eventness

English

Etymology

Coined by Mikhail Bakhtin as event +‎ -ness

Noun

eventness (uncountable)

1. The quality of not being utterly predictable; The specificity that characterizes an occurrence as meaningful.
   • 1994, Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time, page 22:

     When the present simply actualizes what had to happen, events lack eventness.

   • 2014, John Nguyet Erni, Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations, page 34:

     But to extricate a thought, utterance, or deed from the contingency and particularity of its occurrence is precisely to transcribe away its eventness, that is to say, its living, unpredetermined quality, its concrete situatedness in time and place, and the particularized meaning attendant on this unsystematizable, uncodifiable specificity.

   • 2016, Richard Beach, Deborah Appleman, Bob Fecho, Teaching Literature to Adolescents, page 209:

     The experience of “eventness” has to do with the element of suspense.