deferral that is inherent in any temporal event.
But of course. Anything but that. Heaven forfend that we resemble lines!