Contemporariness

Contemporariness is, then, a singular relationship with one's own time, which adheres to it and at the same time, keeps a distance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism. Those who coincide too well with the epoch, those who are perfectly tied to it in every respect are not contemporaries, precisely because they do not manage to see it; they are not able to firmly hold their gaze on it.

(Agamben, "What is Contemporary", p.41 in What is an Apparatus?)