This book applies Heideggers writings to experimental fictions and film genres in order to study a being-there that performs itself beyond liveness and a future that is already here. Theatrical mise-en-scène is analyzed as a way of modeling the Heideggerian ontological-existential, exchanging a deeper presencing for the fictional now of liveness. The book is organized around ostensible objects that are in fact things-as-such and performs its theme via time-traveling, interruptions, decompositions, incompleteness, failure, geometric patterning, and above all black pages first cited inTristram Shandy. This is a nuanced, original work that combines unexpected sources with even more unexpected writing, imagery, and correspondences. It is part of Golubs ongoing project of lyrically reimagining philosophy and the mise-en-scène of theatrical performance (a presence-room of consciousness) in light of one another.

Spencer Golubis Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Comparative Literature, and Slavic Studies at Brown University, USA. He is the author of six previous books: A Philosophical Autofiction: Dolors Youth;The Baroque Night;Incapacity: Wittgenstein, Anxiety, and Performance Behavior;Infinity (Stage);The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia; andEvreinov: The Theatre of Paradox and Transformation.

1.Page (Rectangle).- 2.Book (Decomposition).- 3. Clock (Times Pre-Sequels).- 4. Horse (Why Is There Something Else Rather Than Something?).- 5. Human (Being).