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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor Andrew Benjamin for his support.
This thesis has been written with the help of Louis Greenspan, Michelle
Murphy and the Ccru. It is dedicated to my family.
Capitalism's Transcendental Time Machine
Contents
0. Introduction
[p. 2]
1. Philosophy's Copernican Revolution: Time in The Critique of Pure Reason
[p. 15] 1.0 Introduction: Kant's Discovery of the Transcendental
[p. 28] 1.1 The Transcendental Aesthetic: Time as Form of Inner Sense
[p. 41] 1.2 The Transcendental Deduction: Time and the 'I Think'
[p. 57] 1.3 The Schematicism: Time and Abstraction
2. Time in Modern Capitalism
[p. 68] 2.0 Introduction: Time in Kant and Capitalism
[p. 76] 2.1 Clock Time
[p. 93] 2.2 The Synthetic Culture of Clock Time, or Time = Money
[p. 121] 2.3 History and the Transcendental
3. The Materialist Revolution: Time in Capitalism and Schizophrenia
[p. 134] 3.0 Introduction: Aeon, or The Plane of Consistency
[p. 144] 3.1Transcendental Materialism: Deleuze and Guattari's Critique of Kant
[p. 157] 3.2 From Eternity to Aeon
4. The Aeonic Occurrence: Y2K
[p. 177] 4.0 Introduction: Anticlimax
[p. 184] 4.1 Time-mutations
[p. 198] 4.2 Dates and the Semiotic of Aeon
5. Conclusion
[p. 207]
Appendix
[p. 218]
Bibliography
[p. 219]
Summary
This thesis seeks to establish a connection between abstract thought
and material practice. It does so by focusing on the relation between the
transcendental philosophy of time and the socio-technics of time-keeping
practices.
The thesis begins with a discussion of Kant's philosophy of time as
outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason. It argues that Kant's discovery of the
transcendental coincides with the development of an entirely new conception
of time. This new conception overturns classical thought by making a
distinction between the abstract form of time and the empirical phenomena of
movement and change.
The second chapter maps the transcendental philosophy of time on to
the history of capitalist time-keeping. This history includes: the invention and
development of the mechanical clock, temporal standardization and the
increasing importance of the equation 'time = money. The aim in bringing
these two spheres together is to show, both that Kant's philosophy of time
owes much to his empirical surroundings, and also that capitalist time can
only be understood through the temporal abstraction of transcendental
thought. This link between Kant and capitalism is blocked, however, by a
dividing line which separates the philosophical nature of time from the
empirical changes of history.
In order to surpass this problem the thesis turns to the work of Deleuze
the
Guattari
'transcendental
abstract
connects
materialism'
whose
and
is
This
by
innovations.
time
accomplished
of
with
empirical
production
replacing the classical conception of a transcendent eternity with the
immanent materiality of an exterior plane. This plane - which they call Aeonis composed of thresholds, or singular events which make no distinction
between time and that which occurs in time. The final chapter explores the
dawn of the third millennium - or Y2K - as constituting one such Aeonic event.
0. Introduction
In colloquial language the terms inside and outside are used to
demarcate simple spatial relations. The boundaries between them are
physical and the passage which connects one to the other, though not always
easy to negotiate, is never completely blocked. For no matter how secure,
walls can always be scaled, doors opened, and gates unlocked. In
philosophical language, however, the terms inside and outside designate a
relation that is altogether more impermeable. For whether of an individual
subject or organism or of a social code or structure, interiority, as a
philosophical concept, indicates an absolute segregation., The inside, in this
context, is a mode of containment that operates not through physical
boundaries but by an imperceptible border which draws the contours of all
that can be thought and perceived. It is a contention of this thesis that, when
used in this absolute sense, the division between inside and out is not a
spatial determination but a temporal one. Existence is an enclosure not
2
in
it
locks
time.
It is perhaps for
because it happens in space but because
us
this reason that one can detect a tendency in both philosophy and religion to
3
liberation,
time
escape and exteriority.
with notions of
oppose the concept of
' Much contemporary or postmodern thought has dealt with the segregation between inside
and out by concentrating on the interiority of language. Deconstruction, in particular, has held
that this zone of interiority is so all encompassing that it renders an occupation of the outside
impossible (note Derrida's famous phrase: il nya pas d'hors du texte). Subversion, from this
point of view, can only occur as a disruption from within.
2 This claim, that interiority has more to do with time than with space is one of the crucial
insights of transcendental philosophy and will be discussed in detail in the chapter 1.
3 Though extremely widespread, the notion that liberation is an escape from time is perhaps
most clearly expressed in the religions of the East such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Both
these religions have developed meditative techniques (yoga) that aim to release the
practitioner from the never-ending cycle of time, and both maintain that enlightenment is
reached through an escape from the illusion of time, or Maya. The details of this thought and
its relation to the arguments which follow are, however, beyond the scope of this thesis.
2
For an inside that is bounded by temporal rhythms must find its outside in a
realm which is exterior to time.
In the classical western tradition this connection between the
philosophy of time and the notion of inside and out is based on a disjunction
which opposes time to eternity. This disjunction is articulated most famously
by Plato who defines time "as the movable image of eternity, " (T, 77) a
definition which establishes the interiority of time in opposition to an exteriority
which is eternal. Though immensely widespread, this contrast between time
and eternity, rests, at least in its classical formulation, as we will see, on a
very specific understanding of both the nature of time and of the relation
between inside and out. 4
The classical tradition equated time with astronomy. Conceived of as a
'movable image', it was thought to be perceived in the cyclical changes of the
heavenly spheres. 5 Equivalent to celestial movement, time was made the very
6
principle of variation. Manifestingitself
as a never ending processof change
and activity, it governed the continuous flow of becoming in which all
existence was trapped.
Thus, it was precisely due to its associations with variation that time
was considered to be a mode of capture. For the classical tradition
4 In what follows I offer a brief outline of the
classical conception of time and eternity. Though
this could undoubtedly be criticized for passing over many of the complexities of classical
thought, the purpose here is only to sketch the basic contours of this philosophical tradition so
as to provide a clearer means of understanding the temporal revolutions which constitute the
main focus of this thesis. To this end both Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy of time are
discussed in more detail in chapter 1.
5 See Plato `Timeaus' in Plato: The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton
and Huntington
Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961(especially section 38 -39). Also note the
following from Definitions: "(chronos) time: the motion of the sun, the measure of its course. "
("Definitions" in Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1997, p
1678.)
6 As we will see, both Plato
and Aristotle tie time directly to movement. Though Plotinus
argues against this formulation, his notion that time is an activity of the soul shows that he too
conforms to the classical tradition in linking time with the variable processes of becoming and
change.
3
considered temporal rhythms, the passage of seasons, and the changes of
day into night as an elaborate simulation which belonged only to the created
world of phenomena. It held that the processes of movement and change
were but a shadow of a timeless realm that lies beyond, and it was inside this
'
the
that
world of shadow and mirage
subject was caught. Governed by the
variations of matter, entangled in the multiplicity of becoming, humans were
held prisoner, duped by the illusory movement of time.
This vision of time found its direct opposition in the concept of eternity.
Differentiated from the temporal image of movement and variation, the eternal
was conceived of as a realm of constant stasis. In contrasting change with
identity, multiplicity with unity, and becoming with being, it offered an
alternative to the world of sensible appearance, and thus constituted a realm
which existed outside the phenomenology of time.
It is within this dualistic framework, then, that the exteriority of the
eternal must be understood. Eternity, conceived of in opposition to
temporality, should not be confused with the ever-lasting which is a
8
Situated neither in the deep past nor in the
time.
continuous extension of
distant future, eternity is not a stretch of time but a timelessness. Co-existing
simultaneously with each and every moment, it is the essence of
appearances, the constant form which the variations of time can only
represent in a shadowy fashion.
TI am referring here, of course, to the writings of Plato. It is interesting to note that in the most
famous section of these writings Plato uses a spatial metaphor, the image of an underground
cave, to illustrate his conception of interiority. Even here, however, the prisoners are captured
not so much by spatial boundaries, but rather by their incapability of breaking free from the
entrapment produced by a fascination with the moving images of time. See: Plato. 'The
Republic. ' in Plato: The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961
8 "Because eternity touches each and every time, it is easily confused with the closely related
But
in
its own
"
in
the
"always
is,
be,
everlasting.
a
word,
concept of what
or,
was,
and will
proper concept, the eternal only "is"; only in the present tense can it be said to be or act in any
way. Exempted from all having-been and going-to-be, eternity is familiarly defined as
timelessness, in distinction from the everlasting (sometimes also called the sempiternal). "
Encyclopedia of Religion: Volume 5. Edited by Mircea Eliade, p 167.
4
As the essence of time, the eternal was revered as the divine
archetype. Operating from above, it was eternity that created time.
Considered to be the essence of transcendent production, it was able to
create without getting involved in the matter of its creation9 "Eternity, " writes
Plotinus "is a majestic thing and thought declares it identical with the
God. "(TE, 226)10
With this quote the obvious convergence between the classical notion
of eternity and the conception of the deity produced by the monotheistic
traditions of the West is clearly revealed. The form of the eternal - as the
genesis of the image of time - is paralleled in the opening section of the Old
Testament where we encounter God, as the eternal, who is presented as the
creator of time.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from
the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he
called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
(Genesis, 1: 3- 4)
According to the bible, then, time originates with the first act of
creation. Moving across the waters of the unformed void, God acts initially to
generate light and begin the passage of time. This primordial event is the
Drawing on the work of such feminist thinkers as Luce Irigaray (esp. Speculum of the Other
Woman. Trans. Gillian C Gill. Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 1985) it appears that
the classical distinction between the phenomenon of time and the transcendence of eternity is
essentially masculine in nature. For the notion of a transcendent eternity, beyond or above the
enclosure of time, only occurs by differentiating the eternal from matter, creation, becoming,
and multiplicity- that is from all things traditionally thought of as female. It is interesting to note
in this respect that in Hinduism, Shakti, the principle of female power, is sometimes conceived
of as time. See Zimmer, Heimrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and civilization. Edited by
Joseph Campbell. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963
10The influence of Neoplatonism on monotheistic religion, and in particular on Christianity is
from
is
this
it
that
Suffice
it
here.
to
even
to
too
clear
note
address
much
vast a subject
minimal exposition - that the philosophical understanding of the eternal converges with the
Judeo-Christian God.
5
singular occurrence which takes place outside the confines of temporality.
For, once it is established, a time determined by the passage of day into night
structures and conditions the rest of the week of creation. Eternity, as an
exterior and transcendent dimension, appears in its pure form only once
again, at the end of the bible, with the promise of messianic redemption.
Thus. in both classical philosophy and in the scriptures of the
Abrahamic traditions, life's entrapment in the continuous process of temporal
change, becoming and multiplicity was opposed to the wholeness and unity of
an eternal being who, untainted by the material world, existed as complete
"
itself.
The outside was thus equated with
perfection contained within
transcendence, a mode of escape that led out of the enclosure of time and
allowed one to reach - whether through faith or through knowledge -a higher
and more primary inside.
This thesis is an exploration of two revolutions, one philosophical, the
other socio-economic which, together, have fundamentally altered the
12
The first of these is philosophy's
technics
time.
philosophy, culture and
of
'Copernican revolution' which was instigated by Immanuel Kant in his text the
Critique of Pure Reason. The second occurs with the onset of capitalism, and
involves the invention - and subsequent innovations
time-keeping
of
a
-
"Note the following quote from Plotinus: "That
which neither has been nor will be, but simply
possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor
having ever changed - that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life-instantaneously
entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part- which belongs to Authentic Existent by
its very existence, this is the thing we are probing for this is Eternity. (TE, 225)
12 In order to achieve focus,
much that relates to the main theme of this thesis - that is,
revolutions in the nature of time - was of necessity left out. The two most obvious exclusions
are, on the 'materialist side, ' the recent changes in the physics of time (a topic that is
introduced in an interesting and comprehensive manner by Ilya Prigogene and Isabelle
Stengers in Order out of Chaos. Bolder Co: New Science Library, 1984) and, on the
'philosophical side', the work of Henri Bergson. (who is undoubtedly an important influence on
the philosophy of time found in the writings of Deleuze and Guattari - see Deleuze, Gilles.
Bergsonism. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barabara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books,
1988). To incorporate these topics would require much more time and space than is available
here.
6
system that is based on the clock. By bringing these two revolutions together,
the thesis seeks to establish a connection between abstract conceptual
thought and concrete material practices, a connection which is exemplified by
the convergence between the transcendental philosophy of time and the
socio-history of time-keeping practices. Establishing this connection, however,
requires not only a reformulation of the classical conception of time produced, as we will see, through the creation of a split between, on the one
hand, the constant structure of formal time, and, on the other, empirical
change conceived of as history - but also a reinvention of the classical notion
of eternity. This latter is found in the work of Deleuze and Guattari who
substitute the transcendence of eternity with the immanent concept of Aeon,
or the absolute Outside, conceived of as the continuous variation of an
intensive temporality. It is by way of this concept of Aeon that we will find, in
what appears as the "history" of capitalist time, Aeonic events which are at
once entirely abstract and fully material. The abstract materiality of these
events, as we will see, transfigure the boundaries between inside and out, for
though they are in no way eternal they nevertheless occur on an exterior
plane outside the interior confines of time.
From the point of view of the philosophy of time, the revolutionary
break brought on by both Kant and capitalism rests on a transformation which
occurs in how time is mapped on to the distinction between constant and
13
variable. As we will see in the chapters which follow, both critique and clocktime differentiate themselves from the classical tradition by insisting that it is
not time itself which varies, but rather that variation inheres in that which
exists in time. This distinction, between time and that which is in time, arises
from the fact that both Kant and capitalism separate temporality from the
changing patterns of astronomical cycles. Split off from the concrete rhythms
of the phenomenal world, time becomes an abstract grid, the a priori frame
13This distinction corresponds to a set of oppositions including quantity and quality, and
content and expression which will be discussed throughout this thesis. It is a contention of the
thesis that these oppositional couples -or stratified distinctions - are what constitutes the
interiority of time.
7
which structures both philosophical thought and the socio-economic and
cultural milieu. Time is no longer variable since it has become the very
presupposition of change. The stasis of eternity is thus replaced by the
constant fixture of formal time.
This transformation in the nature of time is, as will be made clear, of
fundamental importance to the whole of the Kantian system. For it is this
division, between time and what occurs in time, which ultimately
distinguishes the empirical (a posteriori) from the transcendental (a priori).
Kant first insists that time cannot be equated with alteration in the
'Transcendental Aesthetic', the very first section of the Critique. "Alteration is
an empirical phenomenon, " claims Kant, and is thus "only possible through
and in the representation of time. " (CPR, 76) This paves the way for what
Deleuze has called the 'first great Kantian reversal' (KCP, vii) which frees time
from its age old subordination to movement. Unhinged from its ties to change
and activity, time becomes an abstract condition of experience, the a priori
structure within which all change and movement takes place.
In capitalism this differentiation - between a constant temporality and
the variation of that which occurs in time - receives concrete expression
through the division between clocks and calendars. Though this split has
14
for
thousands
of years, it is only within capitalism that the distinction
existed
between these two types of time-keeping devices has become an abstract
distinction in the nature of time itself. Through the continuous innovation and
growing ubiquity of the clock, capitalism contrasts the qualitative time of the
calendar (with its differences in seasons, light, temperature etc) with the
precise, homogenous, standardized and purely quantitative ticking of the
clock. It is within the formers qualitative time that variation takes place.
Change in time is recorded by the calendar which has ceased to measure the
to
instead
become
life
subordinated
a
mechanism
rhythms of everyday
and
the developmental narrative of history. Though capitalism makes use of these
14 Sundials have been in use since the third millennium B.C. and evidence of water clocks (or
clepsydra) have been found as early as the sixth century B.C. (HH, 20-21)
8
15
it is also essential for the capitalist mode of
in
time,
variations
calendric
production that time be treated as an abstract quantity that does not vary. It is
this that is provided by the time of the clock.
By establishing the difference between the structure of a constant
temporality and the variable experiences of history, both Kant and capitalism
have created a fracture in the appearance of time. It is by way of this fracture,
(and its coinciding synthesis) that these two revolutions have managed to
overturn the classical tradition and inaugurate what may be called the modern
16
time.
conception of
Yet, despite the fact that the critical understanding of temporality finds
its parallel in the culture and technics of capitalism there is an adamant
insistence, on both sides, that a fundamental distinction be maintained
between the philosophy of time and its socio-economic and cultural
manifestations. This distinction rests, as we will see, on the apparent
divergence between transcendental and historical production. The explicit aim
of The Critique of Pure Reason is to establish, through immanence of criteria,
the legitimate domain of reason and thereby dismiss the 'groundless
17
pretensions' of metaphysical speculation. From the point of view of critique,
15This is a crucial point that will be made clear in our discussion of the economist BoehmBawerk found in chapter 2.
16Deleuze uses this phrase when describing the Kantian conception of time. Though I have
not included any strict definition of modernity, I have used the term to describe both the
Kantian philosophy of time and the time-keeping practices that developed with the clock. Used
In this manner it is meant to differentiate both Kant and clock time from, on the one hand, the
philosophy of time upheld in the classical tradition, and, on the other, from the contemporary
or'postmodem' time-keeping practices that have emerged within cyberspace.
"To quote Kant's famous passage: it is obviously the effect not of levity but of the matured
judgment of the age, which refuses to be put off with illusory knowledge. It is a call to reason
to undertake anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely that of self-knowledge, and to
institute a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims, and dismiss all groundless
pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its own eternal and unalterable
laws. This tribunal is no other than the critique of pure reason. ' (CPR, 9)
9
therefore, it is strictly illegitimate to hold that time is the product (or the image)
of eternity. In revolt against this classical doctrine, Kant replaces transcendent
creation with the immanent synthesis of the understanding. Operating in a
realm which is constitutive of experience these synthetic processes construct
time as an a priori epistemological representation. This representation, which
Kant calls the form of inner sense, is the universal and necessary
precondition for all empirical phenomena. Put simply then, time, for Kant, is a
mental construct within which empirical reality takes place. History, which
develops in time, cannot be equated with transcendental synthesis since the
very existence of history presupposes and is dependent upon the
transcendental construction of time.
Karl Marx, the most famous philosopher of capitalism, shares Kant's
insistence of the need to develop an account of production which does not
seek recourse in divine transcendence. 18However, unlike Kant, Marx
maintains that the ultimate realm of production lies not in the synthetic
processes of reason but rather in the dialectical forces of history. Thus, for
Marx, the a priori are themselves subject to change. Produced by the dynamic
forces of history, formal time is not an epistemological representation but a
contingent historical formation. Marx's historical materialism, 19(his
"Hegelianism turned on its head"), thus maintains that outside the
particularities of the capitalist time machine is a form of variable time with a
logic of its own. The exteriority of this temporality
is
which
not exhaustively
-
structured by any specific mode of production - is ultimately responsible for
creating the time of capitalism (conceived of as both the duration of the
capitalist mode of production and the structure of time prevailing within it).
18This is obvious from the famous Marxist
contention that religion is the opiate of the people.
19*Accordingto Engels' 1892 introductionto Socialism:Utopianand Scientific,historical
materialism designate[s] that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and
the great moving power of all important historical events in the economic development of
society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division
of society into distinct classes, and in the struggle of these classes against one another. "
(DMT, 234)
10
Thus, both critical thought which refuses to acknowledge its socioeconomic surroundings, and Marxism which denies the possibility of
transcendental synthesis, insist that - despite their obvious connections
the
-
philosophical and socio-technical revolution of time be kept separate and
opposed. This opposition, as we have seen, ultimately rests on the fact that
the privilege given by transcendental production to the ahistoricity of a
constant time comes into conflict with the primacy that historical materialism
grants to the variations of a temporality governed by the logic of events. With
this conflict, the path to exteriority - on both sides - is lost, as each revolution
seeks to contain the other by presenting itself as a higher and more primary
inside. Neither Kantian thought, nor the Marxist analyses of capitalism, then,
will accept that the exterior realm productive of time is constituted by the
eternal transcendence of God. Yet; they nevertheless come into conflict over
what should substitute for eternal creation in the modern conception of time.
Transcendental critique, the critique of political economy and the secular time
of capitalist societies thus converge in their understanding of time but diverge
in their accounts of what lies outside it as the ultimate force of production.
The modem revolution in the nature of time is thus only partially complete.
For though the classical conception of time has been overturned, the notion
of eternity - the traditional zone exterior to time - has been left basically
unchanged (if only by being ignored).
Deleuze and Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia presents itself as
a revolution in transcendental thought which seeks to replace Kantian
idealism with a type of Spinozistic materialism. 20This involves, as we will
20Deleuze and Guattari's involvement
with Spinozisic philosophy is hard to overestimate.
Spinoza's nonreductive immanent, cosmic and ethical materialism could be said to be the
single most important influence in their work. Though the philosophy of Spinoza will be
touched upon in chapter 3, to explore it in detail is beyond the scope of this thesis. To fully
engage with this topic see Deleuze's two books on Spinoza (both listed in the bibliography)
and the numerous references to Spinoza found in A Thousand Plateaus.
11
see, a critique of the Kantian system itself. For according to Deleuze and
Guattari, the Kantian notion that transcendental production occurs under the
unity of the subject and is therefore epistemological in nature, is strictly
illegitimate from the viewpoint of critique. Refusing to see a priori synthesis as
an idealist representation, they reconstruct transcendental philosophy on the
basis of an immanent materialism. This combines the critical method with a
Spinozistic vision of a world laid out on a single plane (substance or
Nature). 21Transcendental synthesis, thus cease to function as the interior
operations of reason and become instead machinic22diagrams for the
intensive multiplicities that compose and populate an exterior body, which
Deleuze and Guattari call the plane of consistency, planomenon, or body
without organs.
Whereas Kant's Copernican revolution involved a reformulation of the
nature of time, so Capitalism and Schizophrenia's materialism involves a
revolution in the nature of eternity. This requires, as we will see, that the
opposition between an interiorized notion of time, associated with change,
multiplicity and becoming, and the conception of the outside as a divine,
transcendent and unified eternity, be overturned. Transcendental materialism
thus substitutes the classical disjunction between time and eternity with the
difference between two planes of composition which function machinically to
produce the distinction between extensive and intensive time. The former of
these - named Chronos - is attributed to the plane of organization and
development, while the latter belongs to the immanent plane of consistency
and is given the name of Aeon. With the concept of Aeon, Deleuze and
21To quote from Deleuze: "Everyone knows the first principle of Spinoza: one substance for all
the attributes. But we also know the third, fourth or fifth principle: one Nature for all bodies,
one Nature for all individuals, a Nature that is itself an individual varying in an infinite number
of ways. What is involved is no longer the affirmation of a single substance, but rather the
laying out of a common plane of immanence on which all bodies, all minds and all individuals
are situated. " (SPP, 122)
12
Guattari bring to philosophy a notion of eternity which is not based on the
wholeness and unity of a transcendent beyond but on the flat multiplicity of an
immanent outside.
In the biblical tradition the eternal cuts into time through singular
events that are explosive and highly dramatic in nature. At the limit, it appears
as genesis and apocalypse, the beginning and end of creation. Beyond these
points, the eternal is encountered only after death, on judgment day, where it
carries the threat or promise of damnation and salvation, or when it crashes
into history interrupting the linear order of time through miracles and divine
revelation.
We will see that - though no less intense - the connection between
Aeon and Chronos is much more quiet and subtle. For Aeon does not
manifest itself in time. Though it is itself composed of singular events - which
can be precisely dated and named - these events compose a virtual plane of
intensity that positively avoids climactic actualization. Deleuze and Guattari
call these Aeonic occurrences plateaus and show how they constitute an
exteriority that haunts the successive order of extensive temporality.
The final chapter of the thesis takes the pervasive sense of anticlimax
that accompanied the dawn of the third millennium as indexing one such
event and explores Y2K -a sign that operates as both a date and a name - as
a singular Aeonic occurrence. While this may first appear farfetched, we will
see that, though it has now been dismissed as irrelevant, Y2K is crucial to the
transcendental philosophy of time. This is primarily due to the fact that, as a
singularity, it shares all the characteristic features of Aeon including: an
effective virtuality, a nonsignifying semiotic, a disruption - or positive
avoidance - of extensive succession and an immanent machinic abstraction.
Cutting across the stratified segmentation of Chronos, Y2K thus
22The term machine will be used throughout the thesis as it is crucial to the work of Deleuze
and Guattari. It will be explained in more detail in chapter 3. Briefly, though, Deleuze and
Guattari use the term machine, not to signify a technical apparatus, but rather to designate the
immanent circuits of production that constitute any flat assemblage (regardless of its particular
form or substance)..
13
functions as a mutation (or accident) both in the structure of formal time and
in the empirical development of history. It collapses the distinction between
time's formal expression and the content which happen to fill it, dissolving the
rigid opposition between technics and culture, constant and variable and
temporality and change. In this way Y2K constitutes an event - not in time but
of time - that allows the capitalist production of temporality to escape from
the interiority of history and thus exemplifies the convergence between the
material practices of time-keeping systems and processes of abstraction
which are conventionally located in the philosophy of time.
14
Chapter 1: Philosophy's
Copernican Revolution.
The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had
neither life nor history ... I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral
performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than
did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee drinking,
writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time,
and the neighbours knew that it was exactly half-past three-o-clock when
Immanuel Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight fitting coat, with
his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue
called after him to this day the `Philosophers walk. "... What a strange contrast
did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world annihilating
thought! In sooth, had the citizens of Konigsberg had the least presentiment
of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt a far more awful
dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of the executioner, who
can but kill the body. But the worthy folks saw in him nothing more than a
Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed in his customary hour, they
greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him.
Heinrich Heine. Religion and Philosophy in Germany
p. 108-9
49. Ko. Revolution.
[Molting]
Fire in the water. The image of REVOLUTION. Thus the superior man
sets the calendar in order and makes the seasons clear.
I Ching: The Book of Changes, p. 190
1.0 Introduction:
The Discovery of Transcendental Time
In 1781 Immanuel Kant published the first edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason. The history of philosophy registers the date as the moment of
Kant's "Copernican revolution, " a moment in which Kant is said to have
accomplished in the realm of thought what Copernicus had accomplished,
the
Traditionally,
two
in
story of
the
realm of astronomy.
over
centuries earlier,
Kant's revolution emphasizes epistemology and concentrates on the role of
15
the human intellect in constituting the external world. It is here, we are told,
that one should locate the dramatic shift that is at the core of Kantian
'
philosophy. What this chapter will argue, however, is that this emphasis, on
the role of the intellect, mistakes what is truly revolutionary in critical thought.
The argument, which draws on Deleuze's reading of Kant,2 consists of two
main points. First, that the transformation of the human subject is merely a
consequence of Kant's more fundamental innovation, the discovery of the
realm of the transcendental, and second, that to appreciate the truly
revolutionary nature of this discovery we must turn our attention away from
the enlightened subject of reason and focus instead on the occulted nature of
time.
The most common approach to Kant is to read him as an
epistemologist, a philosopher who is predominantly concerned with how
knowledge can be justified. "ccording to this account The Critique of Pure
Reason centers around the question: "How are a priori synthetic judgements
1 In the following section this position will be illustrated through the writings of Heinrich
Heine. Though Heine poetic and lyrical language is unique amongst the
commentators on Kant, his views are not at all unconventional. In the '"Past Masters"
text on Kant, for example, Roger Scruton, writes that the essence of the Copernican
revolution is that 'self consciousness requires that the world must appear to conform
to the categories' (Scruton, Roger. Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982, p.
28). The Encyclopedia of Philosophy concurs that this epistemological view is the key
to understanding Kantian thought. 'Kant's principle task in the Critique of Pure
Reason was to determine the cognitive powers of reason, to find out what it could and
Encyclopedia
in
the
Immanuel"
("Kant,
in
of
knowledge"
the
could not achieve
way of
Philosophy Volume 3. Edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan Publishing,
1967, p.305)
2 This is comprised both of Deleuze's book on Kant and a series of lectures on Kant
that have been reprinted on the Internet (see bibliography).
16
possible? " (CPR, 59) To answer this question Kant must begin by defining
what he means by the synthetic a priori.
In the order of time, " writes Kant in the preface to the first Critique,
"we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all
our knowledge begins. But though all our knowledge begins with experience it
does not follow that it all arises out of experience. " (CPR, 41) With this
distinction - between knowledge that is based in experience and knowledge
that is independent of it - Kant separates the a priori from the a posteriori.
This difference is absolute and rigorously determined. Empirical knowledge
which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience" (CPR-43) gives rise
to judgments which are particular and contingent (the sun rose today) while a
priori knowledge, on the other hand, gives rise to judgments which are
universal and necessary (today succeeded yesterday). Since knowledge
gained from experience is always particular and contingent it can never be the
basis for judgments which are universal and necessary. Thus, Kant writes,
"necessity and strict universality are the sure criteria of a priori knowledge. "
(CPR, 44) This difference between the a priori and the a posteriori is the first
basic division which allows Kant to demarcate the singular zone of knowledge
that he is concerned with in the first Critique.
Yet this distinction, between knowledge that is based in experience
for
itself
in
it,
is
is
independent
knowledge
that
sufficient
not
of
and
In
to
discover
Kantian
thought.
order
the
of
central problematic
understanding
the transcendental, yet another distinction was required. The two sides of the
17
table had to be split in half. To accomplish this, Kant drew another line on a
different axes, cutting across both the a priori and the a posteriori. 3 This line
corresponds to the difference between knowledge that is analytic and
knowledge that is synthetic.
Analytic a priori cover logical truths. By drawing out "something that is
(covertly) contained within a concept" (CPR, 48) they analyze, elucidate, or
explicate what is already implicitly known. Kant's example is as follows: "If I
say, for instance 'All bodies are extended' this is an analytic judgment. For
do not require to go beyond the concept which I connect with 'body' in order
to find extension as bound up with it. " (CPR, 48)
Analytic knowledge is restricted to the domain of the a priori. It does
not arise empirically. For "judgments of experience, " writes Kant, "are one
and all synthetic" (CPR, 49) By the term 'synthetic' Kant is referring to
knowledgethat 'goes beyondthe concept'. To make the judgment 'this body
is heavy', for example, is to connect concepts 'synthetically'. For since not all
bodies are heavy, one cannot arrive at the concept heavy from an analyses of
4
'body'.
the concept
Transcendental philosophy concerns itself with the final box in the
table - the one that contains the 'synthetic a priori". The puzzle which it sets
for itself is how synthetic knowledge can be produced independently of
3 See Table 1 in the appendix.
4 On page 49 of the first critique Kant uses this example to explain synthetic
judgements which are made from experience.
18
experience. The prime examples of synthetic a priori knowledge are found
within the realm of mathematics. As the commentator Alfredo Ferrarin writes,
"If what the Critique shows is the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements, it
is mathematics that takes advantage of this ampliative principle with greatest
confidence and success. " (KECI, 147) 7+5'
12, to stick with the example
that is repeated throughout the secondary literature on Kant,5 is a synthetic a
priori judgment. It is a priori since it, like all mathematical propositions, is both
universal and necessary. It is synthetic since neither the number 7 nor the
number 5 has contained within it the number 12. "The concept of 12, " writes
Kant, "is by no means already thought in merely thinking the union of 7 and 5;
and I may analyze my concept of such a possible sum as long as I please,
still I shall never find the 12 in it." (CPR, 53)
Though philosophers had long been concerned with such a priori truths
as are found in mathematics it was Kant who first recognized them as being
6
synthetic. Thus transcendental philosophy,
even when confined to
epistemology, is far from being a mere exercise in the catalogue of
knowledge. For in questioning the tendency to divide everything between the
a priori analytic judgment and the a posteriori synthetic judgment Kant
"exposed the insufficiency of certain philosophical categories and conceptual
5 Kant uses this example himself both in the first critique and in the Prolegomena to
Future Metaphysics.
6 As Deleuze
writes, 'analytic a priori judgment that meant something, synthetic a
posteriori judgment that meant something, but synthetic a priori judgment, that's truly
a monster. ' (KST, 9)
19
frames. "(KST, 9) Focusing his attention on the synthetic a priori he exploded
old distinctions and in so doing discovered a powerful new machine.
According to Kant, synthesis is "a blind but indispensable function of
the soul. " Though "we are scarcely ever conscious" of its power, without it,
he insists, "we should have no knowledge whatsoever. " (CPR 112) In
focusing on the connections and constructions of this hidden realm, the
Critique of Pure Reason develops a 'synthesized way of handling
philosophy''
which is not based on analyses of that which is already given
but on an "extension of our previously possessed concepts. " (CPR, 47) It is,
writes Kant "a genuinely new addition to all previous knowledge. " (CPR, 51)
It is this 'new addition' that accounts for the shift in the subject's
position which occurs in Kantian thought. What is important to recognize here,
is that this shift is a result, a corollary, of the more fundamental discovery of
this abstract and productive realm of knowledge. Before Kant, the subject was
found buried, submerged underground, chained in the darkness of Plato's
cave. According to this traditional vision, the subject was trapped in the body,
forced to access the world through the unreliability of the perceptual
apparatus. An unfortunate fool, blinded by ignorance, duped into mistaking
shadows for reality, the subject could not help but deform the world, mutating
it into the falsity of illusion. Philosophy's striving consisted in its promise to
provide the escape route. Operating with a truth that depended on a
6 This phrase comes from a question raised by Deleuze in an introductory lecture on
Kant. "Why, ' Deleuze asks, "wouldn't there also be a synthesized or electronic way of
20
"harmony between the subject and the world, " (KST, 5) philosophy struggled
to cut the chains, to correct the inherent deformity, to free the prisoner from
the world of shadows and illusions.
Through his discovery of the transcendental, Kant replaces harmony
defective,
becomes
deceived
longer
The
and
no
subject,
with circuitry.
productive and constitutive. Having given up the impossible attempt at
discovers
he
has
being
"the
the
to
the
rational
of
world,
objects
conforming
to
the
Kant
14)
After
the
(KCP,
must
conform
"
world
of
objects
new power.
"
Deleuze,
teaches
Revolution
Copernican
first
the
writes
thing
us,
"The
us.
"is that it is we who are giving the orders. " (KCP, 14) The prisoner has
become a legislator.
As previously noted, it is this shift in the subject's position which is
In
thought.
Kant's
be
a
to
the
taken
revolutionary
traditionally
core of
at
dramatic passage,the poet Heinrich Heine,describesthis, philosophy's
Copemican revolution, as follows:
Formerly, when men conceived the world as standing still, and the sun
failed
to
it,
agree
calculations
round
astronomical
as revolving
the
But
Copernicus
the
and
still
stand
sun
when
made
accurately.
So
it,
behold!
Everything
admirably.
accorded
round
earth revolve
formerly reason, like the sun moved round the universe of phenomena
the
bade
light
But
Kant,
it.
throw
sun stand
to
reason,
upon
and sought
is
turns
the
and
round,
universe of phenomena now
still, and
illuminated the moment it comes within the region of the intellectual
orb. (RPG, 114)
Yet, while Heine has capturedthe drama of Kant's discovery,his
handling philosophy. ' (SLK, 1)
21
account reveals a certain problem. For if the stress is on human reason,
Kant's allusions to Copernicus are somewhat puzzling. Before Copernicus,
Heine reminds us, the earth stood as the central pivot or axis around which
everything else revolved. Modem astronomy, which is based on the
Copernican system, removed the earth from this central position, making it
equal to any other planet. The Copernican revolution thus derailed us from
our privileged status in relation to phenomena. Kant, on the other hand, is
said to have done the exact opposite. Whereas Copernicus displaced us from
the center of the universe, Kant put us there. Why, then, does Kant speak of
his philosophy as Copernican? For it would seem that the emphasis on the
human intellect is not a sufficient explanation. Perhaps, if we look more
closely, we might find some other reason for this seemingly confused
analogy.
In the early years of the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus, a polish
astronomer, attained immortal fame by overthrowing the Ptolemaic universe
of the ancient world. Frustrated with the impossibility of achieving accurate
measurements of astronomical movements, Copernicus began to question
Ptolemy's geocentric vision. Instead of assuming that the stars revolved
around a still earth, Copernicus thought, to quote Kant, "whether he might
have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to
remain at rest. " (CPR, 23) Copernicus posited a heliocentric world in which
the stars no longer measured time. He explained the day by the earth's
rotation on its own axes and the year by its annual cycle around the sun. In
22
the Copernican system, then, it is the movement of the earth which marks out
the temporality of the astronomical calendar.
The Critique of Pure Reason, writes Kant, proceeds "precisely on the
lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. " (CPR, 23) Inspired by the
astronomers' method, Kant attempted an analogous experiment in
philosophy. Frustrated by the inherent instability of metaphysics, critical
thought seeks to attain more solid foundations by focusing not on the
authority of experience but on the conditions which make experience
possible.
It is well known that Copernicus' discovery met with fierce resistance,
both from natural philosophy and from the church. For these two institutions
were allied in their commitment to maintaining the authority of Aristotle, who
had insisted that the earth stood still. This resistance was heightened by the
fact that despite Copernicus' findings the world still appeared to conform to
Ptolemy's ancient vision. Copernicus was thus responsible for a strange and
mysterious revolution in which nothing seemed to change but through which
everything has been transformed. It is in this way, as we will see, that Kant is
a true Copernican. For the Copernican revolution, whether in astronomy or
philosophy, changes nothing at the level of experience. Our perceptions and
even the way we talk about those perceptions have not altered. Phenomena
remain the same. The sun still appears to revolve. The earth still appears to
stand still. External bodies still appear to be in motion. We still say that the
sun rises and sets. The difference is, and this is the revolution, that now
23
everybody knows it is only a manner of speaking.
In a series of lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason, Gilles Deleuze
maps out a singular and original account of Kant's Copernican revolution
which is based neither on epistemology nor on a change in the position of the
intellect but on a shift in the nature of appearance itself.
According to Deleuze, the classical tradition structured the world
around a basic opposition. "The whole of classical philosophy from Plato
onwards, " he writes, "seemed to develop itself within the, frame of a duality
between sensible appearances and intelligible essences. " (KST, 4) Thus,
previous to Kant the world was divided between, on the one hand, the
degraded realm of sensation which was based on bodily knowledge and
experience, and on the other hand, the realm of ideas, pure forms or
essences which were transcendent and therefore untainted by the blemishes
of sensation.
For Plato a priori knowledge was the proof of transcendence. His
dialogues insist that the very fact that there is knowledge independent of
experience shows that reason remembers a time when it was unfettered by
the body's cage and was free to gaze upon the pure essence of things. 8 The
philosophical distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge was
' One of the most famous examples of the Platonic view of the a priori occurs in the
Meno where Socrates infers the transcendence of the Forms through a slave's
knowledge of geometry. See Plato, 'Meno' in Plato-The Collected Dialogues. edited
by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1961 (especially pages 363-374).
24
thus, for Plato, evidence of the fact that our capture in the illusory realm of
phenomena could be opposed to an exteriority characterized by the
transcendent truth of the idea.
The Critique of Pure Reason overturns the classical tradition by
developing a philosophy that is no longer grounded in this basic opposition.
"For the disjunctive couple appearance/essence, " writes Deleuze, "Kant will
substitute the conjunctive couple what appears/conditions of appearance.
Everything is new in this. " (KST 4)
With Kant, then, phenomena cease to be trapped by the ancient
duality. "It's like a bolt of lightening" (KST, 4) The world of appearances
"The
is
Deleuze,
the
is
left
instead,
What
to
apparition.
according
vanish.
I
don't
Full
it
in
far
is
stop.
ask
appears.
as
appears
so
apparition, what
is
if
it
false
false.
don't
is
behind,
I
if
there
or
not
myself
ask
something
myself
The apparition is not at all captured in the oppositional couple, in the binary
distinction where we find a PPearances distinct from essences. " (KST, 4).
No longer bound by the fundamental distinction of classical thought,
Kant transforms the meaning and implications of a priori knowledge. "In the
case of the a priori, " writes Deleuze, "Kant "borrows a word but he
Kant
the
in
its
"
Plato,
(KST,
1)
For
a priori,
sense.
renews
unlike
completely
as we will see, is associated with the immanence of abstraction and not the
transcendence of the eternal forms. To quote from Deleuze: "Kant is the one
25
who discovers the prodigious domain of the transcendental. He is the
analogue of the great explorer - not of another world, but of the upper and
lower reaches of this one. " (DR, 135) In opposition to the transcendent ideas
and logic of the analytic a priori, the synthetic a priori constitute a continuous
process of production that is both exterior and immanent to our experience of
the world. The basic question of transcendental philosophy "how are a priori
synthetic judgments possible? " can thus be restated as follows: given a
certain experience what are the conditions that went in to producing it?
Kant's answer, as we will see, shows that that which is exterior - or
independent - of experience is not a transcendent world above us but rather
9
he
transcendental.
It
is
the
immanent
this which
outside.
calls
an
As was noted in the introduction, the classical disjunction between
essence and appearance corresponds to the distinction in the philosophy of
time between, on the one hand, the phenomena of temporality and change,
and, on the other, the essence of eternity. Overturning this classical duality
between essence and appearance requires not only a transformation in way
we approach phenomena but also a fundamental reinvention in the
philosophy of time. As we will see in the chapter which follows, the discovery
of the domain of the transcendental ultimately rests on this reinvention - or
revolution - in the nature of time. Deleuze, recognizing this, writes in an
introduction to Kant that "all the creations and novelties that Kantianism will
9 According to Deleuze, `The whole Kantian notion of the transcendental is created in
order to refute the classical notion of the transcendent. The transcendental is above
all not the transcendent' (SLK, 7)
26
bring to philosophy turn on a certain problem of time and an entirely new
conception of time. (KST, 1) It is to this new conception of time which this
chapter now turns.
27
1.1 Transcendental
Aesthetic: Time as the Form of Inner Sense.
Until now the task we have given ourselves was to represent space, the
moment has come to think time.
Gilles Deleuze, Kant: Synthesis and Time, p. 1
With its central divisions, parts, sections, chapters, books, sections of
chapters, and chapters of books, the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason
seems more like the work of a ramshackle artificial intelligence than that of a
human being. ' The immense scale and complexity of Kant's 'thinking
machine' is revealed with one glance at the table of contents.
The bulk of the text is divided into two main parts, the 'Transcendental
Aesthetic' and the 'Transcendental Logic'. This split corresponds to the
central distinction in Kantian thought which divides the intuition from the
understanding. Intuition deals with the realm of sensation. Receptive and
immediate, it is the form in which the diversity of sense material is presented
to the mind. Understanding, on the other hand, is defined as the
'spontaneous production of concepts'. (CPR, 92) An active mediation, rather
than a receptive and immediate presentation, it serves to represent the
perceptions that are given to us in intuition in accordance with the categories
' De Quincy's text 'The Last Days of Immanuel Kant' gives further evidence of this
seemingly preposterous claim. Besides the meticulous order of his daily schedule,
Kant never perspired, evoked rigorous numerological arrangements for the guests at
his dinner table, and, at his deathbed, when all human faculties had left him, was still
able to speak at length on any problem in history, philosophy or mathematics. See: De
Quincy, Thomas. 'The Last Days of Immanuel Kant! in The Collected Writings of
28
of reason. Time appears first in the former category. It is defined in the
opening section of the Critique of Pure Reason as a 'pure intuition, ' or the
'form of inner sense'. (CPR, 77)
The Transcendental Aesthetic, "the science of a priori sensibility"
(CPR, 66) begins with a strict process of elimination. It is concerned only with
what is left after both the concepts of the understanding and the matter of
Kant
What
been
have
are
what
calls the
remains
stripped
away.
sensibility
'pure intuitions, or 'the form of appearances. ' These are defined as the
The
the
that
world.
of
perception
conditions
constitute
our
underlying
transcendental media for the reception of sensible content, they constitute the
For
Kant
there are only
take.
form
the
apparition
must
which
structure and
two such forms, space and time.
Kant defines space as "the form of outer sense". It is "the property of
to
"we
through
ourselves objects which are
represent
which
our mind"
outside us. " (CPR, 67) Thus, for Kant, space is the form in which the external
That
is
that
to
to
the
is
say,
we sense as
everything
senses.
presented
world
To
from
being
in
to
space.
quote
of
as
perceive
we
necessarily
us
external
the first Critique:
In order that certain sensations be referred to something outside
me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in
be
I
in
that
I
find
may
able to
order
similarly
and
myself),
which
represent them as outside and alongside one another, and
Thomas De Quincy Vol. IV. London: A&C Black, 1897.
29
accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the
representation of space must be presupposed. (CPR 68)
Time, on the other hand, is defined as "the form of inner sense, that is
of the intuition of ourselves and of our inner state. " (CPR, 77). In the
'Transcendental Aesthetic, ' then, time provides the underlying structure of all
our states of mind. It is what conditions the very experience of thought,
including our awareness of outer perceptions and the consciousness we have
of ourselves. As Kant writes, "everything which belongs to inner
determinations is represented in relation to time. " (CPR, 68)
In the following section we will see that in making time the form of inner
sense Kant revolutionizes the classical philosophy of time both by liberating it
from its dependence on change and by releasing it from an implicit spatial
bias.
According to Deleuze, the first great Kantian reversal in the Critique of
Pure Reason was to free time from its subordination to movement Taking
2
it
Kant,
joint'
is
Deleuze
to
'time
Hamlet's phrase the
and applying
out of
shows how in taking time off its hinges, Kant develops a "sort of modern
consciousness of time. " (KST, 1) In this 'modern consciousness' time is
separated from the external world of space and thus undergoes a sort of
2 In his text 'On four poetic formulas that might summarize the Kantian philosophy"
(found in both Kant's Critical Philosophy and in Essays Critical and Clinical) Deleuze
uses this Shakespearean quote -'the time is out of joint' - to explore Kantian thought.
To quote Deleuze: 'Hamlet is the first hero who truly needed time to act, whereas
earlier heroes were subject to time as the consequence of an original movement
(Aeschylus) or an aberrant action (Sophocles). The Critique of Pure Reason is the
book of Hamlet, the prince of the north. (ECC, 28)
30
topological twist. What was once located in the external world is folded in.3
Time, detached from the movement of that which is outside us becomes the
structuring principle which conditions the inside. Thus, as we will see, in
making time the form of inner sense Kant not only redefines the classical
conception of time, he also transforms the traditional understanding of
interiority and its relation to the outside.
In Plato's dichotomized world, time exists on only one side of the
mirror. Essences, which are eternal and real, exist in a transcendent realm
outside time. Time, on the other hand, belongs to the world of appearances,
which, according to Plato, is governed by a continuous process of change
and movement. For Plato, then, it is change and movement that are the
defining features of time.
In his dialogue Timeaus, Plato describes time as the "image of
eternity" (T, 1167). He perceives this image in the movement of the stars and
thus equates the production of time with the 'perfect and immutable' cycles
within which the planets revolve. "Such was the mind and thought of God in
the creation of time. The sun and the moon and five other stars which have
the name of planets were created by him in order to distinguish and preserve
the numbers of time. " (T, 1167). In the 'curved time' of a 'circular universe
Plato's God has bent the skies into an arc. "A Demiurge which makes
3 To quote Kant: "Time is not something which exists of itself, or which inheres in
things as an objective determination, and it does not, therefore, remain when
abstraction is made of all subjective conditions of its intuition.... Time is nothing but the
subjective condition under which alone intuition can take place in us. "(CPR, 76)
31
circles, " (SLK, 2) as Deleuze puts it, has created a world whose map is
observed in the heavenly spheres. Thus, for Plato, 'the name' and 'the
number' of time can be found in the changes and motion that take place in
the sky.
Kant's break with Plato is absolute. For, according to the first Critique,
movement is empirical, which is to say it exists at the level of experience.
Transcendental philosophy, he writes, "cannot count the concept of alteration
among its a priori data. " (CPR, 75) For Kant the revolutions of the stars, the
swing of a pendulum, the sand in an hourglass all occur in time and as such
fall outside the problematic of critique. Plato's perfect image can not be time,
for, "time itself does not alter but only something which is in time. " (CPR, 82)
According to Kant, time explains the possibility of movement, but movement
is not time. "The concept of alteration and with it the concept of motion, as
alteration of place, he writes, " "is possible only through and in the
representation of time. " (CPR, 75)
Thus, Kant liberates the form of time from the endless cycle of the
Platonic world. Time is no longer contained within the circular revolutions of
the planets. Instead, it is the relation of time to motion itself that revolves. In
Kant, writes Deleuze, "time is no longer related to the movement which it
measures, but movement is related to the time which conditions it. " The
Critique of Pure Reason conceives of a `straight line" of time that is cut off
32
from its subordination to all that exists in time. 4 To quote from Deleuze:
Time is no longer coiled up in such a way that it is subordinated to
the measure of something other than itself, such as, for example,
astronomical movement. Everything happens as if, having been
coiled up so as to measure the passage of celestial bodies, time
unrolls itself like a sort of serpent, it shakes off all subordination to a
movement or a nature, it becomes time in itself for itself, it becomes
pure and empty time. It measures nothing anymore. Time has
taken on its own excessiveness. It is out of its joints, which is to say
its subordination to nature; its now nature which is subordinated to
it. (KST, 12)
Since time is already presupposed in motion, Kant, 'the great
explorer', must begin to search elsewhere. Looking behind objects to
discover the conditions of their production, Kant finds that time is "not an
empirical concept that has been derived from any experience. " (CPR, 74) In
the abstract realm of the transcendental, Kant discovers a form of time that is
independent of the experience of motion.
It would first appear that Kant finds a predecessorin Aristotle who
modifies the Platonic vision, by making a distinction between motion and time.
Though Aristotle connects time to the cycles of astronomical change he does
not equate it with them. His argument rests on two points. First, that while
4 It is interesting to note that Foucault, when writing of Deleuze, evokes the 'straightening' of
time that is initially produced by the first Critique. The circle must be abandoned as a faulty
principle of return; we must abandon our tendency to organize everything into a sphere. All
things return on the straight and narrow by way of a straight and labyrinth line" (TP, 166) This
notion of the straight labyrinth of time is used by Deleuze to designate the transcendental form
of time. In the preface to Kant's Critical Philosophy, he writes as follows: We move from one
labyrinth to another. The labyrinth is no longer a circle, or a spiral which would translate its
complications, but a thread, a straight line, all the more mysterious for being simple,
inexorable as Borges says, 'the labyrinth which is composed of a single straight line, and
which is indivisible, incessant. ' (KCP, vii) Deleuze also uses the notion of a straight labyrinth to
describe the time of Aeon (a concept that will be discussed in detail in chapter 3).
33
time exists everywhere, movement only occurs in particular things. Second,
that while things that move can be either fast or slow, time itself does not
shift in speed. "It is evident, then, " writes Aristotle, "that time is neither
movement nor independent of movement. " (P, 371)
In order to discover the precise relation between motion and time,
Aristotle turns to number. To quote his famous formula "time is just this - the
number of motion. " (P, 372) The circular revolutions, the heavenly spheres
are still linked to time but the two are no longer directly equivalent. "Time, is
only movement, ' writes Aristotle "in so far as it admits of enumeration. " (P,
372) Change must be numbered for it to be time.
"Time, then, " for Aristotle, "is a kind of number. " (P, 372) The kind of
number that it is, rests on a distinction made in the Physics, between the
"number with which we count", and "the number of things which are
is
from
"Number,
in
Physics:
To
two ways 373).
the
(P,
used
quote
counted"
both of what is counted or countable and also of that which we count. Time,
then, is what is counted, not that with which we count: these are different
kinds of thing. (P, 372)
Thus, Aristotle, like Kant, seeks to discover time by shifting focus away
from the concreteness of astronomy. However, as we will see, the abstraction
he makes in the direction of number is ultimately subordinated to empirical
determined
time
Aristotle
For
to
the
are
of
as
numbers
according
movement.
"the measure of a quantity of change. " (P, 375)
34
For Kant, as for Aristotle, time is conceived as being fundamentally
numeric. Kant recognizes that any representation cannot help but serve to
spatialize time. Since time 'yields no shape' (CPR, 77) it cannot be
represented. Still, he focuses on a single spatial image that will function as an
analogy for his new form of time. For Kant, the closest we get to time in
5
is
image
the
the
line.
"We represent the time
of
space,
real number
sequence, he writes,
by a line progressing to infinity, in which the manifold
constitutes a series of one dimension only; and we reason from the properties
6
line
the
(CPR 77)
to
time.
properties of
all
of this
Yet, despite the fact that both Kant and Aristotle link time to number,
Kant breaks with Aristotle no less than with Plato. For in freeing time from its
subordination to movement, Kant had to uncouple number from
measurement. In the domain of the transcendental, the numerical processes
of time are unhinged from the concreteness of change. With Kant the number
of time thus breaks from Aristotle's classical formula. Ceasing to function as
5 Commentator Alfredo Ferrarin makes much of this, arguing that in Kant numbering
and arithmetic are practically synonymous with the generation of time.
6 This sentence continues as follows: with one exception that while the parts the
of
line are simultaneous the parts of time are always successive' (CPR, 77) Yet, it is
important to note, that while the parts of time are successive, time itself, for Kant, is
not. Deleuze is insistent on this point. "Time, ' he writes, Is no longer defined by
succession because succession concerns only things and movements which are in
time. If time itself were succession, it would need to succeed in another time, and on
to infinity. Things succeed each other in various times, but they are also simultaneous
in the same time, and they remain in an indefinite time. It is no longer a question of
defining time by succession, nor space by simultaneity, nor permanence by eternity.
Permanence, succession and simultaneity are modes and relationships of time. '
(KCP, vii-iii)
35
'the quantity of motion', the 'things that are counted' become 'that with
which we count'.
It is easier to understand what is at stake in this reversal if we map
Aristotle's distinction in the philosophy of number on to the difference
between cardinal and ordinal numbers. Cardinal numbers [one, two, three... ]
are used to express amount or quantity. Ordinal numbers, on the other hand,
are used to express position [first, second, third]. Bound to keep track of that
which it belongs to, the cardinal number is tied down, attached to what is in
time. "Cardinal, writes Deleuze, "comes from cardo; cardo is precisely the
hinge, the hinge around which the sphere of celestial bodies turns and which
makes them pass time and again through the so-called cardinal points. "
(KST, 12) Ordinal numbers, on the other hand, are indifferent to the space of
'
measurement. What counts, for them, is order not measure. In unchaining
time from its bonds to what is in time, Kant silmutaneously freed number from
its subordination to measurement. As Deleuze writes, in Kant's 'new
definition of time' number "ceases to be cardinal and becomes ordinal, a
pure order of time. " (DR, 88)
In the end therefore, despite the differences between Plato's and
Aristotle's conceptions of time, from the perspective of transcendental
7A familiar
example of ordinal numbering is that used by the library cataloguing
system. It is clear, in this case, that what is important is the order of the books and not
the amount of space between them.
36
philosophy, they are basically alike. For both belong to "a certain tradition of
antiquity, in which time is fundamentally subordinated to something which
happens in it, and this something can be determined as being change. " (SLK,
1) By separating time from the heavenly spheres and making number
independent of motion, Kant thus splits with an entire tradition. Operating
with the conjunction 'what appears/conditions of appearance, ' Kant creates
(or discovers) a disjunction between the form of time itself and the changes
which occur in time.
This distinction between the abstract form of time and the changes
which occur within it requires that time be released from its spatial
determinations. In the Critique of Pure Reason, time is no longer located in
the objects of the world or in their relations, but is situated instead in an
abstract realm that is independent from our perceptions of space. The
transcendental form of time, as we have seen, is an empty form, conceived of
as nothing but a pure ordinal sequence. Since time has no spatial dimension,
even the number line is but an analogy.
In the Transcendental Aesthetic, space, as we have seen, captures the
whole of exteriority inside itself. Thus in order to separate time from space,
time which was once located in the external world, must be folded in. For,
according to the first Critique, the only thing that is not in space is the inner
determinations of our mind. In making time the 'form of inner sense' Kant
thus locates time in the singular domain which exists outside the
representation of space.
37
This process of interiorization gives time a certain dominance over
space. For according to Kant everything that we represent as in space must
also be processed by time, precisely insofar as it is experienced (and thus
belongs to our inner states). "Appearances", writes Kant, "may, one and all,
vanish; but time (as the universal condition of their possibility) cannot itself be
removed. " (CPR, 75) Thus, for Kant, while everything that exists is in time,
time is the one thing that does not exist in space, since everything in space
'already' presupposes time. 8 To quote from the first Critique:
Time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances whatsoever.
Space, as the pure form of all outer intuition, is so far limited; it serves
as the a priori condition only of outer appearances. But since all
representations, whether they have for their objects outer things or not,
belong in themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner state;
and since this inner state stands under the formal condition of inner
intuition, and so belongs to time, time is an a priori condition of all
appearances whatsoever.... Just as I can say a priori that all outer
appearances are in space, and are determined a priori in conformity
with the relations of space, I can also say, from the principle of inner
sense, that all appearances whatsoever, that is, all objects of the
senses, are in time, and necessarily stand in time relations (CPR, 77)
Once abstracted and interiorized time takes on enormous new powers.
Productive of the actual rhythm of thought and sensation it gains control over
the whole of experience. Time, as the form of interiority, is thus absolutely
inescapable. For everything we see, think, feel, hear and know has already
been given a speed, an order and a rhythm in time. With Kant, then, the
inside ceases to be conceived of an empirical container and is instead
8 From the
perspective of transcendental philosophy, then, William Burroughs
38
thought transcendentally (as an interiority over against space and not merely
in space). One can never escape time, since time is a limit that works us from
the inside. Yet, as Deleuze notes, there is something very strange in this
notion of time as interior limit.
To think time means to substitute for the classical schema of an
exterior limitation of thought by the extended, the very very strange
idea of an interior limit to thought which works it from the inside, which
doesn't at all come from outside, which doesn't at all come from the
opacity of a substance. As if there was in thought something
impossible to think. As if thought was worked over from the inside by
something that it cannot think. (TLK, 1)
In moving from transcendence to the transcendental, Kant reworks
both the inside and the outside. Time conditions an inescapable interiority,
but in doing so opens a new and more radical exteriority, since the production
of time itself cannot be captured "within" time. In other words, the one thing
that is not interior to time is the transcendental form of time itself. Thus, in
discovering the abstract realm of the transcendental, Kant unmasks an
unanticipated immanent exteriority - an outside that does not transcend the
world but that is no less alien for that. "The greatest initiative of
transcendental philosophy", writes Deleuze, "was to introduce the form of
time into thought. " (DR, 86) Yet, as the next section will show, it is only a very
particular mode of thought that can process Kant's modern consciousness of
time. For Kant revolutionizesthe interiorityof thought only by immersingit in
formula, The only way out of time is into space' ("H, 19) can only be a trick.
39
1.2 Transcendental
Deduction: Time and the `I think'
How can man think what he does not think, inhabit by a mute occupation
something that eludes him, animate with a kind of frozen movement that
figure of himself that takes the form of a stubborn exteriority.
Foucault, Order of Things, p. 323
It is false to say: I think. One should say: one thinks me.... I is another
Rimbaud, Complete Works, p 101
I am separated from myself by the form of time.
Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy, p. ix
In modem philosophical thought it is Descartes who first secures the
borders which separates the inside from the outside. His book, The
Meditations, assures the divide by devising what has become one of
'
familiar
horror
philosophy's most
stories. Deeply suspicious of appearances,
Descartes speculates that God has been replaced by an evil demon who
tricks us into taking the exterior world for reality. Determined to escape these
demonic delusions, Descartes supposes 'that the heavens, the air, the earth,
colours, shapes, sounds and all external things that we see, are only illusions
and deceptions which he [the demon] uses to take me in. " (M, 100) Stripped
of all faith in reason and truth, Descartes imagines the external world as a
I As Slavoj Zizek
writes, the Cartesian cogito "opens up, for a brief moment, the hypothesis of
the Evil Genius who, behind my back, dominates me and pulls the strings of what I experience
as reality." Slavoj Zizek. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1993, p. 12
41
mad and uncontrollable experiment. The senses, which grant us access to
this outside world, must no longer be trusted. Even the certainties of abstract
truths such as are found in mathematics and geometry must be questioned.
For once the demon has been let in, there is no telling how far his influence
extends. Plagued by a powerful and cunning entity bent on deception,
Descartes tries to flee from the demon, demarcating the outside by a rigorous
process of philosophical doubt.
Yet, as time passes, Descartes manages to gain control and dispel the
horror which torments him. Turning in on himself, Descartes discovers that
the doubt which haunts the outside serves to ground the inside in an
2
undeniable certainty. The fact that I doubt, the Meditations famously
concludes, assures me that I exist. For, "when I doubt, there is one thing
which I cannot doubt, which is that as a self that doubts, I think. " (SLK, 2) In
doubting the objects, properties, truths and sensations of the external world,
Descartes thus carves out a secure container for the subjects insides. The
famous formula "I think therefore I am" guards us against the demonic
games that threaten our perception and knowledge of the outside world.
Separated from the dubious nature of exteriority, the Cartesian subject
thus finds its protection by folding in. For though everything outside us may
2 To quote Descartes: "There is a deceiver
is
highly
know
he
not
who
most
powerful and
-I
most highly cunning, who always industriously deceives me. If he is deceiving me then without
doubt I also am. And he might deceive me as much as he can, he will still never effect that I
would be nothing, so long as I shall cogitate that I am something. So that - all things having
been weighed enough, and more - this statement were, finally, to be established: "/ am, I exist"
is necessarily true, so often as it is uttered by me or conceived by the mind. "(Meditation 11: 3)
42
be a trick, nothing, Descartes contends, can fool us about what exists inside.
Guarded by the security of self consciousness, Descartes uses the
boundaries of a conscious interiority to rebuild his faith in the external world.
After Descartes, it is this certainty of interiority which has became the sure
foundations for philosophical inquiry. 3 Schopenhauer describes this as
follows:
By his taking cogito ergo sum as the only thing certain, and
provisionally regarding the existence of the world as problematical, the
essential and only correct starting point, and at the same time the true
point of support, of all philosophy was really found. This point, indeed,
is essentially and of necessity the subjective, our own consciousness.
For this alone is that which is immediate; everything else, be it what it
may, is first mediated by consciousness, and therefore dependent on
it. It is thus rightly considered that the philosophy of the moderns starts
with Descartes as its father. (WWR 2,3)
It would seem from the traditional account of the Copernican
revolution, with its emphasis on the synthetic powers of the human intellect,
that the Critique of Pure Reason is a continuation of this basic line. In
focusing on the constitutive inner powers of human subjectivity, Kant,
according to this interpretation, outlines a philosophical position that - in
Cartesian fashion - prioritizes the inside. By positioning reason at the center
of the universe and concentrating on the legislative powers of the
understanding, critique, according to this reading, reinforces the subject
discovered by Descartes. Kant's 'modernity', from this perspective, consists
in his belief that the external world of representations is generated by the
productive powers of interiority.
3As Deleuze writes, in Descartes "doubt was only a deter to a more secure
edifice of
43
All this dissolves, however, with the contention that Kant's 'modern
consciousness' stems not from his repositioning of the subject but from his
redefinition of time. For in making time the form of inner sense, Kant
subordinates the certainty of interiority to the productive forces of
temporalization. Transcendental philosophy, as we will see, abandons the
Cartesian line by conceiving of an inside that is passive in relation to the
immanent exteriority of time. Dismantling the security of interiority by
discovering an outside line that divides the inside from within, the Critique of
Pure Reason riddles interiority with the difference between the receptive
nature of what exists in time and the synthesizing processes of the form of
time itself. With Kant, then, the certainty of self consciousness dissolves into
questions about the relation of time to itself. Critical thought thus not only
differentiates itself from the tradition of modem philosophy which stems from
Descartes, it fractures its very foundations.
As we have seen in the discussion of the 'Transcendental Aesthetic',
the first critique divides the inside from the outside through the distinction that
it makes between space and time. Space, for Kant, as the form of outer
sense, constitutes the structure in which the objects of the external world are
presented to the mind. The form of interiority, on the other hand, is time. Kant
here defines the outside as that which exists in space and the inside as that
which occurs in time. Yet, as we have already noted, since the exteriority of
space is mediated by the inner determinations of the mind, everything that is
knowledge. ' (DD, 77)
44
in space is also in time. For Kant, then, all our experiences, whether internal
or external, are inescapably conditioned by the order and relations of time.
From the perspective of transcendental philosophy, Cartesian doubt
has an implicit spatial bias. Descartes seems far more concerned with the
ways in which the evil demon may be deceiving us about the external world of
space than he is with the deception that might be taking place in the internal
4
This becomes startlingly apparent when one recognizes that
time.
realm of
the Meditations, structured around a series of successive days, is governed
by a strict temporality5. Duped by the comfort of self consciousness,
Descartes seems blind to the fact that his entire philosophical method unfolds
inside a structure that is conditioned by time. Kant's break with Descartes
must be located here. It is impossible for Kant to make the inside the "true
point of support for philosophy" since the thought of the transcendental
insists that the inside is produced by the alterity of time.
This notion of time as the productive force of interiority depends, first of
all, on shifting the line which. separates the inside from the outside. The
4 Though Descartes claims that amongst the things which he doubts is the time in which
things endure' (Meditations 1:8) this has little practical consequence. For Descartes'
reconstruction of certainty occurs inside the passage of temporal succession (that is the days
in which the Meditations unfold). Thus, though Descartes claims he is questioning time, his
philosophical method does little to challenge the interior structure of time.
5 Deleuze claims that this structure of the Meditation makes it `the first text to introduce time
into philosophical discourse. " For unlike previous philosophical texts, with Descartes, the
unfolding of temporal succession has positive implications for what can or cannot be said. In
Descartes, says Deleuze, "there is a temporality which has unfolded which meant that he
could not say in the second what he will say in the fifth. "(TLK, 4) There is undoubtedly an irony
here. For despite the fact that time operates in the Meditations as a positive structuring
principle, Descartes nevertheless ignores the operations of time when securing his
philosophical foundations.
45
border which Descartes locates at the break between the certainty of self
consciousness and the doubt which haunts our knowledge of the outside
world is radically altered by the first critique. With Kant the division between
interiority and exteriority, as we have seen, ultimately corresponds to the
distinction between the empirical realm of experience and the transcendental
plane, which is to say that in Kant, the inside is defined as that which occurs
in time, while the outside is left to the only thing which escapes this interiority,
that is the abstract and productive forces of time itself.
In focusing on this distinction - between time and what is in time - Kant
dramatically diminishes the importance of self consciousness. For
consciousness of ourselves, to use Schopenhauer's term for the basis of
Descartes' philosophy, is, for Kant, relegated to the level of the empirical. It is
an experience which happens in time. Recognizing that "I am" is a verb
6 Kant thus questions the very core of the
by
temporality,
conditioned
Cartesian formula. The proposition 'I think' or 'I exist thinking, ' writes Kant,
"is an empirical proposition. " (CPR, 381) To quote from the first critique:
Consciousness of self according to the determinations of our state of
inner perception is merely empirical, and always changing. No fixed
and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances.
Such consciousness is usually named inner sense, or empirical
apperception. (CPR, 136)
6 As Deleuze writes the assertion 'I am a thing which thinks' serves however implicitly to
bind the I think to a determinate entity in time "We cannot say with Descartes 'I think therefore
I am. I am a thing which thinks. ' If it is true that the I think is a determination, it implies in this
respect an indeterminate existence (1am). But nothing so far tells us under what form this
existence is determined by the I think: it is determinable only in time, under the form of time,
thus as the existence of a phenomenal, receptive or changing ego. (KCP, viii)
46
Therefore, what Descartes perceived as an asylum from doubt,
becomes in Kant a constantly changing " flux of inner appearances" which
constitutes, not the stability of the I think, but the superficiality of the empirical
ego.
The ego, then, according to Kant, is in a passive or receptive relation
to the structuring principles which condition it. As Deleuze writes, "the Ego
itself is in time, and thus constantly changing: it is a passive or rather
receptive Ego, which experiences changes in time. " (ECC, 29) No longer
transparent to itself, the subject becomes an entity continually affected by
something which it cannot reach. For, the experience of interiority, like all
inner determinations of the mind, has necessarily been structured by time as
the form of inner sense. The primary position granted to the self as an object
of awareness is thus subordinated in Kant to the synthesizing processes of
time. Caught inside the web of temporality, the being which doubts cannot
serve as a foundation since, according to critical thought, we only know the
ego after it has already been given a sequence, an order and a rhythm by
time. Critical philosophy is thus led to an extremely strange assertion. For,
according to Kant, the 'spontaneous' activity of the synthetic a priori which
characterizes the subject of the Copernican revolution must be separated
entirely from the knowledge of what goes on in our minds.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant describes this curious
in
Foreshadowed
the
inner
the
sense.
as
paradox
of
consequence
'Transcendental Aesthetic', but only fully brought to light in the 'Deduction, '
47
the paradox of inner sense, writes Kant, arises from the fact that "this sense
represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we appear to
ourselves not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as we are
inwardly affected, and this would seem to be contradictory since we would
then have to be in a passive relation [of active affection] to ourselves. " (CPR,
166) The self of transcendental philosophy, is paradoxically split, fractured by
a line that separates the consciousness of an empirical ego from an
unconscious transcendental I. Moreover, the riddle continues, we are only
conscious of ourselves after we have been worked over by that part of
ourselves that we can never know. For one only becomes aware of the ego
after it has affected itself from within. For Kant, then, inner sense is governed
by a complicated circuit in which the self is 'auto-affected' by 'another'.
This paradox which haunts Kant's notion of interiority is, as we have
seen, a necessary consequence of the transcendental method. For, the
fundamental conjunction of critical thought, appearance ' conditions of
appearance, demands that one look behind empirical reality to the abstract
forces which condition it. According to Kant's Copernican revolution our
experience of ourselves is not given, it is produced. Thus, for Kant,
knowledge of the empirical ego is not an answer but a riddle. For the concrete
experience of interiority is incapable of revealing the abstract transcendental
conditions of its own production. Thus it is the very nature of transcendental
production that ensures the shift away from the subject to time. For, the only
thing that can produce the experience of being in time is the operation of time
48
itself.
Thus far, the transcendental notion of time has been described as an
abstract and empty form defined as nothing but a pure ordinal sequence.
Taken on its own, however, this description is severely limited. For it is in
danger of missing the fundamentally productive nature of the transcendental.
Spontaneous and active, time at its most abstract is characterized by a
continuous process of production. The form of temporality, for Kant, is, above
all, not a static eternity. For as we will see, time, in transcendental philosophy,
is made up of blind acts of synthesis continually at work producing the
experience of a world that exists in time.
These productive capacities of the transcendental form of time are
outlined by Kant in his discussion of the three fold synthesis set out in the first
part of the 'Transcendental Deduction'. Before exploring these synthesis in
detail it is important to stress, once again, that Kantian synthesis occurs in a
realm independent of experience. The three synthesis outlined in the
Deduction are the a priori machines that underlie experience. As Deleuze
writes, they do "not bear on diversity as it appears in space and time, but on
the diversity of space and time themselves. Indeed, without them, space and
time would not be 'represented. "(KCP, 15)
Kant's discussion of the three fold synthesis, then, is an attempt to
uncover the productive constituting forces of the form of time itself. "All our
knowledge, " writes Kant in the introduction to the section, "is finally subject to
time, the formal condition of inner sense. In it they must all be ordered,
49
connected and brought into relation. " (CPR, 131) The synthetic processes of
the deduction are meant to explain the means through which this occurs.
Kant's goal is to explicate how the transcendental form of time functions to
put the world in time. The focus, then, is not on a realm of production that
occurs in time, but rather on the 'spontaneous' activity that accounts for the
abstract possibility of the very experience of time.
After cautioning the reader of the difficulties which will inevitably beset
an enterprise "never before attempted, " Kant begins his discussion with
what he calls 'the synthesis of apprehension in intuition'. "Directed
immediately upon intuition" (CPR, 131) the 'synthesis of apprehension, is
located in the receptive domain of sensibility. It transforms our intuitions into a
grid that renders them capable of being perceived. For according to Kant, as
Deleuze makes clear, there is not only a diversity that exists in time but a
diversity of time itself. The very possibility of perception requires that this
diversity be synthesized. For intuition to take place the unrepresentable
multiplicity of time must be made representable. The synthesis of
apprehension fulfills this requirement by combining the manifold of intuition
into the units that constitute moments in time. It thus operates, as Deleuze
writes to "produce the different parts of time. " (KCP, 15)
The second synthesis, the synthesis of reproduction in the imagination,
is the act through which the imagination ensures the a priori rules which
determine the "sequence or coexistence" of appearances. It is, according to
Deleuze, "the means by which we reproduce the preceding parts as we arrive
50
at the ones following. " (KCP, 15) Without this second synthesis the order and
association of representations would be completely random.
If cinnabar were sometimes red, sometimes black, sometimes light,
sometimes heavy, if a man changed sometimes into this and
sometimes into that animal form, if the country on the longest day were
sometimes covered with fruit, sometimes with ice and snow, my
empirical imagination would never find opportunity when representing
red to bring to mind heavy cinnabar. (CPR, 132)
The synthesis of reproduction is thus the transcendental ground which
ensures the reproducibility of experience. It is the means through which past
appearances are duplicated. It thus assures the coexistence and order of that
which appears in time.
The third and final synthesis Kant calls the synthesis of recognition in a
concept. By relating the synthesized manifold to the concepts of the
understanding the synthesis of recognition allows one to recognize what has
been intuited and reproduced by the other synthetic operations. According to
Kant it is only through this final synthesis that one gains knowledge of the
objects of experience. For "that which constitutes knowledge, " writes
Deleuze, "is not simply the act by which the manifold is synthesized, but the
act by which the represented manifold is related to an object (recognition: this
is a table, this is an apple, this is such and such an object). " (KCP, 15) In the
Critique of Pure Reason it is the synthesis of recognition which ensures the
identical
in
in
For
to
time.
object
as
any
given
order
recognize
continuity of
different times there must be a synthesis capable of guaranteeing identity
through time.
51
Through this final synthesis, Kant deduces what is known as the
synthetic unity of apperception, the 'pure, original, unchangeable
consciousness' (CPR, 136) which constitutes the Kantian 'I think'. For, the
ability to recognize the same object as identical in different times requires,
according to Kant, a unity of consciousness, an unchanging identity, which
ensures the temporal continuity necessary for recognition to take place (from
the side of the transcendental subject). Transcendental apperception, then,
is the necessary 'condition which precedes all experience, and which makes
experience possible. ' (CPR, 136) Defined simply as "numerically identical' it
is the synthetic operation which explains the continuity of experience,
7
belongs
to
me.
guaranteeing that all my experience
As we have seen, it is with the notion of the transcendental I that Kant
most clearly reveals his radical departure from the modern philosophical line
that has its roots in Descartes. The security of self consciousness which
identity
for
Cartesian
the
thought
the
that exists
rests
on
ground
as
serves
between the knowledge of the I think and the temporally determined,
conscious entity that I am. The Kantian 'I' on the other hand, does not
8
determinate
entity. For, as has already been noted, the
correspond to any
7 As Deleuze writes, 'My representations are mine in so far as they are linked in the unity of a
consciousness in such a way that the 'I think' accompanies them! (KCP, 15)
8 According to Deleuze, this notion that the I think is not attached to a determinate entity is at
the heart of Kant's objection to Descartes. With the Cartesian cogito, writes Deleuze, the I
think is an act of instantaneous determination, which implies an undetermined existence (I
am) and determines this existence as that of a thinking substance (I am a thing that thinks).
But how can the determination apply to the undetermined if we cannot say under what form it
is 'determinable'? (ECC, 29) With this objection Kant profoundly challenges the Cartesian
52
self of transcendental philosophy, is paradoxically split, fractured by a line that
separates the consciousness of empirical experience from the unconscious
realm of the synthetic a priori. As Deleuze writes, "the I and the Ego are thus
separated by the line of time which relates them to each other, but under the
conditions of a fundamental difference. " (KCP, viii) By defining interiority
through the split between time as an abstract synthetic process and the
concrete determination of that which exists in time, transcendental philosophy
conceives of a self that is based on the absolute difference between the
transcendental I and the empirical ego.
Critique demarcates this difference by a rigorous determination of the
boundaries of knowledge. The Ego, as consciousness of inner sense, admits
knowledge whereas the I, for Kant, can never be known (but is always
presupposed in knowing). Existing in a realm outside all experience,
transcendental apperception is never the object of direct awareness. Devoid
of all logical characteristics, the I, writes Kant, is nothing other than a
numerical identity. Empty of all content, stripped of its ties to substance or
personality the I becomes an empty slot. Necessary to explain the very
possibility of experience the 'Transcendental I' can be thought but never
known. Transcendental apperception is philosophy's final answer to the
oracle at Delphi. For Kant, 'know thyself' has become a rigorous
impossibility, an illegitimate use of reason.
formulation which equates the empty representation 'I think' to the determinate substance'
am a thing which thinks. '
53
There is then, in Kant, a radical difference between what we are and
what we know ourselves to be. For according to the 'paradox of inner sense'
we are only conscious of ourselves after we have been worked over by that
part of ourselves that we can never know. Kant thus posits a subject that is
9
in
itself.
to
An empty synthetic process that accompanies all
exterior relation
your representations, the I in Kant is so named not because it exists inside
you but because wherever you are it is. In Deleuze's reading of Kant, this
finds its expression in Rimbaud's formula 'I is another. '
What this section has sought to show is that this 'other is time.
Deduced from the temporal continuity that underlies experience,
transcendental apperception is determined solely as the agent of the
transcendental form of time. For Kant, "I is an act which constantly carries
out the synthesis of time. " (KCP, viii) Thus, while the Ego marks the interiority
of the subject, the I can only be defined as the exteriority of time. In
introducing time into thought, Kant inserts an irreparable fissure into the core
of the subject. To quote Deleuze: "the form of interiority means not only that
time is internal to us but that our interiority constantly divides us from
ourselves, splits us in two. " (KCP, ix)
9 This notion of a subject in an exterior relation to itself has obvious resonance with the
psychoanalytic distinction between the ego and the id. Freud himself recognized that his
notion of the unconscious borrowed much from transcendental thought. The psychoanalytic
assumption of unconscious mental activity appears to us, he writes in his essay The
Unconscious, as an extension of the corrections undertaken by Kant" (U, 173).
54
According to Heinrich Heine "The name of Immanuel Kant has the
might of an exorcism. " "His thought, " he writes "was a revolution and one not
wanting in horrors. " Even night wandering spirits, are stricken in terror at the
sight of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. " (RPG, 107) Deleuze agrees, Kant's
"thinking machine is absolutely frightening. " (KST, 1) This fright arises from
the fact that Kant has transformed the nature of philosophical horror,
replacing Cartesian fear with a sort of transcendental dread against which the
certainty that guards us against the demon is powerless. For Kant there is no
security in self consciousness, for it is nothing but a mask. By implanting
uncertainty at the core of interiority, Kant riddles even the cogito with doubt.
Like the replicants in the film Bladerunner, transcendental philosophy thus
torments the subject with the taunting refrain 'you are not what you think you
are. '10 With Kant, then, "everything happens as if the "enemy" of thought
was within. " This enemy - the transcendental outside - does not exist in
another time or another space. Its exteriority consists only of the fact that it
knows nothing of borders. Thus unlike Descartes demon it can neither be
locked out nor contained. One no longer need be afraid that the 'reality' of
outer perceptions is a trick, for Kant's 'modem consciousness of time, "
plagued us with a much more intimate fear. Surrounding us in an inaccessible
exteriority which infiltrates the inside at the very level of its production, the
Kantian outside (or the syntheses of time) not only constitutes the experience
10 In Tarrying
with the Negative, Zizek writes of Blade Runner as a Kantian film in Blade
Runner Deckard, after learning that Rachel is a replicant who (mis)perceives herself as
human, asks in astonishment: "How can it not know what it is? " We can see, now, how more
55
of the external world, it generates the very experience of ourselves. For, as
Deleuze writes, with Kant "it is not time that is interior to us; it is we who are
interior to time. " (ECC, 31)
than two hundredyears ago, Kant's philosophyoutlinedan answerto this enigma. (TN, 15)
56
1.3 The Schematism: Time and Abstraction
In his essay Theatrum Philosophicum, Michel Foucault proposes that
all philosophy can be defined according to its underlying antagonism towards
the principle figure of classical thought. "What philosophy, " he writes, "has
not tried to overturn Platonism?.. .Are all philosophies individual species of the
genus AntiPlatonic? Does each begin with a declaration of this fundamental
rejection? " (TP, 166). These questions, when applied to Kant, will serve as
the guiding thread in the final pages of this chapter. For to follow Kant in his
exploration of transcendental time demands, as Foucault suggests, a return
to critique's initial declaration, its fundamental rejection of transcendence.
The Critique of Pure Reason, as has already been noted, overturns
Platonism by discovering an abstract form of time that has been freed from its
subordination to movement. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that
this implies that Kant's argument with Plato can be restricted to any particular
'
For, the notion of abstract time does much more than
dialogue.
zone or
transform the ancient conception of temporality. As this section will make
clear, abstract time subverts Plato at its core by revolutionising the notion of
abstraction.
It is important to note from the start, however, that these two moves,
the redefinition of time and the reformulation of the abstract, are ultimately
1 Plato's most explicit discussion of time is found in the dialogue Timeaus', but as we
will see the Kantian engagement with Plato has implications which extend far beyond
57
indistinguishable. For critical thought only makes time abstract by equating
the abstract with time-production. This circuit, explicated in the chapter on the
schematism, serves to distinguish abstraction from the transcendence of the
philosophical idea. No longer distant and withdrawn from its concrete
instantiations, abstraction, in Kant, becomes directly implementable.
Operating as the general medium of exchange, 2 abstract time is not a
transcendent form situated beyond the world of phenomena but becomes
instead the immanent plane of the transcendental.
Thus, abandoning both the interiority of the subject and the
transcendent, eternal idea, the Critique of Pure Reason subordinates thought
to the abstract production of time. For this reason, the attempt to situate Kant
in the 'Anti-Platonic genus' that defines philosophy will inevitably prove
inadequate. Foucault's questions, when applied to critique, are not definitive
but strategic. Having discovered the abstract synthetic machine which
constitutively underpins the philosophical idea, Kant becomes immersed in a
revolution that extends far beyond the history of ideas. For, as we will see in
the following chapter, the Kantian notion of transcendental time has at least
as much to do with capitalism as it does with philosophy.
To begin to unravel these claims requires an examination of the role
given to time in the chapter on the schematism. A notoriously difficult concept
this particular dialogue.
2 As the 'third thing' which functions to connect the two heterogeneous
parts of the
system, the schematism has certain similarities to the abstraction which Marx sees as
necessary to the production of exchange value. This will be discussed in further detail
58
in Kant, the schematism is best understood by the crucial function that it
serves. Put simply, the schema is a 'monogram' or diagram which connects
the faculty of sensation discussed in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' with the
faculty of understanding as discussed in the 'Transcendental Logic'. The
difference between sensation and understanding, as has been previously
stated, is one of the basic distinctions at work in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The schematism, as the abstract plane that connects these two sides, is thus
the necessary link which provides coherence to the underlying structure of the
first critique.
The Transcendental Aesthetic, as was shown in the first section of this
chapter, is dedicated to a discussion of time and space as the a priori forms
of sensation. Though animated by the synthesis of intuition, these pure forms
according to Kant, are essentially receptive in nature. They act on what is
given, ordering sense data into a transcendental grid. As Deleuze writes they
are the "means by which we pose the manifold as occupying a certain space
and a certain time. " (KCP, 15) Dedicated to the presentation of the manifold,
the faculty of sensation synthesizes the diversity of intuition into an image
capable of being perceived.
The understanding, on the other hand, is defined as the spontaneous
production of a priori concepts. In the Transcendental Logic, Kant outlines
these concepts in what is known as the table of categories. 12 in number, the
categories are laid out in 4 groups of three with specific principles which
in chapter 2.
59
determine both their order and their relations. 3 By making use of the table of
categories, the understanding provides knowledge through the act of
representation. Deleuze describes this as follows: "The important thing in
representation is the prefix: re-presentation implies an active taking up of that
which is presented; hence an activity and a unity distinct from the diversity
which characterize sensibility as such. " (KCP, 8)
Thus, by the time one reaches the chapter on schematism, the realm
of the transcendental has been divided, split between, on the one side, the
production of the image, and, on the other, the production of concepts. Yet, in
so far as these processes remain separated they work in vain. For, neither
thoughts nor perceptions are capable on their own of constituting experience.
To quote Kant's famous formula: "Without sensibility no object would be
given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts
blind.
intuitions
" (CPR, 93)
are
concepts
are
empty,
without
contents
without
According to the first critique, therefore, there can be no account of
knowledge which does not synthesize our a priori understanding of the
concepts with our intuition of the objects of experience. Crucial here is the
fact that, for Kant, unlike for Plato, concepts only gain their legislative power
through some ulterior mechanism which makes them directly and immediately
applicable to phenomenon. "Concepts, " writes Kant, "are altogether
impossible and can have no meaning if no object has been given to them. "
3 For a list of the categories see Table 2 in the appendix.
60
(CPR, 181)
The discussion of the schematism thus inevitably begins with a
question. "How, then, " asks Kant, "is the subsumption of intuitions under
pure concepts, the application of a category to appearances possible? "
(CPR, 180) Kant is here searching for a key. The task of the schematism is to
provide a medium of communication - something that is at once intellectual
and sensible - which can serve to fuse the two halves of his system together.
"Obviously, " writes Kant, "there must be some third thing, which is
homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the other hand with
appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter
possible. " (CPR, 181)
This 'third thing' is time. Thus, while it initially seemed as if the form of
time was clearly situated along side space in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic',
in his discussion of the schematism, Kant abstracts the form of time from this
particular determination. For as the previous section on the Deduction
showed, it is not only sensation but thought as well which occurs in time.
Thus, for Kant, just as all appearances are subject to temporal form so too
are the categories. In order for the a priori concepts to connect with the
appearance they must, according to Kant, "contain a priori certain formal
conditions of sensibility, namely those of inner sense. " (182)
Providing the categories with a temporal dimension is the task of the
transcendental schema. "This formal and pure condition of sensibility to
we
is
the
the
the
restricted,
understanding
concept of
employment of
which
61
shall entitle the schema of the concept. " (CPR, 182) By ensuring that they
can be expressed as a determination of time, it is the schema of the concept
which implements the categories, giving them an organizational function in
relation to intuition.
Although both the concept and the image are conditioned by time, the
production of the schema arises neither from the understanding nor from
sensation. Submerged in a realm anterior to knowledge, the schema is
produced by the operations of a third faculty, the transcendental imagination.
"The schema is in itself always a product of the imagination,' (CPR, 182)
Kant writes "the two extremes, namely sensibility and understanding, must
stand in necessary connection with each other through the meditation of the
transcendental function of imagination. " (CPR, 146) Situated in the middle,
on the diagonal line in between intuition and understanding, Kant describes
the synthetic process of the transcendental imagination as a secret art. `This
schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their
mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real
modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to
have open to our gaze. " (CPR, 183)
In discovering the secret art of the productive imagination the first
critique formulates time as a circuit of abstract production. In both sensibility
and the understanding production occurs in a linear flow, channelled into the
production of a product (the concept or the image). With the imagination, on
the other hand, production is taken to a higher power of abstraction, in which
62
the product (the schema) is itself nothing other than the process of abstract
4
production.
The schema is neither an image nor a concept but a diagram. Like all
true diagrams, it is not a static representation but a functional machinic
5
component. As an aspect of transcendental time it
operates, for Kant, as the
abstract process through which experience is produced. With the chapter on
the schematism, then, Kant frees time from being locked into any particular
determination, either on the side of the image or on the side of the concept,
and makes of it instead the abstract plane of connectivity on which his whole
system depends.
In Platonic philosophy the abstract is equated with a realm that exists
outside time. Universal and eternal, this realm is only accessed through the
transcendence of ideas. The process of abstraction, then, was considered to
be philosophy's privileged tool. As a method of extraction or generalization it
served to prompt a 'recollection' of all that is universal, eternal and
transcendent in the idea. By drawing away from temporally determined
appearances, abstraction was thus used to connect one with a realm outside
time.6
4 It is this discovery, which will be explored in greater detail in the chapters
which
follow, which plugs transcendental thought directly into the technological and social
machines of capitalism.
s This is why Deleuze speaks of the schematism as 'rules of production. '(FLK, 3) For
a
discussion of the diagram as it functions in Deleuze and Guattari see ' Thousand
Plateaus pp. 143-146
,
BA good example of this is found in the discussion of the
slaves knowledge of
geometry found in the dialogue'Meno'.
63
Defined in this way, the abstract is dialectically opposed to the
concrete. The distinction between these two spheres corresponds to the
difference between essence and appearance, the basic duality which, as we
have seen, functions as the structure for the whole of classical thought.
Within this duality the concrete is associated with temporally determined
appearances, while the abstract belongs to the eternal nature of essences.
Separated in this way, the abstract and concrete exist on two separate levels.
Bound by a rigid hierarchy, the relation between them is one of reflection.
Thus, just as the appearance is conceived as a degraded image of the
essence of the idea so, for Plato, the concrete is conceived of as a shadow of
the abstract.
For Kant it is not a realm outside time, but time itself that is abstract.
Conceived of in this way the abstract ceases to be equated with the
transcendence of the idea and is instead the process by which concepts (or
ideas) are applied to the objects of sense perception. That is to say, for Kant
concepts are only implementable because they are given a temporal
determination by the abstract production of time. It is this abstract production
which constructs an immanent plane of connectivity, a sort of general medium
of exchange on which the Kantian system of the transcendental is based.
As a process of production, the abstract ceases to be dialectically
opposed to the concrete, transcendent reflection gives way to an immanent
connection. The relation between the abstract production of time and
temporally determined appearances is no longer dichotimized. For in
64
transcendental thought abstraction operates within the concrete. 7 It is thus
conceived of, not as a means through which one can escape from the illusion
of appearances into the truth of the idea, but rather as the virtual synthetic
processes through which the actuality of appearances are produced.
Despite the fact that he distinguishes between abstraction and ideas,
Kant still seeks to maintain that at its most abstract, the production of time
takes place inside the mind of the knowing subject. Yet, the fact that the
schema is described as a hidden art whose secrets can never be revealed
suggests that perhaps even he is aware that the transcendental philosophy of
time is irreducible to an epistemological theory. 8 A process of construction
that is neither perceived nor understood, 9 the production of abstract time (or
schema) is not a product of interiority but belongs instead to the unconscious
10
inside.
Kant's contention that the schema is
the
plane which produces
found 'hidden in the depths of the human soul' is ultimately nothing but
vague lyricism and must be considered illegitimate from the standpoint of
critique. For as we have seen, according to the immanent criteria of
7 In Deleuze and Guattari's transcendental materialism abstract machines
are defined
as follows: 'There is no abstract machine, or machines, in the sense of a Platonic
Idea, transcendent, universal, eternal. Abstract machines operate within concrete
assemblages: They are defined by the fourth aspect of assemblages, in other words,
the cutting edges of decoding and deterritorialization. ' ("TP, 510). Both transcendental
materialism and abstract machines will be discussed in detail in chapters 3 and 4.
aIt can in fact be argued that Kant is only inclined towards epistemology when he is
not being transcendental enough.
° Since it is neither a concept nor an image, the abstract production of transcendental
time can be neither known nor perceived.
10Defined as a 'secret and hidden art', the schematism should be understood as
an
unconscious process.
65
transcendental thought the production of time cannot be confined to the
interiority of the subject, philosophical or otherwise.
It used to be the case that the ultimate agent of abstract production
was found in the realm of metaphysics. It was believed that the
transcendence of God created us and the world that we experience. We have
seen, however, that the Kantian revolution has demolished this belief. With
his sustained attack on the 'Queen of all sciences', critique undermined the
transcendence of God and, to use Heine's words, functioned as 'the sword
that slew deism' in philosophy. (RPG, 107)
The conventional tale is that Kant replaced God with man".
Developing a theory of production which does not pass through God, Kant
placed the transcendental subject in the role of the ultimate creator. To quote
Alistair Welchman in his thesis Wild above rule or art., Creation and Critique,
the Kantian subject "operates a production fully theological in scope: it is
nothing less than the production of the empirical world, of the universe as
such." (CC, 46) In this thesis it is argued that it is the inhuman forces of time
that surpass the power of the subject as the ultimate agent of transcendental
production.
This chapter began by maintaining that the Kantian discovery of the
11It is important to keep this term
gendered. For, as Luce Irigaray points out in her
writings on Kant, any theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the
masculine. Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman. trans. Gillian C Gill. Ithaca
New York: Cornell University Press, 1974, p. 133.
66
transcendental
required a revolution in the nature of time. The classical
conception which conceived of time as equivalent to the phenomenal world of
change and motion had to be overthrown. In its place Kant constructed an
account of a constant, formal time within which all variation takes place. He
called this the 'form of inner sense' due to the fact that it conditions all
thoughts and perceptions from within. Yet, as we have seen, in located time
inside the subject, Kant radically altered the notion of interiority by
subordinating it to the exteriority of time. In the chapter on the schematism
this exteriority of time overturns the transcendence
of Ideas and of God by
replacing them with an immanent plane of abstract production which is
nothing other than the transcendental
production of time.
67
Chapter 2: Time in Modern Capitalism
2.0 Introduction:
Time in Kant & Capitalism
To describe Kant and capital as two sides of a coin is as necessary as it is
ridiculous. `strange coin indeed that can synthesize a humble citizen of
Konigsberg with the run-away construction of the planet.
Nick Land, Thirst for Annihilation, p. 3
In the previous chapter it was argued that Kant's Copernican revolution
is not, as is traditionally contended, centrally concerned with a change in the
role of the human subject, but is instead about a transformation in the nature
of time. Subordinating the human intellect to the abstract, synthetic and
productive operations of temporality, the Critique of Pure Reason
demonstrates that it is not the subject that produces time but rather time that
produces the interiority of the subject. Transcendental philosophy, then, is not
simply an epistemological theory but must also be understood as the
discovery of something fundamentally new in the nature of time.
In the following chapter, we will see that at the dawn of capitalism,
centuries before the writing of the first Critique, history registers a change at
'
Thus, we will find,
in
technology
time.
level,
the
the empirical
of
culture and
that the transformation of time in Kant's philosophical revolution is matched
by an equally dramatic "revolution in time"2 brought on by changes in
technology, sociology, geography and economics. By bringing together these
' This will be explored by examining the work of a variety of socio-historians of time, including,
amongst others, David Landes, Lewis Mumford and Gerhard Dohm-van Rossum.
2This phrase is taken from DavidS. Landes' book Revolutionin Time:Clocksand the Making
68
two revolutions, the chapter seeks to investigate links between the production
of a capitalist time and time as it is conceived of in transcendental philosophy.
In order to do this most effectively, the chapter is composed of three
sections divided according to the following themes: 1) the technological
development of the clock and the emergence of a new form of time, 2) the
synthetic nature of the capitalist temporal regime (with particular emphasis on
GMT and on the equation 'time = money'), and 3) the problems and
philosophical implications which inevitably arise when one attempts to
connect historical change with transcendental philosophy.
In his book History of the Hour. Clocks and Modem Temporal Orders,
Gerhard Dohm-van Rossum writes that it is now considered to be 'textbook
wisdom' that in the Late Middle Ages, there occurred, in the culture of the
West, a transformation
in the apprehension of time. The most important
instrument of this transformation
was the invention and development of the
mechanical clock. The impact of the clock, which Lewis Mumford has called
the "key machine of the modem industrial age" (TC, 14) is impossible to
overestimate. For, as we will see, the rapid growth and overwhelming
influence of this new device attests to the fact that the clock was not merely
an advance in time-keeping technology but was also the expression of a more
fundamental alteration in the nature of time itself. With the arrival of the
mechanical clock there arose, for the first time in history, an abstract, secular,
homogenous, quantitative and autonomous mode of time which was separate
and distinct from the historical, astronomical and qualitative time of the
of the Modem World.Cambridge.Mass. HarvardUniversityPress, 1983.
69
3
calendar.
It should be immediately apparent that these distinctive features of
clock time - its distinction from the movement of objects in the external world
and its autonomy from the events which happen inside it - closely correspond
to the Kantian form of time discussed in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic'. It
would thus appear, that the first great critical reversal which revolutionizes the
classical conception of temporality by conceiving of a time independent of
change is mirrored by transformations which occurred to the nature of time
under capitalism.
The notion that Kantian thought is linked to developments in the
technology of time should come as no surprise. For, as we will see, the lore
which surrounds Kant's life and habits suggest that, as an empirical subject,
Kant was obsessed with the temporality of the clock. What this chapter seeks
to maintain is that the time which governed Kant's life seeped into his writings
and made a crucial impact on his philosophy. In assuming a link between
Kant's life and his writings the chapter seeks to propose that Kant discovered
a new form of time, not by looking into the hidden recesses of the human
soul, but through his sensitivity to the way time was functioning in the culture
4
him.
which surrounded
It is not only the technology of the clock, however, which links Kantian
3The distinction between clocks and calendars will be discussed in detail in the following
section.
4This is not to say that Kantian philosophy can be reduced to socioeconomics. For the
connection between Kantian thought and clock time cannot be explained through a linear
causal relation. In fact the precise relation between these two aspects of the 'revolution in
time' is extremely complex and is thus treated as one of the main themes addressed
throughout this thesis.
70
thought to the production of capitalist time. For when seen through the
perspective of transcendental philosophy, it becomes apparent that capitalist
time establishes itself as a universal synthetic regime. This perspective is
importantly different - but nevertheless compatible with - the analyses of
capitalist temporality that is traditionally maintained by the socio-historians of
time. From Mumford to Marx, the story of the emergence of a modem
industrial time is implicitly structured through the dynamics of dialectical
struggle. In a tale riddled with nostalgia and warnings, these thinkers lament
the fact that in the modem period the concrete, organic, and natural time of
the calendar has been overwhelmed and dominated by the artificial time of
the clock. 5
Seen through the lens of the Kantian system, however, clocks and
calendars no longer appear as the two sides of a battle. For, as we have
seen, the Critique of Pure Reason operates with a tripartite structure which is
capable of connecting apparent divisions through a process of abstract
production. Replacing dialectics with the 'synthesised or electronic way of
handling philosophy" (SLK, 1) transcendental thought configures the time of
capitalism, not as the tyrannical rule of the clock, but rather as the
establishment of a new regime of synthesis. Instead of subordinating the
more 'natural' time of the past, it sees capitalism as constituting an abstract
plane of connection which brings together the time of the clock with the
temporality of the calendar. This abstract connection is instantiated by
5 To quote Mumford: 'Abstract time became the new medium of existence. Organic functions
were themselves regulated by it one ate, not upon feeling hungry, but when prompted by the
clock: one slept, not when one was tired but when the clock sanctioned it.'
71
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), an 'artificial' synthesis which acts as the
universal standard of a globalized time.
The establishment
of GMT (with it's synthesis of clocks and calendars)
is further combined, under capitalism, with another crucial synthesis, most
succinctly captured by the phrase 'time equals money'. This equation - which
constitutes the basic formula of the capitalist system - involves, as we will
see, not only a new and autonomous form of time but also a transformation in
the cultural and economic practices which serve to constitute a particular
temporal regime.6 It is precisely these transformations in the culturaleconomics of time and the practices which they make possible which provide
the primary conditions of existence for the capitalist social system.
A certain confusion arises, however with the recognition that the
capitalist production of time could only have taken place within a particular
historical context. The invention and development of the mechanical clock,
the establishment of Greenwich Mean Time and the practices which equate
time with money required that certain contingent socio-economic forces were
in place. And yet, the paradoxical fact is that these forces were determined in
large part by the temporality that they made possible. In short, capitalist time
depends upon a particular historical formation, and yet this historical
formation presupposes the production of capitalist time from the start.?
e As we will see these practices include such phenomena as wage labour, credit and interest.
Capitalism, then, must be conceived of cybemetically, that is as a system which operates
with feedback loops, or nonlinear circuits of production in which ' causes B and B causes '. In
this way culture and technology no longer need be viewed through models of linear causation
but can be seen instead as locked into nonlinear circuits of reciprocal presuppositions. It is
undoubtedly a circuit, or cybernetic loop such as this that is responsible for generating both
the time of the clock and the culture to which it belongs.
72
The fact that the production of capitalist time introduces a new mode of
temporality that is independent of change, that it operates through the
establishment of universal synthesis and that these synthesis are
presupposed in the culture they produce, suggests that, like transcendental
philosophy, capitalism accesses a realm independent of empirical processes,
and is productive not of events that occur inside experience but of the
underlying conditions that make experience possible. Escaping the confines
of interiority it functions, not only through that which happens in time - but as
the abstract production of time itself.
The difficulty with this claim, however, is that the attempt to equate
transcendental time with capitalist time runs into the familiar problem of how
to connect philosophical concepts with material reality. Put simply, this
problem can be stated as follows: Capitalism is a historical event thought to
be empirically produced and thus, by definition, falls outside the domain of
Kantian thought. For, as we have seen, the first crucial step in identifying the
realm of the transcendental
is to differentiate it from the experiential world of
the empirical. How, then, could capitalism, a socio-economic
occurs in time, be associated with the transcendental?
event which
What is the
relationship between the empirical change in time that occurred at the onset
in
in
time
that
the
theory
the
occurred
of
revolution
of capitalism and
transcendental
philosophy?
This is the problem which the final section of this chapter seeks to
For
it
Karl
Marx.
is in Marx
to
the
first,
by
turning
It
does
work
of
so,
address.
where one finds one of the most consistent and well known attempts to
connect philosophical thought with the concrete socio-economic conditions of
73
material practice. Marx concurs with Kant that analyses should not be based
on experience but should concentrate instead on the conditions which make
experience possible. His work departs from Kant, however, in that it
subordinates transcendental structures to the internal forces of history.
According to the principles of historical materialism, production at all levels
ultimately rests with the dialectical struggles of the past. For Marx the a priori
are not eternal but subject to change and transformation. Transcendental
time is thus determined by historical time.
Though Marx gives an account of how Kant's philosophy of time might
relate to capitalism, the Marxist analysis will be shown to be ultimately
inadequate. For Marx's insistence on the productive forces of history leaves
no room for a theory of transcendental production. Thinking dialectically
rather than synthetically, his conception of material production risks folding
the transcendental back into the empirical. Thus, though offering a bridge
between philosophy and the empirical conditions of capitalism, Marx's
writings manage to hide precisely the zone that Kant's work makes visible.
In order to bridge the gap that has opened between Kant and Marx,
the chapter turns finally to the work of Michel Foucault. By taking on board the
Marxist critique of idealism without falling back into a naive empiricism,
Foucault develops a theory that has the potential to link Kant with capitalism
without sacrificing either the empirical or the transcendental.
For Foucault, just as for Marx, the a priori is historical. His books are
famous for mapping the ways in which transcendental structures vary from
age to age. Yet, unlike Marx, Foucault is deeply suspicious of accrediting
74
these changes
of
history. According to Foucault the
to the internal dynamics
rhythm of historical transformations,
"does not follow the smooth, continuist schemas of development which are
normally accepted. " (PK 112) Foucault's work thus leads us to the conclusion
that though transcendental structures change in time, these changes are not
themselves historically produced.
Foucault combines a Marxist historicism with transcendental thought in
order to arrive at the notion of discontinuity. This often controversial concept
is meant to signal the breaks in history, when, in the space of only a few
years an entire regime of power, which governs all that can be said and seen,
is subject to a 'global modification. ' In Foucault's work the continual passage
history
is
interiority
The
by
is
interrupted
time
of
opened
eruptions.
sudden
of
to forces from the outside. Thus, for Foucault it is not that the transcendental
is
by
history
history
but
that
to
be
punctuated
rather
reduced
can
transcendental
events. It is the task of this thesis to explore capitalism's
peculiar intimacy with these discontinuities.
75
2.1 Clock-Time
Throughout history, social revolutions have tended to be linked to
calendric transformations.
New leaders (whether religious or political) have often
sought to inaugurate their reign through the introduction of a new calendar. For
the calendar, as we will see, is closely tied to the specificity and individuation of
a culture and is therefore viewed - both by rulers and by revolutionary groups as the means through which they can separate themselves both from their
immediate past and from their existing surroundings. Thus, calendric change has
been seen by cultures as the first and most crucial step in establishing their
autonomy and solidifying their traditions.
The capitalist revolution, however, has ignored this tendency, For
capitalism, as a social system has a peculiar indifference - and therefore
practical conservatism - to its calendric milieu. In its entire history there has
been but one successful attempt at calendric reform. ' This occurred in 1582, at
the dawn of capitalism, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced modifications into the
1 There was a serious attempt at calendric reform during the French Revolution. This occured
through the introduction of a time-keeping system known as the 'Calendar of Reason. ' `Launched
in 1792 - the revolutionary Year One - this new calendar had uniform months of 30 days each,
taking on an extra 5 (or 6) days at the end. These were reserved for holidays called Virtue,
Genius, Labor, Opinion and Recompense. Instead of gods and emperors it used names for the
months: Nivose for snowing months, Pluvoise for Rainy Month, Thermidor for Heat Month, and
Brumaire for Foggy Month. Weeks were 10 days long, with three weeks per month. Days were
likewise divided in a decimal arrangement into 10 hours each of 100 minutes, with every minute
containing 100 seconds. ' (C, 238) However the 'Calendar of Reason' lasted only until 1806 when
Napoleon quietly reintroduced the Gregorian system.
76
Julian calendar. The Gregorian reforms, however, were not - intended as the
installation of a new calendar, but rather as the modernization of an old one.
Pope Gregory had no desire to challenge the culture of the existing calendar, he
simply wanted an improvement in time-keeping accuracy. The Julian calendar
was slowly coming out of sync with the seasons. In order to stop this slide Pope
Gregory XIII initiated a number of fairly modest changes. He decreed that the 4th
2
October
15th
October,
to
the
of
would skip
moved the beginning of the year
of
from March 25th to January 1st, and made a slight adjustment to the Julian leap
year axiom3. These reforms gave the Julian calendar an added degree of
precision while leaving all the essential elements, the eras, the numerals, the
counting systems, and the festivities, unchanged.
Under capitalism, the Gregorian calendar has spread throughout the
planet4 and now appears as the dominant time-registry of the global oecumenon,
5
local
calendars without serious challenge. This is a testament to an
overcoding
2 This particular reform prompted a series of riots in which 'mobs collected in the streets and
shouted 'give us back our 11 days'. ' (C, 228)
3 The Gregorian calendar, like the Julian calendar, treats every fourth year as a leap year. The
only difference is that in the Gregorian calendar no century year is a leap year unless it is exactly
divisible by 400 (eg 1600,2000). 'A further refinement, the designation of years evenly divisible by
4,000 as common (not leap) years, will keep the Gregorian calendar accurate to within one day in
20,000 years". Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 5, Micropedia, p.476.
4 The Gregorian calendar was adopted by the protestant German states in 1699, England and its
colonies in 1752, Sweden in 1873, Japan in 1873, China in 1912, Soviet Union in 1918.
5 The first, serious challenge to global dominance of the Gregorian calendar occurred at the dawn
of the third millennium and was brought on by a computer bug known as Y2K. This will be
discussed in detail in chapter 4.
77
ultra conservatism in capitalist time. For despite its globalized culture, capitalism
operates with the calendar of the Holy Roman Empire.
This almost parodic stability in calendrics is starkly contrasted by the
remarkable changes that have happened to the technology of the clock.
Capitalism's 'revolution in time' thus combines an extreme conservatism on the
side of the calendar with an unprecedented social and technological run-away on
the side of the clock.
Socio-historians agree that the crucial turning point in the history of
Though
the
it
development
the
time
mechanical
of
clock.
occurred
with
capitalist
has so far proved impossible to pinpoint the precise place, time and
in
date
Europe,
the
historians
invention,
to
this
process,
most
of
circumstance
the late thirteenth or early
6
fourteenth century. (HH) It is commonly agreed that
the key to this technological breakthrough was a simple engineering device
known as the verge and foliot escapement. By regulating the speed and flow of a
internally
lever
to
this
generate a
able
was
metallic
small
spoked wheel
standardized beat or pulse. This was undoubtedly a crucial step in making the
Lewis
for
keeping
the
time.
As
device
track
of
reliable
and
clock a consistent
Mumford writes, after the creation of the mechanical clock "the clouds that could
6 Joseph Needham's work on Chinese science has shown that some type of mechanical clock
by
the
Chinese.
the
(perhaps
century)
developed
as
eighth
early
as
centuries earlier
was
Nevertheless, by the time Jesuits came to China in the 16thcentury there was no sign of these
devices. For a good summary of this work and the issues that it raises see History of the Hour pp
86-88.
78
paralyse the sundial, the freezing that could stop the water clock on a winter
night, were no longer obstacles to time-keeping; summer or winter, day or night,
one was aware of the measured clank of the clock. (TS, 14) This first
technological breakthrough unleashed a series of inventions and discoveries
(from the pendulum to the metric beats of the caesium atom) which have
combined to make the clock the most precise and accurate machine that has
from
built.
As
Mumford
the mechanism of early clockwork to
been
suggests,
ever
the digital pulse of cybernetic computers, clocks and clock making have
innovation.
forefront
technological
been
the
of
at
consistently
In its relationship to determinable quantities of energy, to standardization,
to automatic action, and finally to its own special product, accurate timing,
the clock has been the foremost machine in modern technics; and at each
towards
it
in
lead:
it
has
the
a
perfection
which
marks
remained
period
other machines aspire. " (TC, 15)
At first glance it would appear that the difference between clocks and
While
in
difference
the
than
is
scale.
more
a
ultimately nothing
calendars
divides
day
the
the
days,
the
is
to
clock
and
years,
months
count
used
calendar
into hours, minutes, seconds, (and now ever more intricately divided
is
deceiving.
For
distinction
this
Yet,
the
as
of
simplicity
seeming
subseconds).
two
types
between
these
in
distinction
implicit
the
of timewe will eventually see,
keepers is a distinction between two very different types of time. Thus, in
developing the technology of the clock, capitalism has discovered and unleashed
something entirely new in the very nature of time.
79
In order to understand what is peculiar about clock-time it must be first
distinguished from the temporality of the calendar. At its most abstract this
distinction rests on the different ways these two devices combine a beat and a
The
beat,
in
the
time.
that
the
two
calculating
a
necessary
are
elements
count While
basic
is
the
tick,
unit
of
measure.
used
as
pulse
or
and
repeating
regular
the count, on the other hand, provides the numerical sequence which places the
In
timeto
tell
the
time,
into
all
order
series.
an ordinal
units of measurement
keepers, whether calendars or clocks, require some kind of synthesis between
these two elements.
Calendric time is based on astronomy. The calendar takes its beats from
the revolutions of the planets. Its' tick is determined by the earth's rotation
Egyptian
to
the
from
the
For
modern
the
ancient
calendars,
all
sun.
around
Gregorian, use the day as their basic unit of measure. Defined most simply then,
The
in
his
book
Crump
Thomas
Yet,
is
day
writes
the calendar a
as
count.
Anthropology of Numbers "in practice no system ever confined itself to the
the
the
For
85)
side
of
"
on
("N,
constraint
days.
uniformity,
calendric
of
counting
differences
for
by
the
which are added
is
of
beat,
web
the
complicated
made up
to the side of the count.
The calendar complicates the linear numerical sequence that adds up the
By
based
is
that
a
series
of
cycles.
on
developing
days by
a system of counting
the
rhythms of religious
with
movements
combining a variety of astronomical
tradition (i.e. the yearly cycle of earth around the sun, the monthly cycle of the
80
moon, and the 7 day week of the Genesis story) the calendar envelopes the day
count into longer and more complicated cycles of time. 7
The great problem for calendrics is that these cycles are inevitably
incommensurable.
The most striking example of this is the incompatibility of the
lunar month with the solar year which results from the discrepancy that exists
between the time it takes for the earth to travel around the sun (365 days, 5 hr
48 min 46 sec) and the 12 months (29.5 days each) which, make up a lunar year.
Since almost all calendars seek some mode of accounting for both these cycles
the different elements of the calendar invariably come out of sync. Thus, in all
calendars, supplementary axioms of convergence - known as intercalations - are
8
in
harmonize
to
the
the
required
order
cycles and reconcile
count.
The incommensurability of the cycles and the necessity of intercalations
ensure that the time of the calendar is intrinsically rhythmic. Produced through a
variety of different but interconnected cycles, the calendar is made up of a
multiplicity of systems all intertwined. Metric regularity gives way to cyclic
discontinuity as the periodicity of the tick becomes governed by a polyrhythmic
count.
The most common expression of calendric time is found in the practice of
7In the Gregorian calendar, for example the day-count is subsumed under four cycles, the week,
the month, the year and the era (BC/"D).
8 In the Gregorian calendar this is known as the leap year axiom, the practice of inserting one day
every four years.
81
dating. Viewed as a numerical sequence or pattern the date is the record of a
rhythm. Using a combination of temporal units which are qualitatively distinct, the
date is inherently synthetic. 8/29/00, for example, is a combination of day, month
and year. It is a string of numbers (lacking a common modulus) which expresses
the heterogeneity intrinsic to calendric temporality.
The calendar's numerical complexity, its heterogeneity at the level of
is
itself
the
fact
time
the
the
that
to
calendar
composed of
of
speaks
expression,
'when?
'
Calendric
is
directed
towards
the
time
question
variations.
qualitative
This temporal marker, which depends on the difference between past, present
Thus,
itself.
in
the
time
distinctions
future,
nature
of
presupposes qualitative
and
it'is not only the internal variation at the abstract level of the count which makes
the calendar fall on the qualitative side of the quantity/quality divide.
In the calendar, temporal units are not only determined numerically, but
light,
in
intensive
temperature,
by
distinguished
climate etc.
changes
are also
Thus, the calendar not only dates events, but is also, as we will see, a timekeeping device which is ultimately structured according to the events which it is
dating. For in the calendar, the separation between time and that which occurs in
time is very difficult to make.
This merging of time with concrete phenomena occurs because of the
the
the
Based
links
of
planets,
revolutions
on
astronomy.
with
calendar's close
days,
by
is
determined
such
events
as
temporality
natural
repetitive
calendric
lunar cycles, seasons etc.... These astronomical occurrences act as a sort of
82
macrocosm for organic life, further strengthening the qualitative nature of
calendric time.
The discipline of chronobiology, for example, attests to the fact that the 24
hour day is connected to the internal rhythms of the human sleep/wake cycle.
The lunar month, which governs the movement of the tides, is in almost all
cultures - closely linked with a woman's menstrual cycle? While the year is tied
to the passage of the seasons which regulates everything from life cycles, to
migration patterns to the extremely influential rhythms of agriculture.
A rhythmic, heterogeneous count, tied to astronomy, organic life and the
cycles of civilization, the calendar has always had a close affinity to ritual and
religion. Traditionally the calendar was the sole responsibility of religious leaders
(in Egyptian the word for priest means star watcher). Almost all cultures give
great attention to the maintenance of an accurate calendar, since it is this that
structures the rhythms of religious life. Punctuated by ritual, holy festivals and
prayer, the passage of calendric time is a cultural celebration.
It is thus not an exaggeration to claim that one's culture is one's
calendar. In a book entitled Hidden Rhythms Eviatar Zerubavel uses the
example of Judaism to illustrate this point. According to Zerubavel the Jewish
people distinguish themselves from gentiles through the specificity of their
calendar. He stresses, in particular, the importance given to the observance of
9As Samuel Macy writes in his book The Dynamics of Progress: Time, Method and Progress,
"months, moons and menstruation are so closely related that we use the same root-word for all
83
the Sabbath, a weekly reminder of tradition which operates to structure and
determine the rest of the week. "The Jewish calendar, " writes Zerubavel, "has
been hailed as the single most important book of the people of Israel. It has
been said to have preserved the Jews as a people, to have united all those who
have been scattered around the world and made them one people" (HR, 73)
It is perhaps this which explains the tendency for cultural revolutions to
inaugurate calendric change. The adoption of a new calendar is amongst the
most powerful means of separating a people from their social surroundings. By
celebrating different holy days and not sharing in the same festivities a new
calendar works to entrench cultural difference. Thus, Christianity distinguished
itself from Judaism through the adoption of a luni-solar calendar and by switching
the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Mohammed, operating with the same
principle, "replaced the luni-solar calendar that had prevailed in Arabia with an
entirely lunar calendar. " (HR, 81) He also made the Islamic day of rest fall on a
Friday, thus distinguishing his-followers from both the Christians and the Jews.
Clock time, as we will see, can be differentiated from the calendar on a
point by point basis. First, because clock-time substitutes the calendric
emphasis on the count by innovating on the side of ticks or beats. Using cardinal
rather than ordinal numbers the clock does not count time: it measures it. The
clock is by its nature indifferent to astronomy. It can, as is the case with the
three of them." (DPTMP, 26)
84
sundial, use the rotations of the planets as its mode of measure but its tendency
has been to find the tick of time elsewhere. Following a line through metallurgy
and on to geology the clock extracts the beat away from astronomical
movement. -For as D S.. Landes writes in his book Revolution in Time: Clocks and
the Making of the Modem World, "to the physicist any stable oscillation is a
clock. " (RT, 6) The clock, then is a machine which either engineers its own tick,
as is the case with the mechanical clock or it incorporates one from the outside
into its own internal mechanism, as is the case with clocks which run on the
pulse of the quartz crystal. Thus, unlike the calendar in which a vast distance
separates the count from the beat, clocks have assimilated natural time into the
machine.10
Secondly, clock time is metric rather than rhythmic. There are no
intertwining cycles or irregular beats in the constant ticking of a clock Unlike in a
.
calendar in which each date has a specificity of its own, clock time is
homogenous. August'21,1998,
for example, is a sign attributed to a particular
historical year (the year the presidency was rocked by scandal, two years away
from the millennium etc... ), allied with a specific season (summer), allocated to a
particular time at that season (towards the end), and linked to designated day of
10This tendency for clock's to develop a new form of time independent of astronomy reached its
apex in the 1960's with the development of the atomic clock. This machine "which depends for its
operation on the incredibly precise rate of decay of a caesium isotope," (BT 71) has now become
the ultimate chronometric reference. "Atomic clocks, which operate at accuracies equivalent to an
error of one second in 150,000 years enable us with ease to measure irregularities in the rotation
period of the Earth itself the former standard of timekeeping." (BT 161)
85
the week (Friday). Yet, while calendric units are constrained by the qualitative
aspects of the time which they are meant to designate the units of clock time are
based on arbitrary divisions which are purely conventional. " The results in a
strong tendency of the clock to autonomize the time from any events outside its
12
own mechanism.
Unlike the calendar, clock time does not date events but determines the
length of time they take. It replaces the internal variation and complicated system
of counting with a metric and homogeneous measure. Extracted from history and
stripped of ceremony, ritual and religion, the regular beat of the clock is allied
with quantity rather than quality. It is an abstract and formalized time indifferent
to the events which it measures.
For the majority of history the clock has been subordinated to the
calendar. Until the invention of the mechanical escapement, clocks in so far as
they existed (as sundials, water clocks and sand glasses) operated within the
confines of the calendar. Using variable hours which were determined by the
length of the day and fluctuated with the seasons, the time of the clock had little
"Traditionally clock time has been organized according to the Babylonian 60 based system (there
are 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute). However, with the rise of digital
technology clocks have begun to split the second into gradations based on the decimal system
(e.g the nanosecond, the picosecond etc... )
12This is most evident with cyberspace time which does not distinguish between the days of the
week or even between night and day. This results in businesses having to develop new models in
which they are 'open' 24 hours, 7 days a week, and is also an increasing factor in processes of
globalization which make use of different time-zones to increase productivity.
86
or no autonomy. Though it was used for certain civil functions, 13in comparison to
the calendar, the clock was a trivial device.
Thus, in focussing on the technological development of the clock,
capitalism has actualized a distinction in time which had, until the capitalist
regime, existed solely as a virtuality. In effecting a technological change that
made clock time ever more independent from the calendar, capitalism not only
invented a new type of time-keeping device it also discovered a new type of
time.
"Academic's lives, " Deleuze is quoted as saying, "are seldom
interesting." Days are invariably filled with some mixture of reading, writing, and
lecturing, and unless this routine is punctuated by some surprising or dramatic
event biographical details rarely hold much importance. In the case of Immanuel
Kant, however, the situation is somewhat different. For the legends surrounding
Kant's life suggest that he performed the monotonous routine of his academic
schedule with such extreme regularity and precision that one cannot fail to
become absorbed in the meticulous, almost psychotic timing of his day to day
existence.
In an essay entitled The Last Days of Immanuel Kant Thomas Dequincy
13For example, in the fifth century water clocks were used in Athenian law courts to limit the time
of speeches. "Since court proceedings usually had to be concluded within a day, the total
speaking time in criminal trials was split three ways between the accuser, the accused, and the
judges, using as a basis the approximate amount of water that flowed out of vessels on a short
day (about nine hours). (HH, 23)
87
combines historical fact with fictional flare to describe this existence in detail.
Kant's day, according to Dequincy, began "precisely at five minutes before five
o'clock, winter or summer, when Lampe, Kant's footman, who had formerly
served in the army, marched into his master's room with the air of a sentinel on
duty, and cried aloud in a military tone. "Mr Professor, the time is come. " (LDIK,
341 ) Upon hearing this pronouncement
Kant rose immediately and "as the clock
(LDIK,
341)
In
breakfast
table"
five
he
the
accordance with
seated
at
was
struck
his passion for order and "love for architectonic symmetry" (WWR, 448) Kant tables
the
that
the
the
of
structure
reminiscent
adopted
a
routine
goes
story
so
first critique. His daily schedule was divided into 3 parts of 8 hours each, the first
dedicated to work, the second to leisure, and the third to sleep. The first part, the
"precisely
before
three-quarters
brought
to
day,
at
when
a
close
was
working
has
his
'It
threeto
from
his
he
cook,
struck
aloud
called
chair and
arose
one
lunch.
After
to
his
Kant
341)
then
(LDIK,
and
preceded
office
up
closed
quarters'
the meal at 3: 30 pm, almost half way into the section of the day reserved for
leisure, Kant would go on his daily walk. He was greeted, according to legend, by
the citizens of Konigsberg who would look out their windows, wave to the
Heine
Thus,
his
by
their
compares
when
movements.
watches
professor and set
Kant to the "great clock of the cathedral" he is not speaking metaphorically. For
if the stories are even partially true, the extremity of Kant's punctuality was such
that his very activities functioned to tell the time.
88
As an empirical subject, then, Kant was deeply influenced by the clock.
Historically, he was writing in a period in which these time-keepers had already
achieved a certain amount of ubiquity and were well on their way of establishing
themselves as the key device in time-keeping technology. A year before the
publication of the first critique, clocks made the first step in supplanting
astronomy as the ultimate chronometric reference, when "in 1780 Geneva first
"
(ST,
Kant
"mean
in
to
time.
4)
lived in a
time"
to
solar
use
preference
started
introduced
been
had
long
to urban centres and it is
in
since
which
clocks
world
Heine's
from
that
is
the
analogy,
central to the town
as
clear
case,
undoubtedly
lore
Moreover,
the
Konigsberg
time
which surrounds
piece.
a
public
was
of
Kant's life suggests that some form of clock or watch adorned every room of his
home and study.
Yet, while it is clear that clock time was a crucial factor in Kant's life, the
impact it had on his writings remains uncertain. There is a strong tendency,
life
from
thinkers
his
to
discipline
in
the
a
separate
of;
philosophy,
especially
foundations
the
Kant,
in
the
is
This
very
at
since
of
case
of
reinforced
work.
between
insistence
the
is
empirical experience and
split
on
an
critique
transcendental thought. It is thus in accordance with his own principles that
Kant's experiential existence is deemed irrelevant. For it is not through the
transcendental.
to
the
that
access
one
gains
empirical
One of the consequences of this line of thought is that it reinforces the
89
commonly held assumption that Kant, like most other thinkers, made his
philosophical discoveries by secluding himself from the outside world. According
to this view, Kant, explored the transcendental in the solitary confines of his
introspection,
he developed
through
a
of
epistemological
where,
process
office
his critique of reason by examining the operations of thinking itself.
The problem with this view is that it cannot help but ignore the uncanny
resemblance which exists between the time of the clock which governed Kant's
life and the discussion of time found in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic'. This
following
features:
to
the
be
according
characterized
can
resemblance
First, clocks converge with Kantian critique in that with both time ceases
to be in the control of an outside authority. Kant's relocation of time within the
individual subject is paralleled in the history of time-keeping when, with the
time
the
of
cheap
watches,
production
mass
miniaturization of clocks and
becomes
the
the
hands
the
in
be
the
state
and
of
to
ruler
or
priest
of
ceased
instead the property of the individual. Thus developments in time-keeping
technology both echo and support the autonomy of the modern subject. To quote
from Davis S Landes:
Where people had once depended on the cry of the night watch, the bell
had
they
the
time
in
the
town
turret
the
now
the
square,
clock
church, or
of
life
in
their
home
their
and
work
a manner
order
and
could
person
or on
at
In
the
this
to
privatisation
way
communities.
once reserved regulated
(personalization) of time was a major stimulus to the individualism that
(RT,
89)
Western
civilization.
of
aspect
was an ever more salient
90
In both the history of the clock and in the first critique, this personalisation
of time corresponds to a process of interiorization. In Kant, as we have seen,
time as the form of inner sense moves inside the subject to become both the
limit and the defining feature of interiority. An analogous process can be said to
have occurred with the technology of the clock. The clock, like the Kantian
subject, is an internally articulated system which relates itself to the outside
precisely through temporal autonomization.
Furthermore, clock time is similar to time as pure intuition in that with both
the power of temporality becomes the ultimate system of a surreptitious capture
and usurpation. The clock is a machine for producing time. Once developed, its
product (hours, minutes, seconds) envelopes everything, including its own
internal processes. Even those objects and events of the external world that had
once been used to mark the time (i.e. the rotation of the planets) are now given
precise and accurate measurement by the ticking of the clock.
The final and most important point of convergence, however, is that both
clock time and time as a pure intuition revolutionizes the classical conception of
time by liberating temporality from the events which happen inside it. In creating
a purely quantitative time - distinct from astronomy -14 clocks developed a mode
of temporality which ceases to be determined by the objects of the external
14In 1967 the rate of cesium's pulse was calibrated to 9,192,631,770 oscillations per second.
This is now the official measurement of world time, replacing the old standard based on the
earth's rotation and orbit, which had used as its base number a second equal to 1/31556925.9747
of a year. This means that under this new regime of cesium the year is no longer measured as
91
world. In this way, the autonomy of clock technology parallels the Kantian
distinction between a formalized structure of time and the changes which occur
inside it. Thus, in paying relatively little attention to the calendar as a timekeeping system in order to concentrate instead on the new technology of the
clock, the production of capitalist time converges with Kantian system
inaugurating a revolution - not in time but of time - which substitutes a
transformation in time-marking conventions for a much more fundamental shift in
the nature of time itself.
365.242199 days but as 290,091,200,500,000,000 oscillation of C's, give or take an oscillation or
two. (C, 234)
92
2.2 The Synthetic Culture of Clock Time, or Time = Money
Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent turns upon the idea that the
most effective way of attacking capitalist culture is to target the time. Set in
London in 1884, The Secret Agent is a tale based on the historic attempt to
bomb the observatory at Greenwich. In Conrad's fiction the rationale for this
bizarre occurrence is related through a conversation between the agent, Mr
Verloc and his boss Vladimir, the Russian agent provocateur. Appearing on
summons to Vladimir's office, Verloc is informed that in order to earn his keep
he must use his links with the anarchist group 'Future of the Proletariat' to
oversee a series of terrorist activities designed to arouse extremism amongst
the British, discredit the revolutionaries and provoke panic amongst the
bourgeoisie. In order to accomplish these goals, Vladimir insists, all the
traditional modes of terrorism must be abandoned. Attacks on either royalty or
religion will not do. Assassinations are expected. Assaults on public buildings,
while they undoubtedly cause some alarm, are easily dismissed as the act of
National
Gallery
"
Vladimir
bomb
in
"A
the
lone
would,
concedes,
maniac.
a
`make some noise, " but not amongst the right people. To hit at the heart of
the bourgeoisie, Verloc is instructed, one must strike against `the true fetish of
the hour - science and learning. " (SA, 35) "It would be really telling, " says his
boss, gloating in the persuasiveness of his own logic, if one could throw a
bomb into pure mathematics. " (SA, 36) Though this is unfortunately
impossible Vladimir contents himself with the next best thing, "What do you
93
think, " he asks, of having a go at astronomy? " (SA, 36) By the end of the
meeting it is dear that in order for Verloc to stay on the payroll he must stage
an attack on Greenwich. 'Go for the first meridian' Vladimir demands as he
pushes the disgruntled but acquiescing Verloc out of the room.
Conrad's book sets out to ridicule the cruel and baseless inanity of this
unsuccessful gesture. His is a story of the perversion of politics, the evil of
ideology, emotional betrayal and personal grief. And yet, the notion that
Marxist revolutionaries should attack the prime meridian is not as absurd as it
first appears. Though the bombing of Greenwich is perhaps ill advised, the
thinking behind it is sound. For, as we will see, there are few things as central
to capitalism as Greenwich Mean Time.
The observatory at Greenwich made its initial impact in the mid
'
eighteenth century, when the clockmaker John Harrison devised a solution to
what had come to be known as the longitude problem. Up until this point,
ocean travellers had only one coordinate with which to determine their
location. The means of judging one's latitude which depends on natural signs
such as temperature and planetary positions had been known for thousands
of years. The much more arbitrary task of determining one's longitude, on the
other hand, was, to quote from Dava Sobel's best selling book on the subject,
a 'dilemma which stumped the wisest minds of the world for the better part of
human history. " (L, 4)
' The precise date for the development of H4, the clock that eventually won the Longitude
prize is 1759.
94
In 1714 the British Parliament, sought to resolve this dilemma by
offering a prize "equal to a king's ransom for a 'practicable and useful'
means of determining longitude. " (L, 8) What followed was a struggle that
pitted the tradition of astronomy against the emerging technology of the
clock. Since longitude is a fusion of space and time the solution to the
problem could come from one of two ways, either through the perfection of
lunar charts, or through the development of a timekeeper that would handle
the extreme conditions of ocean travel
.2
John Harrison, defied the
astronomers at Greenwich who favoured the lunar method and devoted his
life to producing a clock which could keep the time at sea. In 1759 Harrison's
work came to fruition with the completion of H4, the "time-keeper that
ultimately won the longitude prize" (L, 106).
Harrison's marine chronometer was, undoubtedly, one of the most
influential machines ever built. It played a critical role in securing control over
the oceans, expanding trade routes, and stabilizing commercial networks. By
offering a practicable solution to the longitude problem Harrison's clock
established Greenwich at the heart of the British empire, and was thus crucial
to the onset of global capitalism.
It was not until over a hundred years later, however, that the power of
Greenwich was globally entrenched. By the late 19th century the rapid growth
of communication and transportation, in particular the expansion of the
railroad system, meant that some kind of temporalcoordinationhad became
2 This latter
method rests on the fact that longitudecan be inferred by knowingthe time on
95
essential. With each city, town, or village governed by its own local time the
scheduling of pick ups, deliveries, arrivals and departures was next to
impossible. For industrialized culture to function it became necessary to adopt
a standard time frame.
The idea of dividing the world into 24 time zones, 15 degrees of
longitude wide and one hour apart was initially devised to co-ordinate North
American rail way traffic. The installation of this plan, however, demanded
that world time be synchronized on a zero point. This occurred in 1884 at the
International Meridian Conference held in Washington DC. Here it was
agreed that the prime meridian would be the one passing through the 'centre
3
Greenwich'.
Instrument
Observatory
transit
the
the
at
at
of
Mapped at 00 00' 00" Greenwich thus became the official 'centre of
time and space'. Still today Greenwich is the 'keeper of the stroke of
midnight'(L, 168) It marks the beginning of the 'universal day' for all the
world and defines the east/west position of everywhere else on the planet.
"Greenwich time even extends into outer space: Astronomers use GMT to
time predictions and observations, except that they call it Universal Time, or
UT, in their celestial calendars (L, 168)
The history of Greenwich, then, is central to the emergence of a
capitalist production of globalized time. Beginning with a battle which pits
boarda ship and comparingit to the time at port.
3 There was opposition to this, primarily from the French, who 'continued to recognize their
own Paris Observatory meridian, a little more than two degrees east of Greenwich, as the
starting line for another twenty-seven years, until 1911. (Even then they hesitated to refer
directly to Greenwich mean time, preferring the locution 'Pads Mean Time, retarded by nine
96
astronomers against engineers, it tells the story of a transition into a new age
in which the entrenched power of the 'star watchers' gives way to remarkable
feats in engineering, technological innovation, and a continuous upward curve
of industrial development. From the discovery of longitude to the
standardization of time, Greenwich, as the centre of capitalist time, appears to
neglect the calendar in order to celebrate instead the manifest triumph of the
clock.
History of the Clock
It is common amongst sociologists and historians of time to trace the
culture of the clock back to the monastic tradition of the Middle Ages. For,
according to a number of accounts, it is in the monasteries of the West where
one finds the first signs of a culture based on the quantifiable and abstract
4
Benedictine
in
the
Monks,
those
time.
of
particular
order,
clock
regularity of
divided their day into measurable units in order to develop a strict daily regime
of work, rest and prayer. 'For centuries the religious orders had been the
masters of discipline: they were the specialists of time, the great technicians
of rhythm and regular activities. " (DP, 150) By scheduling time and
'synchronizing the action of men' (TC 14) they creating a mode of existence
minutes twenty one seconds. )' (L, 168)
4 In the opening pages of his book Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford suggests that the
clock, the key-machine of the modem industrial age; (TC14) arose out of the temporal
culture which developed in the monasteries. The monastery, ' he writes, was the seat of a
regular life, and an instrument for striking the hours at intervals or for reminding the bell-ringer
that it was time to strike the bells was an almost inevitable product of this life' (TC, 13)
97
based on discipline, rationality and rule.
The temporal regularity and time scheduling of monastic life is said to
have arose initially in order to provide shelter against the unpredictability and
confusion of everyday existence. Living in the isolation of the monasteries
monks created cloistered communities which offered seclusion and refuge
from the chaos of ordinary life. To quote Lewis Mumford: Within the walls of
the monastery was sanctuary: under the rule of the order surprise and doubt
and caprice were put at bay. Opposed to the erratic fluctuations and
pulsations of the worldly life was the iron discipline of the rule. " (TC, 13)
The force which imposed the time table, however, should not be seen
as a solely negative one. Time scheduling was more than a means of trying to
keep the forces of chaos under control. It was also a positive religious
injunction. First, because the rhythms of prayer demanded an accurate
account of the division of time. "The central element in monastic daily routine
164
(A
Seven
119,
Psalm
times
In
keeping
divine
verses
a
with
worship.
was
day I praise thee") and 62 (At midnight I rise to give thee thanks") it was
performed seven times during the day and once during the night. " (HH 35)
The fact that prayers occurred so often, and that their scheduling did not
adhere to calendric time (there is no calendric or astronomical means of
determining midnight) meant that monks had to develop some other way of
keeping track of the time. In order to accomplish this the monasteries put the
abbot in charge of maintaining a new temporal order, one which was no
longer structured by the concrete rhythms of the planets but was determined
98
instead in accordance with the dictates of the monastic rule. Signalling the
time by the ringing of a bell, the abbot would call the monks to prayer. Thus,
unlike other religious practices in which the passage of time dictates when to
pray, in monastic life prayer began to dictate the calculation of time.
This strict timetable of devotion was, as we will see, motivated by a
theological necessity5. For according to the monastic tradition, time
scheduling was in itself a means of devoting oneself to God. 'Idleness, "
Benedictine
"
His
text,
the
is
Benedict,
the
of
soul.
rule,
an
enemy
wrote
committed itself to fighting this enemy by developing a particular relation to
time. Leisure was not permitted. For unless one adopted a disciplined
structure which compartmentalized meditation, devotion and work, idleness
be
that
to
dedicated
time
into
the
meant
was
away
steal
soul
and
would seep
to God. Thus, if monks were to fulfil their religious duty and live according to
the will of their creator, time had to be strictly rationalized. According to this
form
developed
of worship, necessary
a
then,
the
almost
as
was
clock
story,
to uphold the beliefs of a certain strand in the Christian tradition.
This thesis, that clock time originated inside the walls of monasteries,
has been challenged along a number of lines. In his book History of the Hour,
Gerhard Dohm-van Rossum argues, for example, that while it is true that the
monastic tradition rationalised time it did not pay much attention to measuring
it.6 Time in the monasteries was regulated but it was not yet made regular.
5 This will be made clear in our discussion of Max Weber below.
6 See History of the Hour pages 33 40
-
99
For the religious orders marked the division of the day not by the use of the
clock but by the ringing of the bell. Still dependent on the temporality of the
calendar, monastic time operated with hours that fluctuated with the
seasons.? Temporal distinctions were made through divine office not by the
ticking of a mechanism. 8 Thus, discipline and scheduling were not by
themselves sufficient to create the autonomy of clock time.
In an essay entitled Merchant's Time and Church's Time in the Middle
Ages the historian Jack Le Goff makes the claim that clock time arose, not in
the monasteries, but rather through the pragmatic culture of the merchants.
He argues that in order for clocks to take hold, time had to be freed from the
clutches of God. His essay begins with a discussion of usury. "Among the
principal criticism levelled against the merchants, " he writes, "was the charge
that their profit implied a mörtgage on time which was supposed to belong to
God alone. " (MT/CT, 29) Both credit and interest, which are of course crucial
to the merchant, demand tliat the prohibition on usury be lifted and that -as
9
God
be
Furthermore, in that
later
time.
equated with
we will
see - money not
" 'Talk of'Tron discipline' or the machine-like or clockwork rhythm of monastic life,
even in a
purely metaphorical sense, is misleading, because it suggests a time giver (a machine or
clock) external to natural rhythms and the daily round of human life. In actual fact, life
according to the Rule was bound in a very high degree to natural time givers, daylight and the
seasons, and was by no means marked by ascetic resistance to the natural environment. "
(HH, 38)
a'Despite the density of activities, the ordering of the daily monastic routine got by
with
remarkably few indications of time. The beginning of the offices was linked not to a particular
point in time but to a signal or short sequence of signals. ' (HH, 36)
Le Goff writes that once commercial networks were organized, time (and its relation to
monetization) became an object of measurement. The duration of a sea voyage or of a
journey by land to one place or the other, the problem of prices which rose or fell in the course
of a commercialtransaction(the more so as the circuit became increasinglycomplex,
100
they were operating in an environment of technological precision, navigational
necessities, and complex financial dealings, merchants could no longer
accept the unpredictability and variations of a time dominated by religion. To
operate commercial networks merchants needed a mode of time that could
be explicitly measured and regulated-10Commercial capitalism requires a
secularization of time, which operates with constant rather than variable
hours, one in which the science of technology rather than the authority of
priests is in control.
Yet another factor, crucial to the development of clock time, was the
"
process of urbanization. Historically, rural life had been governed by the
qualitative time of the calendar. The passage of the seasons, the natural
cycle of the day and the concrete rhythms of agriculture dictated how time
was structured and filled. In the country, working time was task driven and the
duration and scheduling of each activity was determined by natural cues.
In the urban environment, on the other hand, time become unhinged
from events. From a very early period, public clocks were installed in the city
affecting profits), the duration of the labor of craftsmen and workers (since the merchant was
almost always an employer of labor), all made increasing claims on [the merchant's] attention
and became the object of evermore explicit regulation. (MT/CT, 35)
10This was absolutely necessary due to the emphasis on facts, documentation
and double
entry book keeping that were a crucial component to the life of the merchant. To quote Le
Goff: 'The statuses of corporations, together with such commercial documents as account
sheets, travel diaries, manuals of commercial practice and the letters of exchange then
coming into common use in the fairs of Champagne (which in the twelfth and thirteenth
century became the 'clearinghouse' of international commerce), all show how important the
exact measurement of time was becoming to the orderly conduct of business. ' (MT/CT, 35)
11Deleuze emphasizes this aspect in speaking of the relation between clock time
and Kant.
For Deleuze it is Kant's'historical situation which allows him to grasp the implications of the
critical reversal [in the philosophy of time]. Time is no longer the cosmic time of an original
celestial movement, nor is it the rural time of derived metereological movements. It has
become the time of the city and nothing other, the pure order of time. ' (ECC, 28)
101
centres and time in the towns became governed by these new machines. The
time of the clock began to regulate when one was to eat, sleep and especially
when and for how long to work. As Mumford writes, "the bells of the clock
tower almost defined urban existence. (TC, 14) With the migration from the
country to the towns, then, there arose 'a regular, normal time associated
with daily life, a sort of chronological net in which urban life was caught" (TL
48)
All three of these cultural forces crucial to the development of the clock
discipline
life,
the
the secular world of merchant capital, and the
of
monastic
growth of industrialized urban centres - have also been strongly linked to the
development of capitalist culture.
It has been argued, for example, most influentially by Weber and
Mumford, that the structure and discipline of the monastic tradition was a
crucial precursor to modem industrial society. Operating with the same model
Mumford,
factories,
were crucial in "helping to
writes
monasteries,
as modem
give human enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine. "
(TC, 14), Having built a society based on order, rationalism and rules, the
influence of these religious communities is such that, according to Mumford,
"the Benedictines, the great working order, " can be seen as 'the original
founders of modem capitalism. ' (TC, 13)
In much the same way, merchant capital is often viewed as the
prototype of the capitalist system. There are of course crucial distinctions
between merchant capital, which is restricted to circulation, and industrial
102
capitalism which extends capitalist relations into the sphere of production.
Nevertheless, merchant capital laid down the grid of 'socially decoded' or
commercially rationalized interchange within which industrial capitalism could
12
develop.
Finally, the ongoing process of urbanization, particularly because of its
relation to the abstraction of labour, has also been seen as fundamental in
the transition to the capitalist mode of production. The move away from the
country stripped people of their concrete roles. No longer coded according to
baker)
farmer,
the
the
(the
tasks
vast portions
peasant,
or
positions
particular
labour
became
defined
the
of
abstract
as
quantities
purely
of
population
power. Having lost access or ownership to the means of production they
became 'free labourers'. Thus, life in the city developed a socio-economic
A
factor
be
traded
labour
in
ease.
relative
which
with
could
system which
many - from Smith to Marx and beyond - believe to be the key to capitalist
production.
Thus, the proto-industrial discipline of monasticism, the rationalism of
large
the
fluid
by
the
and
merchants
and
practised
credit
and
accountancy
labour markets that arose through the process of urbanization, are all
in
history
the
in
history
the
both
the
key,
clock
and
of
of
considered
capitalism. Yet, one should not be surprised that the development of clock-
12It has been argued, by Engels in particular, that merchant capital was the vehicle by which
capitalism replaced feudal society.
103
time is so intertwined with the production of capitalist culture. 13 For, as we will
see, at the very foundations of capitalism is the synthetic operation which
equates time with money.
Time Is Money
Part 1: Weber and the Spirit of Capitalism
Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by
his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though
he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to
reckon that the only expense; he really has spent, or rather thrown
away, five shillings besides.. ' (PESC, 51)
According to Max Weber, when Benjamin Franklin speaks these
words, which warn against the dangers of idleness and wasting time, he is
speaking as a mouthpiece for capitalist culture. His words are the
embodiment of the Protestant ethic, an ethic, which Weber has famously
14
feature
'the
'
is
For Weber,
spirit of capitalism.
of
argued, the characteristic
13 As we will see, this relation between clock-time and capitalist culture can neither be
explained by the discourse of technological determinism (which presumes a one way causal
relationship which runs from technology to social systems) nor by social constructivism (which
maintains a linear causality but sees it as running in the opposite direction). For as we will see
in the following pages, the culture of capitalism and the technology of the clock are mutually
involved in a circuit of reciprocal presuppositions such that it is impossible to say which
precedes the other. For it is clear, both, that the development of the clock could only have
taken place within capitalist culture and that capitalist culture presumes, from its very
beginning, the ubiquity of the clock.
14The connections between critique and capitalism are no doubt due at least in part to
Kant's obvious connections to Protestantism. This relation is stressed both by Heine, who
argues that Kantianism is 'nothing else than the last consequence of Protestantism. ' (RPG,
59) and by Weber who maintains that "being partly of Scotch ancestry and strongly influenced
by pietism in his bringing up-many of [Kant's] formulations are closely related to the ideas of
ascetic Protestantism. ' (PESC, 270)
104
capitalist culture is a Christian culture since its 'spirit' corresponds to the
beliefs, practices and ethos of a particular strand in the Christian tradition. His
work sets out to show that by cultivating an ethos of 'active asceticism' this
strand of Christianity became the first religion to have developed an economic
15
is
life.
to
the
ethic which conducive
capitalist way of
This ethic depends, first of all, on what Weber has called, the
'disenchantment of the world. ' (FMW, 290) Christianity, like its precursor
Judaism, is founded on a grand exorcism which banishes magic, expels
spirits and strips objects of their animistic power. Outlawing the sorcerer, it
puts the prophet in charge of a world that is "disenchanted of its gods and
demons. " (FMW, 148) The sacred, which is now captured by the
monotheistic rule of transcendence, has retreated from the everyday. In place
of a magical world, there arises a rational, intellectualized cosmos which is,
for the first time, capable of being measured and quantified.
Seeking to distance itself from mysticism as well as from magic, the
Judeo-Christian tradition shuns not only sorcery but also what Weber calls the
'exemplary prophet', a figure that is characterized by an ecstatic relation to
the divine. (FMW, 289) Trance and possession are criticized since they
attempt to flee from the world that God has created. What is required instead
15It would be
a mistake to assume that Weber's argument is that the Protestant religion is the
cause of capitalism, or the capitalist way of life. No economic ethic, " he writes, has ever been
determined solely by religion. In the face of man's attitudes towards the world - as determined
by religious or other (in our sense) 'inner' factors - an economic ethic has, of course, a high
measure of autonomy. Given factors of economic geography and history determine this
measure of autonomy in the highest degree. The religious determination of life-conduct,
however, is also one - note this - only one, of the determinants of the economic ethic. (FMW,
268)
105
is the 'emissary prophet' who no longer functions as God's 'vessel', but has
become instead, his 'tool'. (PESC, 113-114) With careful sobriety the
emissary prophet encounters the divine as the giver of the law. Working as
God's instrument he teaches his population to mould life in accordance with
the divine will.
The result is the ethos of `active - or wordly - asceticism, " Weber's
name for an asceticism which has turned away from a contemplative 'flight
from the world' and dedicated itself instead to 'work in the world'. (FMW,
290) Placed in the role of custodian or guardian, the active ascetic seeks to
`create the kingdom of heaven on earth, " transforming the world through the
activity of labour. With the active ascetic, then, economic activity ceases to be
16
instead
duty.
hindrance
life
becomes
to
a sacred
a
religious
and
Weber maintains that the ethos of active asceticism reached its apex
in Calvinism. " It is clear from his work, however, that the roots of the
Protestant ethic predate the reformation. According to Weber, the first inklings
of the religious spirit of capitalism can be found in the monasteries of the
Middle Ages. For it is in these secluded environments where there first arose
a culture based on order, discipline and rule.
As we have seen these qualities of monastic life arise from the fact that
16«In inner-wordly asceticism, the grace and the chosen state of the religiously qualified
man
prove themselves in everyday life. To be sure, they do so not in the everyday life as it is given,
but in methodical and rationalized routine-activities of workaday life in the service of the Lord.
Rationally raised into a vocation, everyday conduct becomes the locus for proving one's state
of grace. ' (FMW, 291)
17For Weber's discussion
of Calvinism as a religious foundation for worldly asceticism see
106
they structured their existence according to a new regime of time. Monks
developed a religious culture which deplored the magical and mystical
attempt to access realms that existed outside time. In place of this heretical
'escapism' monasticism insisted on a 'this worldliness' in which spiritual
fulfilment came from the management and measure of time itself. Like the
Puritans after them, they believed that 'not leisure and enjoyment, but only
activity serves to increase the glory of God. " (PESC, 157) With their
condemnation of idleness they produced an ethos in which the "waste of time
was the first and in principle the deadliest of sins. " (PESC, 157) "For,
according to the Christian ethic which Franklin would later expound "every
hour lost is lost to labour for the glory of God. " (PESC, 158) Thus, writes
Weber, it does not yet hold, with Franklin, that time is money, but the
proposition is true in a certain spiritual sense. " (PESC, 158)
It is this which allowed these cloistered communities to engineer a
18
Protestant
culture which, by providing the kernel of the
ethic, managed to
spread outside the monasteries' walls. By making time bound labour a
religious imperative they provided the key to the development of active
asceticism, a temporal ethos which, according to Weber, allowed the
rationalized, divisible and quantifiable world of capitalism to prosper.
Part 2: Karl Marx and the Labour theory of value
The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalismp.98-128
18As Weber writes, 'active self-control,
which formed the end of the exercitia of St Ignatius
107
As is well known Marx's work differs from Weber's in that his theory of
capitalism rests not on an analyses of religion but on a theory of material
production. Nevertheless, as we will see, the synthetic statement 'time is
money' plays as central a role for Marx as it does for Weber. For regardless
of their differences, these two thinkers share the fact that they have
developed theories of capitalism which are founded on a particular regime of
time.
The key to the Marxist understanding of capitalism is the labour theory
of value (which he inherited and modified from the prior history of political
economy). As the economist Joseph Schumpeter writes: The fundamental
explanatory principle of any system of economics is always a theory of value.
Economic theory concerns facts that are expressed in terms of value, and
but
the
is
the
cosmos,
of
economic
also the form
mover
prime
not
only
value
in which its phenomena are made comparable and measurable. " (TGE, 151).
Thus, it is no accident that Capital Volume One opens with a discussion of
how commodities obtain their value.
According to Marx, commodities or 'external objects' can be "looked at
from two points of view of quality and quantity. " (C1,125)
commodities
Qualitatively
are defined by their use value. That is, their value is derived
from the fact that they fulfil some 'human need. ' Thus, a coat, for example,
viewed according to its use value, is something someone wears to keep out
and of rational monasticvirtues everywherewas also the most importantpracticalideal of
108
the cold. As quantities, however, commodities cease to be determined by the
uses they fulfil and become instead 'the material bearers of exchange value'
(Cl, 126) The coat is no longer a garment to be wom but rather an object that
can be traded on the market place.
This switch from use value to exchange value occurs, according to
Marx, through a process of abstraction. That is to say, that the transformation
from quality to quantity requires that commodities be stripped of their concrete
use value and be determined instead by something more abstract. According
to Marx, the exchange relation necessarily takes the form of the equation x=
y (i.e. 100 loaves of bread is equal to 1 coat). What, this equation signifies, he
writes, "is that a common element of identical magnitude exists in two
different things... Both are therefore equal to a third thing, which is in itself
neither the one nor the other. Each of them, in so far as it is exchange value,
must therefore be reducible to some third thing. a (Cl, 127)
Thus, economic transactions in the form of exchange require the
production of an abstract plane in which qualitatively distinct items can be
compared. For in order to operate as a medium of exchange commodities
must be capable of being appraised according to some standard measure.
This 'standard measure', writes Marx, cannot "be a geometrical, physical,
chemical or other natural property of commodities. " (Cl, 127) since these
concrete qualitative characteristics belong to the commodity as use value
and, as we have seen, commercial exchange occurs through a process of
Puritanism. (PESC, 119)
109
abstraction in which commodities are extracted from their particular use or
function.
What the exchange relation necessitates, then, is a value determined
by a common property that all commodities share. For Marx, this common
factor is the fact that all commodities are a product of human labour.
Everything from corn to clothes to cars has been created by the hands of the
worker. It is important to note that labour is here understood not according to
its concrete manifestation (the labourer as farmer, baker, smith etc.. ) but is
Thus,
"
(C1,128)
Marx
labour
in
'human
the
instead
abstract.
as
seen
(from
Adam
Smith),
the
economy
political
of
modem
conclusion
concurs with
that the value of commodities are determined by the quantity of abstract
labour which their production requires.
Posing the question as to how this abstract quantity -that is the
is
be
determined,
item
to
in
labour
of
exchange
each
contained
amount of
the labour theory of value had answered: through aggregate labour time.
The quantity of labour, ' writes Marx, Is measured by its duration, " (Capital
1,46) or, even more emphatically, the measure of labour is time" (PP, 42).
Time, then, is the means through which abstract labour is quantified. It is form
is
thus the means
to
value,
and
exchange
calculate
or standard which serves
through which objects are transformed into commodities. To quote Marx: As
values, all commodities are defined only as definite masses of congealed
labour time. " (C1,47)
In the Marxist theory, labour time not only determines exchange value,
110
but is also the crucial use-value for industrial capitalism, and is thus the
principal of surplus value. It is this recognition which has been seen -by Lenin
19
Marx's
the
theory.
For it is
amongst others - as
comer stone of
economic
surplus value which, according to Marx, accounts both for the (rigorously
quantifiable) exploitation of the worker and for the (exactly equivalent)
generation of profit and wealth for the capitalist class.
According to the analyses in Capital surplus value is generated by the
fact that the capitalist makes the labourer work for more time than is
necessary for the reproduction of labour itself. The economist Boehm-Bawerk
describes the theory as follows.
Under capitalism the working day is divided into two parts. In the first
part-the 'necessary working time' -the worker produces the means
necessary for his own support, or the value of those means; and for
this part of his labour he receives an equivalent in wages. During the
second part -the 'surplus working time '-he is exploited, he produces
'surplus value' without receiving any equivalent for it. (KMCS, 16)
To quote Marx, `the fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep
the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from
working a whole day. (C, 188) In short, "surplus value is produced by the fact
that the capitalist makes the labourer work for him a part of the day without
paying him for it". ( KCS 16) The bourgeois mode of production, then, extracts
surplus from the 'extra' time that the labourer is forced to work.
Thus, the two key features in Marx's analyses of the capitalist system,
through
the
operations
are
constituted
value
value
and
surplus
exchange
-
19 See Lenin,V. I. Marx, Engels, Marxism.Moscow:ProgressPublishers,1970.(especially p.
111
of time. This shows that though Marx is known for his commitment to
historicism, the mode of temporality that he sees at work in capitalism is not
at all historical. In his analyses of capitalist time, Marx ignores the qualitative
time of the calendar in order to concentrate instead on the homogenous,
uniform, and purely quantitative time of the clock. For according to Marx, it is
the constant ticking of the clock which as an instrument of labour discipline
underlies the industrial capitalist system by equating time with money in the
form of hourly wage-rates, thus providing the universal measure of abstract
labour.
Part 3: Boehm-Bawerk The Positive Theory of Capital
The notion that the capitalist synthesis 'time is money' rests solely on
the time of the clock is brought into question by the Austrian economist Eugen
Boehm-Bawerk. Boehm-Bawerk 'positive theory of capital' challenges the
implicit bias of both Marx and Weber by focussing, as we will see, on the
crucial importance of the variations of qualitative - and ultimately intensive time in the constitution of capitalist production.
For our purposes Boehm-Bawerk's theory is best approached through
his book Karl Marx and the Close of his System, a work which according to
Joseph Schumpeter "will never cease to be the critique of Marx in so far as
the theoretical content of Marx's system is concerned. " (TGE, 164) The
54)
112
importance of this book in economic theory stems from the fact that it
provides a succinct account of why the labour theory of value should be
20
by
the
theory
replaced
of marginal utility. Boehm Bawerk's stated aim is to
show that the labour theory of value is, even within Marx's own writings,
21
confused and unworkable. It's success in this regard is such that as Paul
Sweezy writes in the introduction to the text it "might almost be called the
official answer of the economics profession to Marx and the Marxian
school". (MCS, ix)
The crucial factor for us here is that Boehm-Bawerk's argument with
Marx centres on the question of time. It deals, as Schumpeter says, with "the
treatment of the time factor, which is the origin of nine-tenths of the
fundamental difficulties that beset the analytic construction of the economic
process. " (TGE, 165) For, according to Boehm-Bawerk the problem with Marx
and more generally with the labour theory of value is that it misses the overall
workings of capitalism by not paying adequate attention to the primary role of
credit (and interest rates) in the system of capitalist production.
20Schumpeter summarizes the problem with Marx's theory as follows: The essential point is
not whether labour is the true 'source' or'cause' of economic value. This question may be of
primary interest to social philosophers who want to deduce from it ethical claims to the
product, and Marc himself was of course not indifferent to this aspect of the problem. For
economics as a positive science, however, which has to describe or explain actual processes,
it is much more important to ask how the labour theory of value works as a tool of analyses,
and the real trouble with it is that it does this very badly.' (TGE, 28)
21Boehm-Bawark's main contention is that the labour theory of value as laid out in Capital:
Volume I cannot be reconciled with the average rate of profit discussed in Capital: Volume 3.
To quote from Boehm-Bawark: "Marx's third volume contradicts the first. The theory of the
average rate of profit and of the prices of production cannot be reconciled with the theory of
value. '(KCS)
113
Capitalism, according to Boehm-Bawerk, is characterized by a
switch away from direct production in which the existence of the good
immediately follows the expenditure of labour" to what he calls 'roundabout
production' in which the means of production are themselves produced.
Boehm-Bawerk explains this distinction through a variety of illustrations, the
simplest of which is the example of collecting water. In a society based on
direct production water is collected by going to the river each day. Whereas in
a system based on roundabout production a pipe is built that can carry the
water directly into one's home.
In Marxist terms this can be stated by saying that the technological
developments intrinsic to constant capital are a necessary feature of capitalist
production. Yet, though this can be phrased through Marxist terminology it is
not a statement of Marx's own position. For Marx's concentration on labour
power, coupled with his insistence that surplus value can only be generated
through variable capital (employed labour), meant that he could only view
constant capital as a mass of dead labour, a necessary but sterile weight.
Boehm-Bawerk thus departs from Marx in developing a theory in which
change in constant capital has a fundamental role both for the creation of
profit and for the circulation of capital.
For Boehm-Bawerk, then, the time of technological innovation,
research and development is inserted as a positive force in the economy. For
the crucial fact about roundabout production is that while it obtains a greater
result and yields a larger final product than direct production (it is obviously
114
ultimately more efficient to get your water from a tap than to have to go to the
river each day to collect it) it does so by sacrificing time. Roundabout
production is 'time consuming'. "The roundabout ways of capital, " writes
Boehm-Bawerk, "are fruitful but long; they procure us more or better
consumption of goods, but only at a later period of time. This is one of the
ground pillars of the theory of capital" (PTC 82) "In this loss of time which is,
as a rule, bound up with the capitalist process, " he continues, 'lies the sole
ground of that much-talked -of and much-deplored dependence of labourer
on capitalist. "(PTC, 83) The capitalist -as bearer of risk- mobilizes labour,
through credit, on the prospects of future production potentials (not merely
that of immediate extraction of surplus value). 22JosephSchumpeter explains
the theory as follows:
Workers and landlords live on what their means of production produce.
They do not, however, live on what they are at any given time engaged
in producing-their current output is of course not yet ripe for
consumption-but on products that have been produced at some
previous time. To furnish this store of means of subsistence is the
function of the capitalists-workers and landlords can be said then to
live, always and everywhere, on advances made to them by the
capitalists. (TGE, 163)23
This, however is only one side of the equation. Boehm-Bawerk's
analyses insists that credit is always coupled with interest. For it is by means
22To attempt
Marx
does -to calculate a 'rate of exploitation' without reference to this
-as
prospective production radically diminishes the importance of the time element in the system.
23The labour theory of value is
necessarily blind to this fundamental aspect of the capitalist
mode of production. For in determining value through duration of labour time it fails to take
into account the effects of when this labour takes place.
115
of interest that capitalism is able to profit on the sacrifice of time inherent in its
mode of production. Boehm -Bawerk's "positive theory of capital", then, rests
on twin forces of time in which the temporal delay of roundabout production is
compensated by the phenomenon of interest. "The great synthesis of these
two elements, this disengagement and combination of time and added
returns, alone makes possible a consistent theory of the role of time in
production. " (TGE, 167)
Interest, the practice of charging money for time, is founded, according
to Boehm-Bawerk, on the qualitative difference between present and future. It
rests on the fact that present goods are more highly valued than those which
become available in the future. (TGE, 174) That is, one is in general willing to
pay more for something which is available now then for the same product
which will only be available at some future date. There is then, in short, a
difference in value between present and future commodities. "Interest is
simply the price expression of this difference" (TGE, 175)
Thus, whereas the labour theory of value shows how time works as a
force in the construction of the labourer and constitution of the working day,
for Boehm-Bawerk time is itself a positive economic force. Rather than the
relation between time and money being mediated by labour time, the
situation is closer to the reverse since industrial capitalism itself develops
within the context of prospective production - 'industrial revolutions' or
technological innovations - which are anticipated by interest rates (the cost of
credit). For Boehm-Bawerk, then, it is the intensive difference between
116
present and future (a difference which is irreducable to the time measured by
clock) which ultimately accounts for the capitalist equation of time with
money.
In the previous section it was argued that the split between calendars
and clocks corresponds to an abstract distinction in the nature of time itself. It
sought to show that in the period since the Middle Ages, a process of
abstraction occurred - not in human thought but through technical invention
and engineering - which made this distinction manifest. The development of
the mechanical clock and its subsequent innovations freed time from its sole
determination in the calendar and - like the time of 'Transcendental Aesthetic'
is capable of acting as an
temporality
which
mode
of
a
new
established
autonomous force.
This section followed on from this distinction and showed how the
invention of clock-time was crucial to the development of a capitalist culture.
In this sense our discussion would appear to concur with the analyses of
capitalist time made by the historians and sociologists that are mentioned
above. For the majority of these thinkers adopt the view capitalist time is
defined by `the dominance of clock time over space and society. " (NS 432)
Writing with a deep nostalgia they wam of the triumph of an abstract and
artificial time that has supplanted the 'natural' organic and concrete time of
the calendar. Capitalism is conceived as a historical event which inaugurated
the tyrannical rule of an "empty" time, 'divisible into equal, constant, and
117
nonqualitive units. (TLSD 202). With the clock, claims Mumford, "abstract
time became the new medium of existence. " (TC, 17) Alienating people from
the qualitative time of the past, it established a world in which a uniform,
continuous, and homogenous time was disassociated from the intrinsic
variation of human events.
Our investigation into the theories of Boehm-Bawerk, however, have
shown that the capitalist emphasis on clock time must be combined with an
account of how the capitalist economy relates to the qualitative time of
24
calendrics. For in equating time with money capitalism not only functions to
extract discipline, work and efficiency from the abstract time of the clock, but
also converts the variations of calendric time into direct economic activity.
Thus in the connection between Kant and capitalism, the analogies
between time in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' and the formal temporality of
the clock must be seen as only one side of the story. This is important since,
as our discussion of the first critique made clear, the Transcendental
Aesthetic is only a single piece of the Kantian system. For intrinsic to the very
structure of the Critique of Pure Reason is the notion that intuition is blind
unless it is combined with the operations of the understanding.
In the same way, without the calendar the clock is incapable of telling
the time. For, as has already been noted, the ticking which marks the
26In the capitalist production of time, calendric temporality operates less as a marker of
astronomical cycles than it does as a dating system which distinguishes between past,
present and future. Astronomy, as we have seen, has taken on a secondary role since the
planetary revolutions are now measured by the ticking of the clock. Nevertheless, the calendar
is still used to index qualitative distinctions, (year, month, and day of the week), that are
inaccessible to clock-time and yet crucial to capitalist processes of production.
118
passage of hours, minutes and seconds can never, no matter how accurate it
becomes, calculate the day, month or year when something occurs. Thus,
clocks are 'blind' without the dates and the a. m. and p.m. markers which the
calendar provides. Telling the time is thus itself a synthetic operation which
combines the hour, minute and second with the calendric anchors of day,
month and year.
In the Kantian system the two distinct parts of critique are joined
together through the schema. Hidden in the recesses of the imagination, the
secret of the schema takes the synthetic production of time to its highest
power of abstraction. It is thus able to construct a plane which can connect
the Aesthetic with the Logic, joining the intuition of time together with the
temporal concepts of the understanding.
A transcendental reading of the sociology, economics and technology
of time reveals that the production of capitalist time operates, like the diagram
of the schema, to construct an abstract plane which can connect the two
sides of time-keeping with each other. Thus, rather than assuming that the
transformation to capitalist time occurred by replacing the calendar with the
clock, it recognizes that the development of a standardized chronometric
25
in
take
the
place conjunction with
adoption a globalized calendar.
could only
Furthermore, it sees in the universal equation of time with money, an abstract
process of production which mobilizes both the time of the clock and the time
27The fact that 'the day for all the world, begins at Greenwich' shows that GMT is not, as it
may first appear, a standardized time based entirely on the clock. In fact, Greenwich time is a
synthesis between clock time and the calendric count.
119
of the calendar into a particular synthetic regime, and thus views this equation
transcendental
the
the
same
plane
on
as
operating
synthesis
as
or
production of time.
120
2.3 History and the Transcendental
This chapter has sought to demonstrate how elements in the
transcendental structure of time can be mapped on to the temporal regime of
capitalism. The aim in concentrating on this correspondence was not to
reduce the transcendental to the status of the empirical, but rather to uncover
evidence of transcendental synthesis in the sociological, economic and
technical formations of the empirical world. The claim, then, is not that Kant's
writings are the result of the historical experience of capitalist time. For Kant's
critical work, and his discovery of the transcendental production of time,
depends, as we have seen, not on an exploration of experience but of the
underlying conditions which make experience possible. What this chapter
seeks to maintain, however, is that these abstract, synthetic conditions which
Kant
believed
to
inner
the
eternal
not
restricted
as
are
experience
underlie
workings of the human subject but are also found in the technical and cultural
machines that have developed within the history of capitalism.
In an attempt to unravel this assertion, the following section turns to
the work of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault, two thinkers who maintain that
in
fact
transcendental
the
the
are
of
structures
universal
as
appear
what
both
Marx
is,
to
That
transformation.
to
and
according
change
and
subject
Foucault the a priori is itself historical. Thus, both provide an account however implicit - of how it is that the empirical history of capitalism can
coincide so closely with the a priori domain of the transcendental.
121
It soon becomes apparent, however, that Marx and Foucault differ
radically in their accounts of the relationship between history and the
transcendental. Their theoretical positions follow along two very different
lines. At stake in this divergence is, as we will see, two drastically distinct
ways of understanding history, interiority, and the agency of change.
For Marx, historical time operates as a closed system. The ultimate
force in the generation of change, it creates the a priori through the power of
its own internal dynamics. Foucault's work, on the other hand, reveals that
there are certain empirical transformations that are so dramatic and sudden
that they can only be explained through the gaps and holes that break open in
what otherwise appears as the sealed interiority of history. Foucault thus
maintains that rather than being produced inside history, the transformation of
the a priori impact history as a force of the outside.
In examining both these theories, the following pages explore the line
between experience and that which is independent of experience. It does so
in order to ascertain how it is that the transcendental circuits of production
manage to effect the empirical domain of history and vice versa. The
underlying aim, once again, is to reveal the interconnections between the
Kantian revolution in the philosophy of time and the capitalist revolution in the
leads
interconnections,
These
time.
see,
will
eventually
as
we
of
production
ultimately to the conclusion that there are certain events in the history of
the
transcendental.
have
the
of
plane
a
priori
accessed
which
capitalism
Though Marx's take up of Kant is rarely made explicit in his writings,
122
/
the Marxist critique of Kant is well known. For throughout his texts Marx
implicitly challenges the Kantian position for its ahistoricity. 1 This
argument is
found in one of its most succinct forms in the opening pages of the
Grundrisse. Though Marx focuses here on 18th century economists rather
than on philosophers, the attack he makes can be easily applied to Kant. For
the crux of Marx's contention is that by basing their analyses of production on
the individual, rather than on the forces of history, these economists
presuppose what they should be explaining. "The 18th century individual, "
writes Marx, "the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of
society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the
sixteenth century -appears [in these writers] as an ideal, whose existence
they project into the past. ' (G, 83) By taking the individual "not as a historic
result but as history's point of departure" (G, 83) these economists miss the
real forces at work in capitalism. For they fail to see that the bourgeois
individual is a product of capitalist production, which is itself ultimately a
product of the socio-economic forces of history. To begin with the individual is
for Marx 'among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth century' (G, 83)
1 'For Marx, Engels and Lenin, Kant's theory of knowledge was defective in three
related
ways. First, it was held to be ahistorical in its account of the a priori contributions made by the
mind in the constitution of knowledge: for Kant these fundamental concepts were universal
properties of the mind whereas Marxists have tended to understand human cognitive powers
as subject to historical transformation and development. Connectedly, whereas Kantianism
locates the a priori conditions of objective knowledge in the faculties of the mind, Marxism
characteristically locates them in indispensable human social practices which have bodily as
well as mental aspects. Finally, Engels and Lenin argued that the boundary between the world
of knowable 'phenomena' and the unknowable 'things-in-themselves' was not, as Kantianism
required, fixed and absolute but was historically relative. The potential knowability of the world
as it is, independent and prior to the human subject, was seen as essential to the empirical
123
since it takes a contingent product of a particular time and place and treats it
as an a priori condition of experience.
In that it is targeted against the economist's presuppositions rather
than their conclusions Marx's argument recalls the structure of transcendental
critique. Speaking as a true Kantian, Marx contends that theoretical
knowledge should begin not with experience but with the constitutive forces
that produce that experience. However, the content of Marx's assertions can
also be read as an example of critique "turned on its head". Thus, Marx's
historical materialism attempts to do here to Kant what it is so famous for
doing to Hegel.
Formulated in this way, Marx's attack on the 'unimaginative conceits of
the eighteenth century' can be reread as follows: Kant is said to have asked
what are the necessary conditions that produce experience. His answer
depended on a revolutionary new role for the transcendental subject. Marx
turns this question around and asks 'what are the necessary conditions which
produce the transcendental subject. ' His answer, of course, is capitalism.
Marx's contention, then is that Kant mistakes a particular and
contingent product of capitalism - the bourgeois individual - for the universal
and eternal subject of philosophy. Implicit in this contention, as we will see, is
the notion that transcendental structures are ultimately produced through the
internal dynamics of history. For according to historical materialism capitalism
world-view of Marxism!
(DMT, 279)
124
is a particular socio-economic arrangement that "is itself the product of a
long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of
production and exchange. " (CM, 8)
Marxist history, as is well known, generally divides into three phases,
or modes of production, the ancient, the feudal and the bourgeois. 2 These
three phases are related dialectally such that each successive mode of
production develops out of the internal contradictions of the previous one.
Joseph Schumpeter summarized this point as follows: "The forms of
production themselves have a logic of their own; that is to say, they change
according to necessities inherent in them so as to produce their own
workings. " (TGE, 13) Thus, according to Marxist philosophy, the ancient
necessarily gave way to the feudal, and the feudal necessarily gave way to
the bourgeois. Each stage is both historically and dialectically related to the
previous one such that "higher relations of production never appear before
the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old
society. " (CCPE, 12) It is this logical unfolding of history which is for Marx the
ultimate force of production, and the real agency of change. It generates both
2 Actually Marxism usually singles out four stages of development. Note the following from a
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. in broad outline we can designate the
Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modem bourgeois methods of production as so many
epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society! (CCPE, 13) Marx believed,
however, that the first of these, the Asiatic mode, existed outside the progressive development
of history. (See Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization: his dispatches and other writings
on China, India, Mexico, the Middle East and North Africa. Edited and introduced by Shlomo
'Ivineri. Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1968) The over-simplification of a history characterized
by these three rigid stages was questioned and complicated, even by Marx himself, in later
writings. Nevertheless, it is still considered to be the basic structure of historical materialism.
125
the capitalist system and its corresponding structures of knowledge. 3
Thus, for Marx, it is no great surprise that Kant's account of the
philosophy of time should converge with changes in the technology and socioeconomics of time which have emerged under capitalism. For both,
regardless of the fact that they occur in radically different spheres, are a
product and expression of the same stage of historical development.
Transcendental and capitalist time coincide since both are the result of the
inevitable changes in modes of production which constitute the internal
dynamics of historical time.
In likening his philosophy to the Copernican revolution, Kant seems to
anticipate the Marxist contention that the discovery of the transcendental was
a fundamentally historical event. Indeed, it is only as a historical event that it
makes any sense to speak of his thought as a revolution. Nevertheless, Kant
is insistent that the discovery of the transcendental could not have been
derived from historical causes.
In the 'Transcendental Doctrine of Method', the last section of the first
Critique, Kant describes how his philosophical method relies on the
architectonic, or the "art of creating systems. " (CPR, 653) This requires the
extraction of an a priori schema or outline which lies "like a germ... hidden in
reason" (CPR, 654). Once uncovered, this a priori schema, " writes Kant, is
capable of making "a system out of a mere aggregate of knowledge. " (CPR,
3 See in particular Karl Marx. German Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1970.
126
653)
The Critique of Pure Reason -a text so complex it could only have
been written with such a monogram or outline in mind - is Kant's
demonstration that the art of the architectonic exists. Yet, Kant is adamant
that this is an art which can never be learnt. For learning, according to Kant,
is based on the successive accumulation of facts. As such it can only add one
thing after the other, destined to remain at the level of the aggregate,
endlessly piecing parts together, it is caught by the successive temporality of
history.
Anyone, therefore who has learnt (in the strict sense of that term) a
its
have
he
all
principles,
may
of
philosophy...
although
system
explanations, and proofs, together with the formal divisions of the
his
fingers'
to
in
his
head,
body
doctrine,
speak,
at
so
and,
of
whole
knowledge
historical
has
than
of [that]
a
complete
no more
ends,
philosophy. (CPR, 656)
Though, Kant contends that "philosophy can never be learned, save
only in a historical fashion, " (CPR, 657) he nevertheless maintains that the art
knowledge.
For
historical
transcendental
the
such
all
eludes
necessarily
of
inside
is
be
be
in
history
trapped
Kant
to
to
to
experience, stuck at
according
the level of an empirical succession. The "cosmical concept" (CPR, 657-8) of
the transcendental (which is inherently systemic and involves the production
of time itself) cannot be accessed through the interiority of successive
temporality. Thus, though Kant's Copernican revolution is dated, and thus
historical
to
time.
is
from
history,
its
if
exterior
necessarily
genesis
appears as
For, as we have seen, Kant's is a revolution that does not occur in time but to
127
time.
Thus, in seeking to reduce the transcendental to historical forces,
Marx deliberately suppresses the radicality of the Kantian philosophy of time.
By enveloping everything within the closed system of historical development
and asserting that the a priori are ultimately a product of the a posteriori he
leaves no room for a theory of transcendental production. Moreover, in
maintaining that transcendental time is determined by historical time, it can be
argued -in a Spinozistic sense - that Marx fails to take heed of his own
materialism. Though he seeks to reformulate Hegelian idealism by sticking to
the 'real ground of history' his commitment to dialectics requires that
temporal transformations are overcoded with the transcendent logic of
historical time, whose own production can never be explained. That is to say
that Marx's historical, evolutionary or developmental philosophy which
focuses on the processes of production as they occur in time cannot also
account for the production of time itself.
For an analyses that is at once more transcendental and more
Foucault's
Foucault.
Michel
to
the
turn
work
of
work
now
materialist we
in
historical
to
in
the
shifts
map
order
of
power
workings
on
concentrates
forces
for
the
diagram
Foucault,
Power,
in
underlying
as
a
serves
regimes.
bodies
how
to
believe,
from
move, to the
what
people
governing everything
128
way in which objects are produced. 4 Thus by investigating the transformations
in different regimes of power, (he focuses especially the shift from the
classical to the disciplinary regime) Foucault arrives at a theory of
discontinuities which itself underlies the rigidity of a priori structures.
According to Foucault, in the disciplinary regime power has ceased to
be in the hands of the despot. Rather than a 'privilege one might posses'
(DP, 26) power begins to operates as a 'network of relations, ' its
'dispositions, manoeuvres, tactics, techniques and functionings' (DP, 26)
circulating everywhere within the social field. No longer the type of force
which lashes out from above, the micro-physics of disciplinary power inserts
itself directly into the body, subtly articulating its motions, posture, and
rhythms. In this new 'economy' power is productive rather than repressive. It
must be 'conceived not as a property but as a strategy. ' (DP, 26) Such a
power, writes Foucault, "has to qualify, measure, appraise and hierarchize
rather than display itself in its murderous splendour. " (FR, 266)
Foucault introduces this new regime in the fist few pages of Discipline
and Punish through an examination of a prisoners time-table. Thus, we find
amongst the first signs of the transformation of power a rationalization,
scheduling and control of time. Foucault's work traces this new form of
4 For a discussion of Foucault's work on power as a diagrammatics see Deleuze's book
Foucault especially pp. 33-36.
129
control as it spreads from prisons to factories to schools. 5 To quote from an
exemplary passage:
In the elementary schools, the division of time became increasingly
minute, ..In the early nineteenth century, the following time table was
suggested for the Ecoles mutuelles or 'mutual improvement of
schools: ' 8.45 entrance of the monitor, 8.52 the monitors summons,
8.56 entrance of the children and prayer, 9.00 the children go to their
benches, 9.04 the first slate, 9.08 end of dictation, 9.12 second slate
etc.. (DP 150)
Foucault insists, however, that this maniacal ordering of time was only
the first step in the new 'economy' of power. As the disciplinary regime
unfolded monastic asceticism was replaced by a more constructive force.
The principle that underlay the time-table in its traditional form was
essentially negative; it was the principle of nonidlenenss: it was
forbidden to waste time, which was counted by God and paid for by
men... Discipline, on the other hand, arranges a positive economy; it
poses the principle of a theoretically ever-growing use of time.
Exhaustion rather than use. (DP, 154)
Thus, the role of time became crucial not only for scheduling the days
activities but also for a sort of internal articulation of the body. "In the correct
use of the body, which makes possible a correct use of time, nothing must
remain idle or useless: everything must be called upon to form the support of
the act required. " (DP, 152) In the disciplinary regime, writes Foucault, "time
penetrates the body and with it all the meticulous controls of power. " (DPI 52)
5 Disciplinary power cannot be identified
with any one institution or apparatus precisely
because it is a type of power, a technology, that traverses every kind of apparatus or
130
This is the world of Taylorism, chronometric efficiency and time and
motion studies. ' world in which the bodies of soldiers, schoolchildren and
most especially workers are subject to "a sort of anatomo-chronological
schema of behaviour. 'The act is broken down into its elements, the position
of the body, limbs, articulations is defined; to each movement are assigned a
direction, an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed. "
(DP, 152)
The goal is to maintain 'maximum speed and maximum efficiency; by
'extracting from time, ever more available moments, and from each moment,
is
in
time
In
forces.
"(DP,
154)
equated with
which
a
regime
ever more useful
money, power must develop "a new technique for making profit out of the
movement of passing time. " (DP, 157) The question of the disciplinary
individuals,
the
time
is
"how
Foucault,
of
one
capitalize
can
writes
regime,
forces
in
in
their
bodies,
their
in
their
it
in
them,
or
of
each
accumulate
How
is
in
can one
that
and
control?
use
of
susceptible
abilities, a way
be
The
disciplines
durations?
understood.... as
must
profitable
organize
157)
"
(DP,
time.
for
capitalizing
up
and
adding
machinery
In Discipline and Punish the shift from classical to disciplinary regime is
introduced through the contrast between two modes of punishment. In a
famous passage Foucault opposes a graphic depiction of torture with a
life.
"We have,
time-scheduling
description
the
of
prison
of
rigid
meticulous
institution, making them converge and function in a new way. (F, 26)
131
then, " writes Foucault in the opening section of the book, "a public execution
and a timetable... Less than a century separates them. ' (DP, 7)
This swift passage from one form of punishment to another is often
taken to be exemplary of what Foucault called discontinuities. This concept is
introduced by Foucault in order to explain how and why at certain moments a
particular regime of power undergoes 'a global modification. '6 (PK 113)
Foucault makes use of the concept by repeatedly showing how, over the
course of history there have been moments when 'in the space of a few
years' where an entirely 'new 'regime' in discourse and forms of knowledge'
has emerged. (FR, 54)
Discontinuities, thus mark a sort of irruption that crashes into history as
"the intrusion of an outside. " (F, 87) Operating in an exterior relation to the
developmental forces of history, they appear as if from nowhere, introducing
an entirely new regime of power and reconditioning the a priori structures on
Deleuze
for
Foucault,
depends
Thus
as
writes, "things
our
experience
which
interiorization
by
joined
together
or
of
continuity
a
process
are not
..
but
instead they rejoin above and beyond the breaks and discontinuous
(mutation). (F, 86)
The term discontinuity, however, not only designates transformations in
the operations of power but also marks a heterogeneity intrinsic to the nature
6 "My problem, " he is quoted as saying, was to pose the question 'How is it that at certain
moments and in certain orders of knowledge, there are these sudden take-offs, these
hastenings of evolution, these transformations which fail to correspond to the calm, continuist
image that is normally accredited? " (PK, 54)
132
time itself. Contained within the sentence from Discipline and Punish that is
quoted above, for example, is a distinction between various modes of
temporality, from the festive time of the torturous spectacle, through the
metric and quantitative time of the prisoners time table, to the time which
marks the passing of the century. These different time systems are radically
-
even transcendentally incommensurable. Even the supposed consistency of
historical time fails to tie them together (there is nothing in the continuity of
time (the century) that can account, for example, for the introduction of a new
mode of time as evidenced in the time-table). Thus, the concept of
discontinuity is not only used empirically to show the breaks or ruptures in
history, but is also used transcendentally to designate the lack of consistency
'
between
different
In this way,
time.
or continuity
radically
structures of
Foucault begins the process of constructing the conceptual tools necessary to
connect the exterionty of the transcendental production of time with the
interiority of historical variation, or the changes which happen in time.
1This notion of discontinuity connects with what Deleuze sees as Foucault's
transcendentalism. Deleuze depicts Foucault as a neo-Kantian (F, 60) by running his work
through the machinery of the first critique. He sees the Kantian division between the Logic and
the Aesthetic as transformed by Foucault into the distinction between visibilities and
statements, and views Foucaults diagrammaticism as the'analogue of the Kantian
schematicism'. (F, 82) The legitimacy of these mappings, according to Deleuze, stems from
the fact that Foucault, like Kant, is interested in the a priori conditions of experience, and like
Kant, sees in these conditions a distinction between receptivity (intuition, or visibilities) and
spontaneity (understanding, or statements) (F, 60). This analyses by Deleuze strengthens the
notion that the concept of discontinuity is introduced by Foucault in order to construct a
transcendental view of historical change.
133
Chapter 3: The Materialist Revolution: Time in Capitalism and
Schizophrenia
3.0 Introduction:
Aeon, or The Plane of Consistency
In the Western classical tradition time was considered to be
synonymous with change. Manifest in the celestial revolutions, it was
measured by the cyclical processes of astronomy and felt in the patterns of
seasonal variation and the movement of day into night. What the preceding
chapters have sought to show is that - in what can loosely be called modernity
developments
in
both
in
have
the
socio-economic
philosophy
and
milieu
revolutionized this classical conception of time. More specifically, they have
focussed on the fact that in both the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and in the
time-keeping practices that have emerged under capitalism, time has ceased
to be identified with change. What these revolutions have produced instead,
is a distinction between time as an abstract grid or structure and the changes
and movement which occur within it.
The question of this thesis is how an innovation such as this can occur
to the abstract nature of time. Or, to put it another way, how are we to explain
events which happen not only in time but to time? Our response, as we will
see, requires that time be understood as an abstract process of production
which is itself open to transformative events. This necessitates a further
reformulation of the relation between time and change such that these
concepts are no longer equated - as in the classical tradition - nor
134
subordinated to a hierarchical relation - as in the modem conception
but
-
rather coexist together on an immanent plane.
Both the writings of Immanuel Kant and the history of
capitalism's time-keeping systems provide some suggestions as to how such
an account might be formulated. First, we find in Kant a theory of time which
ceases to be the result of a single act of transcendent creation. No longer tied
to the realm of metaphysical speculation, transcendental time the invention
or discovery of the first critique - is defined as a process of a priori synthesis.
This is of crucial importance since an immanent theory of temporal innovation
requires, first of all, a conception of time that is not been transcendently fixed.
Secondly, as we have seen, the Kantian discovery of time as a process
of production, comes during a period of great historical change in the culture
and technics of time-keeping practices. The history of time under capitalism is
a story of continuous innovation, mutation and change. These changes which include the development of the mechanical clock, and the
establishment of global time-zones - have been so profound that it is not
uncommon for theorists to argue that at the core of capitalism as a socioeconomic system lies its unique ability to have transformed the nature of
time. '
It is far from clear, however, how material innovations in the culture
and technics of time can be linked to time as it is conceived of by
We have seen in the previous chapter that the work of the key theorists of modern
capitalism, for example Mumford, Marx and Weber can all be formulated in this way.
135
transcendental philosophy. The problem the thesis encounters then, is how to
synthesize its two sides and thereby establish a connection between the
transcendental conception of time and the technical machines (clocks and
calendars), socio-economic institutions (GMT) and cultural imperatives (time
= money) that constitute time in the capitalist world. Implicit in this problem as should be clear from the preceding chapters - lies a more general
question which concerns the relationship between abstract thought and
material practice. This thesis has formulated this question in the terms set out
by the transcendental philosophy of time. In doing so, it sees the link between
the philosophical and the cultural (conceived of as a particular technological
and socio-economic regime) as dependent on an immanent relation between
the transcendental production of time and empirical innovation in timekeeping technologies and the cultural practices which surround them. The
previous chapter sought to explore the complexity inherent in trying to
establish this relation by way of a debate between the writings of Kant and
Marxist philosophy.
According to Kant, as has already been shown, the schism between
the transcendental and the empirical creates a disjunction between historical
change and the philosophical structure of time. This is because Kant
associates change with the experience of the empirical world. The
transcendental, on the other hand, is absolutely detached from the realm of
continuous movement. Transcendental time is conceived of as a 'pure
intuition' which Kant names 'the form of inner sense. ' It functions, in this role,
136
as a numerical synthesizer ordering and sequencing anything which happens
to fill it. A one dimensional linear succession which provides the underlying
format to every thought and perception, time is a constant structure or matrix
that is indifferent - and exterior - to the empirical attributes through which it is
experienced. Thus, Kant maintains, that while all appearances necessarily
occur in time "we can quite well think time as void of appearances. " (CPR,
75) This distinction between time and the changes which occur within it is
-
as has already been noted - what makes Kantian thought revolutionary. It
also, however, serves to separate the transcendental philosophy of time from
its cultural, technological, and socio-economic surroundings.
It is precisely on this point that Marxism criticizes Kant. For according
to Marx, in ignoring thoughts socio-economic context, idealist philosophy
mistakes consequence for cause and remains blind to the primary processes
of production. Historical materialism attacks the Critique through its famous
contention that philosophy is dependent upon its material conditions and that
2
determined
by
forces
the
history.
empirical
reason's a priori structures are
of
Thus, for Marx, it is the changes which occur in time which are ultimately
responsible for the production of an abstract conception of time.
2 Note the following from The German Ideology. "In direct contrast to German philosophy,
which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say,
we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought
of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active
men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the
ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain
are also, necessarily sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable
and bound to material premises... Life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness
137
However sympathetic one might be to Marx's underlying intention, the
notion that the nature of time is a product of history is paradoxical at best. It is
unacceptable here, because it rules out the possibility of transcendental
production and thus cannot account for innovation in the abstract construction
of time. It is the strength of transcendental philosophy to show that there is a
realm, independent of experience, which is itself productive. It is this realm of
abstract production which constitutes the underlying conditions of the
empirical world. Every historical mode of production happens in time and
therefore necessarily presumes a process of production which it itself cannot at least straightforwardly - produce. As Kant writes in the 'Transcendental
Aesthetic', since time "underlies all intuitions" (CPR, 75) "the actuality of
appearances is only possible inside the representation of time. " In failing to
see time as a presupposition of the changes which occur within it, Marx
suppresses the exteriority of the transcendental. Slipping into Hegelian
idealism he betrays his materialist inclinations by positing the logic of
dialectical history as the everlasting structure of time.
The problem, then, remains. For neither Kant nor Marx can account for
how an event which occurs in time (and is thus empirical) can effectuate
innovation in the transcendental nature of time. Michel Foucault attempts to
address this problem with his concept of discontinuities, a concept which is
meant to designate the "rifts and instabilities" (OT )o iv) that operate to
by life. ' Quoted from 'Excerpts from The German Ideology' in Marx & Engels: Basic Writings
on Politics and Philosophy.
138
disrupt the apparent continuity of historical time. There is, then, in Foucault,
as Deleuze writes, an emergence of forces which doubles history, " or rather
envelops it, according to the Nietzschean conception. " (F, 85) These forces
are undoubtedly linked to the Kantian synthesis of the transcendental in that
the rifts or cracks they break open, mark, above all, the incommensurability of
transcendental structures. Yet the actual process through which this doubling
of history takes place is left unclear. Foucault thus shows us the fact
transcendental is at work in the generation of history, but he leaves no
account of the ways in which these transcendental disruptions operate in
themselves, nor of how they are able to connect with or act upon the
3
history.
It is this problem which must be surpassed if we
empirical matter of
are to succeed in projecting a line that can connect the temporal machines of
capitalism with the transcendental production of time.
In the classical tradition time was defined in relation to the concept of
eternity. Its identity as a process of never-ending change was conceived of
negatively, in opposition to the wholeness, unity and stasis of the eternal.
Plato, as we have seen, described time as the image of eternity, a
3 In his book The Order of Things, Foucault himself admits that he focused on outlining
discontinuous change without examining either the causes of these changes or the
mechanisms through which they occur. To quote Foucault: it seemed to me it would not be
prudent for the moment to force a solution I felt incapable, I admit, of offering: the traditional
explanations - spirit of the time, technological or social changes, influences of various kinds struck me for the most part of being more magical than effective. In this work, then, I left the
problem of causes to one side; I chose instead to confining myself to the transformations
themselves, thinking that this would be an indispensable step if, one day, a theory of scientific
change and epistemological causality was to be constructed. (OT, xiii)
139
description which ensured that temporal change be regarded as belonging to
the realm of appearance and illusion. Despite its all encompassing nature,
time was a mirage, a shadowy mirror of the eternal nature of forms.
From the beginning this thesis has viewed the Kantian and capitalist
revolution in relation to this classical tradition. We have seen how - when
taken together - they provide us with a modern conception of time. However,
though they are successful in transforming the nature of time both leave the
concept of eternity basically unaltered. It is the contention of this thesis that to
make the connection between Kant and capitalism, and thus develop a
materialist account of the transcendental production of time, requires a
reformulation - not only of our conception of time - but also of that which
constitutes its outside (that which is conventionally thought of as eternity).
The following chapter seeks to accomplish this by drawing on the work
of Deleuze and Guattari. In particular it focuses on two main elements of their
work which - taken together - enable them to explain how cultural and
technological innovations in time-keeping practices can effectuate changes in
the abstract production of time. These two elements are:
§1. A revolution that frees transcendental production from the interiority
of idealist thought.
Towards the beginning of their two volume work Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari evoke the name of transcendental
140
philosophy to call for a revolution 'this time materialist' which is aimed at
transforming critical thought. 4 This 'second' revolution follows Kant in making
use of the practice of critique to replace the transcendence of creation with
the synthetic processes of the transcendental. Yet, this time, the revolution
proceeds by way of a critique of the Kantian system itself. Subtracting the
illusion of transcendence (which remains as a relic in Kant's writing) in favour
of a philosophy based on immanence, Deleuze and Guattari unshackle
transcendental production from the organized unity of the subject, liberating it
from the realm of epistemology and representation. According to Deleuze and
Guattari's 'transcendental materialism', abstract production is a material
process, not an epistemological one. Deeply influenced by Spinoza, their
work dissolves the rigid distinction between matter and thought and is thus
able to flatten cultural, technological, socio-economic and philosophical
5
to
events on a single plane.
4 In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari present this revolution as a critique of psychoanalysis.
in what he termed the critical revolution, Kant intended to discover criteria immanent to
understanding so as to distinguish between the legitimate and the illegitimate uses of the
synthesis of consciousness. In the name of transcendental philosophy (immanence of
criteria), he therefore denounced the transcendent use of synthesis such as appeared in
metaphysics. In like fashion we are compelled to say that psychoanalysis has its metaphysics
its
is
Oedipus.
And
that a revolution - this time materialist - can proceed only by way of
name
a critique of Oedipus, by denouncing the illegitimate use of the synthesis of the unconscious
as found in Oedipal psychoanalysis, so as to rediscover a transcendental unconscious defined
by the immanence of its criteria, and a corresponding practice that we shall call
schizoanalysis'. (AO, 75)
5 It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari are able to speak in a single breath of
vegetation and linguistic analyses, geological formations and the gothic literature of H.P.
Lovecraft, packs of wolves and Kantian theory, ticks and the philosophy of Spinoza.
141
§ 2. A philosophy of time that replaces the notion of eternity with the
concept of Aeon.
We have seen from the start that central to Kant's Copernican
revolution is a redefinition of time. This section will show that Capitalism and
Schizophrenia's materialist revolution also involves a reinvention in the
philosophy of time, though it diverges from Kant by concentrating not so much
on the interiority of time but on the exteriority of the eternal.
In the Kantian system eternity appears in a variety of different ways. In
the Transcendental Aesthetic it is constituted as the infinity of an extensive
series, in the Deducton it is produced as the whole of time conceived of as
one, and in the doctrine of the thing-in-itself it mirrors the classical conception
of a quasi-divine transcendence. Deleuze and Guattari overturn all of these
conceptions of eternity replacing it with their own unique reformulation of the
Gnostic notion of Aeon. Thus, in Deleuze and Guattari, everlasting extension
gives way to an intensive continuum. This is held together not by a unified
identity but by the singularity of a plane populated by machinic multiplicites
whose continuous process of variation make no distinction between what
occurs in time and the production of time itself. These singularities - or Aeonic
occurrences - are not above, beyond, or segregated over and against time
but are rather flat with the production of time and constitute its immanent
142
Outside.
It is with this notion of Aeon as an immanent outside that Deleuze and
Guattari's transcendental materialism manages to close the gap between an
abstract production of time and the socio-history of time-keeping practices.
Through the concept of Aeon, they uncover the possibility of events that do
not break into time from a transcendent beyond, as is the case with eternity,
but rather constitute a plane of virtuality whose intensive variation is ultimately
responsible for the production of our experience of time.
143
3.1 Transcendental
of Kant
Materialism: Capitalism & Schizophrenia's
Critique
For Deleuze and Guattari the world is composed of two planes, or
'
is
there
in
itself
two
rather,
a single plane which composes
ways. The most
familiar of these, the one that seems most common or easy to perceive, they
name the plane of organization and development. On this plane the world is
governed by structure and genesis and things are determined according to
their substance and form. This is why the plane of organization has more in
common with an overall plan (the plan of divine creation) than it does with the
flat geometry of a plane.2 Functioning with a tree-like logic of evolutionary
growth, the plane of organization treats everything as a kind of organism.
Bound by arborescence and hierarchy it operates through a process of
stratification (always placing one level on top of the other in accordance with
3
a strict code). Unable to account for its own immanent production, this
stratified plane necessarily appeals to the interiority of a higher dimension as
ultimate cause. The plane of development is thus invariably hidden or elusive,
"existing only in a supplementary dimension to that to which it gives rise (n +
' These two planes are not dialectically opposed as thesis is to antithesis both because the
two planes are simultaneously and continuously under production and also because there is
always a series of complex passages between them. As Deleuze and Guattari write, "why
does the opposition between two kinds of planes lead to a still more abstract hypothesis?
Because one continuously passes from one to the other, by unnoticeable degrees and without
being aware of it, or one becomes aware of it only afterwards. ' (ATP, 269)
2 As Brian Massumi, the translator of A Thousand Plateaus points out, in french 'the word plan
designates both a 'plane' in the geometrical sense and a 'plan! (ATP, xviii)
3 Stratification as a process of production characterized by split intensities, double articulation
and relations of hierarchy is described in detail in the plateau entitled '10,000 B.C.: The
Geology of Morals' in ` Thousand Plateaus.
144
1)." (ATP, 265) This is why, for Deleuze and Guattari, the strata are
'judgments of God' and also why the plane of organization is otherwise
known as the plane of transcendence. (ATP, 265)
"Then, there is an altogether different plane, or an altogether different
conception of the plane. " (ATP, 266) Here, things escape the form,
substance, and hierarchy of the organism by partaking in intensive voyages
and by drawing lines of flight. On this, the plane of immanence or
consistency, there is no distinction between nature and artifice, matter and
thought, people and things. Populated by singularities not subjects this is a
Spinozistic conception of the plane4 in which bodies are defined by the power
of their relations. Consisting solely of collective assemblages or intensive
multiplicities, the plane of consistency is constituted by its immanent lines of
communication and connectivity. In this way, it has more in common with the
heterogeneous multiplicity of the rhizome than with the organized unity of the
tree. 5 Like a rhizome, it is flat in that it spreads vertically rather than through
the addition of stratified layers. It is a plane not a plan in that it requires
nothing above or beyond itself to act as the agent of its own production. As
Deleuze and Guattari write, "however many dimensions it may have, [the
plane of immanence] never has a supplementary dimension to that which
4 The plane of consistency or immanence is
exactly equivalent to Spinoza's understanding of
Substance or Nature as defined in the Ethics. This is why Deleuze and Guattari call the Ethics
the 'great book of the BwO" (ATP, 153)
5 This distinction between tree
introduction
is
throughout
the
to A
used
and
rhizome
Thousand Plateaus.
145
transpires upon it." (ATP, 266) It is thus necessarily a force of destratification.
As the plane where "form is constantly being dissolved" it dismantles the
authority and structures of development, escapes from organization and
overturns or eludes the judgements of God
.6
Deleuze and Guattari's engagement with Kant is in large part
determined by their relation to these two different planes. This is attested to
by the fact that without this as a reference point their take up of Kant can
often appear contradictory and confused. For it is never quite certain whether
Kant should be considered as an ally or an enemy. Is his thought central or
can it be ignored? Partly, this confusion is due to the general method of
Capitalism and Schizophrenia which seems to have more in common with the
sample-based creations of digital technology than with traditional modes of
philosophical analyses. Treating texts as a DJ would tracks, Deleuze and
Guattari emphasize rhythm and style? just as much as logical argument, and
work by extracting the refrains they can use rather than through the adoption
8
theory.
totalizing
or overall
of a
Yet, as with all good synthetic creations, Deleuze and Guattari's
6It is in a text entitled 'To Be Done with the Judgments of God' where Antonin Artaud first
creates the concept of a 'body without organs'. 'Man is sick because he is badly constructed.
We must decide to strip him in order to scratch out this animalcule which makes him itch to
death, god, and with god his organs. For tie me down if you want to, but there is nothing more
useless than an organ. When you have given him a body without organs then you will have
delivered him from his automatisms and restored him his true liberty. "To be Done with the
Judgments of God' in Antonin Artaud. Four Texts, trans. Clayton Eshelman and Norman
Glass. Los Angeles: Panjandrum Books, 1982
7 For example, in lecturing on Kant, Deleuze
advises his students not to follow every line of
"what is really a very difficult book, " but rather to just "follow the rhythm. ' (TLK, 2)
8As Foucault writes in the introduction to Anti-Oedipus, "it would be a mistake to read AntiOedipus as the new theoretical reference (you know that much-heralded theory that finally
146
sampling of Kant is subject to the most rigorous criteria. Their aim - as stated
at the outset - is to embark on a revolution that will transform transcendental
idealism into a materialism. This they accomplish by discarding all those
elements of the Kantian system which serve to bind it to the plane of
organization and development, not so as to deny the importance of his
system but rather so as to remain true to the method of critique. For, as we
will see, it is this method itself which insists that the realm of the
transcendental be liberated from the structure and plan of the organism and
flattened onto an immanent plane.
In order to follow this critical revolution we will begin in the strata, as
Deleuze and Guattari advise, 9 and attempt to enumerate the various features
which organize and develop Kantian thought into an overall plan.
The Critique of Pure Reason is presented in the preface as a
comprehensive system and is intended as the exhaustive inventory of all the
possessions of pure reason. It is meant to provide "the science of
transcendental philosophy" with "a complete architectonic plan. " (CPR, 60)
"In this inquiry," writes Kant, "I have made completeness my chief aim, and I
venture to assert that there is not a single metaphysical problem which has
not been solved, or for the solution of which the key at least has not been
supplied. " (CPR, 10) So certain is he that nothing has escaped his all
inclusive structure, that Kant maintains the Critique "leaves no task for its
encompasses everything, that finally totalizes and reassures)'. (AO xii)
9'It is through a meticulous relation to the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight. '
(ATP, 161)
147
successors save that of adapting it in a didactic manner according to their
own preferences, without being able add anything whatsoever to its content".
(CPR, 13-14)
Kant's confidence in the exhaustiveness of his work stems from his
belief in the systematic unity of critique. For Kant, the art of constructing
systems consists in the ability to unite the manifold of knowledge under one
idea. Ordered by this single identity, the system is likened to an animal body
which even as an embryo, contains all its parts within the whole. Conceived of
in this manner, transcendental philosophy is complete from its very inception
and should evolve like any other organism, "growing from within, and not by
any external addition. " (CPR, 653)
As an organism, the transcendental system originates out of the mind
of the human subject. Known alternatively as the transcendental unity of
"pure
I
this
the
think,
transcendental
the
original
or
subject,
apperception,
unchanging consciousness" (CPR, 136) is the seed or embryo of the
the
in
to
the
Functioning
synthetic multiplicity
critique
unite
architectonic.
to
the
it
to
idea
manifold, synthesize
provide
uniformity
serves
under a single
concepts with intuition, and ensure that all our experiences are our own. It is,
in short, both the cause and creator of a priori synthesis and as such forms
the structuring principle of the plan.
The ability to treat the transcendental as a systematic unity is
ultimately a result of the epistemological nature of Kantian thought. For it is
148
only when thought of as an epistemological representation that the synthetic
manifold can be organized under a single idea. It is no coincidence that in
Kant, a priori synthesis (or the abstract conditions of experience) conforms to
the principles of reason. Rather, it is because the transcendental are a mental
structure, imposed on the world through the interiority of the knowing mind
that this isomorphy necessarily exists. As Kant writes, "the order and
regularity we find in appearances we ourselves introduce". For "it is not
nature itself that is ordered in this way but only the representations of the
mind. " (CPR, 147) Composed on the plane of organization, then, Kantian
philosophy is less concerned with what the world is really like than with how
we are destined to know it.
It is through this attempt to limit the ambitions of philosophy, however,
that the Kantian system makes way for the judgments of God. Critique had
in
island.
Yet,
to
domain
the
conceiving of the
to
an
of
reason
restrict
sought
transcendental as an epistemological representation, it invariably sees that
beyond this "land of truth" is a "wide and stormy sea. " (CPR, 257) Restricted
phenomenal
interiorized
to an
representations, critical thought,
world of
Kant
its
borders.
beyond
to
help
but
to
names this the
a
realm
point
cannot
thing-in itself and seeks to banish it from his system by insisting that because
it transcends all knowledge it must remain exterior to the scope of
10
philosophy.
Yet, with the distinction between what we know and the thing-in-itself,
149
Kant aligns himself with his classical predecessors. "Limiting all that
we can
theoretically know to mere appearances" (CPR, 29) he divides the world
according to the traditional disjunction which opposes the reality of essence to
the shadowy illusion of appearances. It is this which is ultimately responsible
for the idealism of Kantian thought, and is also what allows for an element of
transcendence to permeate the entirety of his system. For, according to the
doctrine of the thing-in-itself the synthetic structures of the I think are haunted
by a transcendent or higher dimension which the subject cannot know. In this
way Kant guides thought precisely towards those metaphysical questions he
claims he is trying to avoid. Supposedly confined to epistemology, critique
seeks to limit reason but only in order to leave room for faith.
With its systematic unity, its strengthening of the subject, and its faith
in epistemology and the transcendence which this implies it may seem as
though one finds in Kant a philosopher who conforms with absolute
exactitude to the stratified conception of the plane. Surely even God could not
ask for a more uncompromising mode of development, a more strict
organizing structure or a more stringent desire for unity. Yet, nonetheless, the
Kantian system too is composed of lines of flight. For despite the apparent
rigidity of the architectonic there is a path in critical philosophy which leads
away from the form of the organism and the hierarchical structure of the plan.
On this line, transcendental philosophy appears less as a totalizing system
10'The true correlate to
sensibility, the thing in it itself is not known and cannot be
known. '(CPR, 74)
150
and more as a systematic method. From this point of view, the critical project
turns away from its organization and development and aims instead to
demolish hidden transcendence in order to discover an immanent plane.
As every student of Kant is aware, transcendental philosophy is based
on the practice of critique. "Our age", writes Kant "is, in especial degree, the
age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit. " (CPR, 9) What is
meant here by criticism is a philosophical method or tool which bases thought
on criteria immanent to the understanding. Targeting metaphysics "the Queen
of all the sciences" (CPR, 7) it denounces transcendence as an illegitimate
synthesis in order to remain on an immanent plane. Aimed at ensuring that
nothing be granted that can not "sustain the test of free and open
examination" (CPR, 9) it insists on abandoning any principles that demand
"
is
inherently
belief.
In
this
anti-authoritarian.
way critique
unquestioning
Determined to "be no longer put off by illusory knowledge" (CPR, 9) it
"dismisses all groundless pretensions" and refuses to seek recourse in
"despotic decrees. " (CPR, 9)
Transcendental materialism draws on Kant's Copernican
Like
Kant, Deleuze and
it
is
in
based
the
that
of
critique.
practice
on
revolution
Guattari adopt the critical method in order to rid thought of the illusion of
transcendence and develop a philosophical system which adheres to
immanent criteria. In this way - though it is far from the didactic analyses Kant
11This is why the French Revolution is often seen as the political equivalent to Kant's
philosophical revolution. See, for example, Heine's Religion and Philosophy in Germany p.
151
expected from his successors - Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a strictly
Kantian text. It soon becomes clear, however, that to follow through with the
critical method so that the thought of the transcendental can reach the plane
of consistency there is much in Kant's own work which must be overturned.
The time has come for the Kantian system itself to submit to critique.
In the hands of Deleuze and Guattari, then, Kantian thought undergoes
a radical transmutation. This is done, in accordance with Kant's own
principles, not by adding anything new to the system but rather through a
process of subtraction. Yet, though they use nothing but this simple arithmetic
procedure, Deleuze and Guattari's critique nevertheless has a devastating
effect. For what Deleuze and Guattari subtract is the identity and unity of the
system, that is the one thing essential to the completeness of the
architectonic plan.
From the point of view of transcendental materialism it is the critical
project itself which requires that the system be dismantled in this way. For the
notion that the transcendental plane can be united under one idea is,
according to Deleuze and Guattari, an attempt - however surreptitious - to
"re-establish a kind of transcendence" (ATP, 109) and thus cannot be
reconciled with the immanence demanded by critique. As Deleuze and
Guattari write, "unity always operates in an empty dimension supplementary
to that of the system considered. " (ATP, 8) Thus, unity must be subtracted
from the system (n -1) if the syntheses of the transcendental are to be
108
152
flattened onto an immanent plane.
Deleuze and Guattari's assault on systematic unity necessarily involves
a critique of the transcendental subject. For in maintaining that the synthetic a
priori are processes which occur inside the mind, Kant positions the subject,
as we have seen, as the system's single organizing idea. It is in this context
that the'critique of Oedipus' found in Capitalism and Schizophrenia must be
seen. For according to Deleuze and Guattari, the subject is "the locus of an
illusion. ' (SPP, 19) Though it is merely a peripheral side effect of more
primary processes, it operates by falling back on the agents of its own
production "which now seem to emanate from it as a quasi-cause. " (AO, 10)
The subject is thus a residuum which presents itself as an original foundation,
the product of a 'miraculating machine. "2 Thus, according to Capitalism and
Schizophrenia to follow Kant in presuming the interiority of the human intellect
is a betrayal of the critical project. For the Kantian contention that we only
have access to a world that we ourselves have constructed is an illegitimate
synthesis of reason. In this way Deleuze and Guattari's critique of the subject
is strictly equivalent to Kants attack on metaphysics, since both are
dismissed for their reliance on transcendence, authority and faith.
Replacing the illusionary transcendence of the subject with a
12In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari speak of the body of capital in the same way it falls
back on all production, constituting a surface over which the forces and agents of production
are distributed, thereby appropriating for itself all surplus production and arrogating to itself
both the whole and the parts of the process, which now seem to emanate from it as a quasicause. Forces and agents come to represent a miraculous form of its own power they appear
to be `miraculated" by it. (AO, 10)
153
Spinozistic lens, Deleuze and Guattari release transcendental
from its confines in representation
epistemological
critique.
individual transcendental
the "error of idealism"
containment
through the development
production
of a non-
Seeking "to determine an impersonal and prefield" (LS, 102) they strip the Kantian system from
and detach the synthetic a priori from their
inside the mind. Capitalism and Schizophrenia
thus treats the
synthesis of the first Critique not as the operations of conscious reasoning but
as the machinic functions of a purely materialist unconscious13 which do not
represent the real but operate instead as the abstract forces which constructs
it.
14
Finally, as we will see in greater detail in the following section, Deleuze
and Guattari revolutionize Kant by finally dismantling the distinction between
essence and appearance, Acting as Spinozists, they flatten the Kantian
division between what we know and the thing-in-itself onto a continuum or
immanent plane. Kant's attempt to restrict his philosophy to epistemology
sacrifices the immanence. of criteria to a faith in transcendence. For Deleuze
from
is
derived
Kant's
his
the a priori
Guattari,
that
then,
claim
work
and
development and organization of the architectonic plan is an attempt to
'reterritorialize' the immanence of the transcendental field. What Kant
12In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari describe the unconscious as a factory, a workshop.
(AO, 55) 'For the unconscious itself is no more structural than personal, it does not symbolize
any more than it imagines or represents; it engineers, it is machinic. Neither imaginary nor
symbolic, it is the Real in itself, the 'impossible real' and its production. (AO, 53)
13This is why the question posed by Capitalism and Schizophrenia is not'What does it
mean? ' but rather, 'How does it work? '
154
discovered when he gained access to the realm of the transcendental was not
the unity and identity of an organism but the disorganized multiplicity of a
common plane (what Deleuze and Guattari, following Artaud will call the body
without organs).
It should by now be clear that in order to engage with transcendental
philosophy the Critique of Pure Reason must be treated not as a
representational text but as a conceptual key. An approach from this
perspective, requires that we view Kant less as an enlightenment thinker and
"
(DR,
135)
"the
Deleuze,
to
explorer.
of
a
great
as
analogue
quote
more,
Seen from this perspective, the Kantian texts cease to be the colorless
instead
become
the record of a
law
from
the
and
courts
of
reason
accounts
'stationary voyage' which unlocks realms beneath and between the empirical
transcendental
boundaries
Underneath
the
of
appearances,
rigid
world.
philosophy discovers the seething processes of the synthetic a priori; a plane
is
functions
independently
it
though
of
experience,
no
of production which,
less real for being abstract. In the Kantian system it is this transcendental
plane, with its continuous process of connection and combination, which
replaces the transcendence of God and of metaphysics.
That Deleuze and Guattari have followed Kant on this voyage, and are
from
is
the
by
driven
clear
to
very
made
synthesis,
a
philosophy
committed
first lines of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 'Everywhere it is machines - real
being
driving
figurative
machines
machines,
other
ones:
machines
ones not
driven by other machines. " (AO, 1)
155
To see the world in terms of a machinic production is not - as it may
first appear - to be caught in an industrialized or mechanistic vision. Operating
with post-cybernetic principles, Deleuze and Guattari define machines neither
by the form of technical integration nor by the molar manufactured
substances of transcendent technology, but rather by disintegrated molecular
production which combines (amongst others), biological, chemical, geological,
and cultural components. The machines of Deleuze and Guattari operate as
intensive multiplicities - flat or rhizomic assemblages - functioning
immanently, rather than as mechanisms controlled by a transcendent,
supplementary, or preprogrammed plan.
In equating transcendental synthesis with machines, Deleuze and
Guattari replace the Kantian emphasis on the unity of the subject and its
epistemological representations with nonhuman agents defined solely by their
ability to connect things together or drive things apart. They thus push
Kantian thought on to its most destratifying line and develop a philosophy true to a radically transcendental critique - which dismantles the architectonic
by transforming the Kantian plan onto a flat, intensive and immanent plane.
156
3.2 From Eternity to Aeon
From the point of view of the philosophy of time, Deleuze and Guattari
depart from Kant not so much by questioning his account of time but rather
through a critique of his notion of eternity. This critique - as we will see - involves
a radical mutation in the philosophical understanding of the eternal. For, despite
the revolutionary nature of Kantian thought, his notion of eternity varies little from
the view of the eternal developed in the western classical tradition. With Deleuze
and Guattari, on the other hand, eternity becomes something altogether
different. Rather than an idealist construction (which it is for both Kant and Plato)
Deleuze and Guattari develop an account of the eternal which is fully materialist
but is nevertheless exterior to time. In this way, transcendental materialism
discovers a notion of the eternal proper to the immanence of critique. This
discovery is of such importance that just as it has been said of Kant that "all the
creations and novelties which he brings to philosophy rest on the creation or
discovery of an entirely new conception of time, " (KST 1) so too can it be said of
Deleuze and Guattari that all of their creations and novelties rest on an entirely
new conception of eternity.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, eternity is produced in at least three
different ways. It first appears in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' as a formal
property of the intuition of time. According to Kant, time as intuition (or the form
157
of inner sense) is best thought of as an extensive arithmetic sequence whose
'
is
line.
Like a number line, the
dimensional
number
a one
closest analogy
transcendental form of time is an everlasting homogenous series, infinite in both
directions. Thus, in this first instance, it is the infinitude of time which constitutes
eternity.
The second place in which eternity is produced is in the 'Transcendental
Deduction'. Here, the eternal is considered to be an aspect of the transcendental
unity of apperception. For it is the unity of this subject which ensures that the
everlasting series of time be brought under a single identity. United in this way,
the eternal, in this second case, is constructed as the whole of time conceived of
as one.
The third zone in Kant's writings in which the eternal is consolidated is in
the doctrine of the thing-in-itself. Here, the eternal is evoked in opposition to the
divine
Conceived
time.
a
of
as
essence, eternity, in
of
phenomenal appearance
this doctrine, is considered to be the timelessness of a transcendent outside.
The conception of eternity developed by Deleuze and Guattari differs
fundamentally from all three of these aspects of the Kantian system. First of all,
because the kind of infinity which is aligned with the transcendental materialist
but
infinity
is
the
everlasting
series
rather
of
an
extensive
of
eternity
not
notion
the intensive infinity of continuum. Secondly, though the eternal as an intensive
1To quote from the first critique: We represent the time-sequence by a line progressing to
158
continuum involves the whole of time, this is not because it is united under a
single subject. Instead, for Deleuze and Guattari the eternal is the mode of time
proper to the plane of consistency. This single plane is characterized by the
continuous variation of machinic multiplicities and not by the stasis of an
unchanging identity. Finally, though the intensive time of the plane of consistency
is exterior to time, it is not conceived of as a transcendent beyond. Rather, as we
which
for
Deleuze
Guattari,
is
body
will see, eternity,
and
a
constructs an
immanent outside.
Part 1. Extensive versus Intensive Time
What is this time which need not be infinite but only "infinitely
subdivisible?" It is the Aeon.
Deleuze, Logic of Sense, p. 61
According to Kant our intuition of appearances is comprised of extensive
magnitudes. "Appearances, " he writes, "are all without exception magnitudes,
indeed extensive magnitudes. "(CPR, 198) What Kant means by an extensive
magnitude is one whose parts are apprehended successively. That is to say, the
pure intuitions (space and time) are extensive in that they order the manifold of
appearance into a succession. This successive synthesis operates by organizing
things into parts and then gathering those parts into a whole. Thus, according to
infinity and we reason from the properties of this line to all the properties of time."(CPR, 77)
...
159
transcendental philosophy, to perceive something in space and time is to
apprehend it as an aggregate. To quote from the first critique "every
appearances is as intuition an extensive magnitude; only in the successive
synthesis of part to part in (the process of) its apprehension can it come to be
known. " (CPR 199)
In the work of Deleuze and Guattari the Greek god Chronos provides the
name for extensive time. Constructed as an infinite series of extensive
magnitudes, Chronos is characterized by the "successive advance from one
moment to another" (CPR, 198) It marks the linear order of a purely metric time.
Composed entirely of "interlocking presents" (LS, 61) which follow one another
for ever, it is a time made up of homogenous units, measured instants or
cardinal beats, which serve to enclose the multiplicity of the world in between its
limits. In Kantian terms, Chronos is the temporality of experience, the form of
time in which the empirical ego is caught.
Yet, as even Kant himself is aware, our perception of the world is not
altogether captured by the temporality of Chronos. In a somewhat obscure
section of the first Critique entitled the 'Anticipation of Perception' Kant makes
clear that there is something other than intuition that is at work in the
construction of appearances. Since space and time are never perceived directly
there must be something in addition to intuition that constitutes perception. This
Kant calls the "matter of an object in general", the "real of sensation" or "realitas
160
phaenomenon" (CPR, 201) and insists that instead of extensive magnitudes it is
comprised of intensive degrees. In all appearances," he writes, "the real, that is
an object of sensation, has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree." (CPR,
201)
The difference between extensive magnitudes and intensive degrees is
perhaps most obvious in our perception of space since the same extensive
space can be filled with varying degrees of intensities. To quote from a lecture by
Deleuze, "the same space can be filled by a more or less intense red, the same
room can be filled with a more or less intense heat, the same volume can be
filled with a more or less dense matter. " (SLK 4)
Yet, the distinction between the intuition of extension and the
apprehension of intensities is just as much a temporal one. For there is a time of
intensities that differs fundamentally from the extensive temporality of Chronos.
Deleuze and Guattari name this intensive time Aeon and throughout their work
systematically oppose it to the workings of Chronos. It is these two readings of
time - time as Chronos and time as Aeon - which transcendental materialism
uses to replace the classical disjunction between the appearance of time and the
essence of eternity.
Aeon can be distinguished from Chronos, first of all, because unlike
extensive magnitudes, the apprehension of intensities does not take place
through successive synthesis. Rather than "proceeding from parts to the whole"
161
(CPR, 203) intensities are instead apprehended in a single instant. To quote
Deleuze:
The apprehension of an intensive quantity is instantaneous, which is to
say its unity no longer comes from the sum of its successive parts. The
unity of a given intensive quantity is apprehended in an instant. Which
amounts to saying that when I say it's 30 degrees the 30-degree heat is
not the sum of three times 10 degrees..30 degrees is not three 10-degree
heats." (SLK, 4)
Thus, unlike extensive magnitudes, intensive degrees are not made up of
homogenous units. Rather than a temporal succession which unites the manifold
of sensation into aggregates or organized wholes, Aeon is comprised solely of
intensive quantities, each of which is itself a multiplicity. According to Deleuze
and Guattari, these intensive multiplicities "cannot increase or diminish without
their elements changing in nature. " (ATP, 31) They thus create a diagonal line
which bypasses the stratic distinctions between constant and variable, quantity
and quality and produce a time of continuous variation whose elements can not
change in size without changing in nature.
One of the essential characteristics of the dream of multiplicity is that
its
distance
in
varies
and
alters
relation to the
each element ceaselessly
others... These variable distances are not extensive quantities divisible by
each other; rather, each is indivisible, or "relatively indivisible, " in other
words, they are not divisible below or above a certain threshold, they
cannot increase or diminish without their elements changing in
nature ...What is the significance of these indivisible distances that are
ceaselessly transformed, and cannot be divided or transformed without
their elements changing in nature each time? Is it not the intensive
character of this kind of multiplicity's elements and their relation between
them? Exactly like a speed or a temperature, which is not composed of
other speeds or temperature but rather is enveloped in or envelops
162
others, each of which marks a change in nature. (ATP 30-31)
Since it is not composed of an everlasting series of homogenous units,
Aeon does not share the infinity of Chronos. Yet, nonetheless, there is an Aeonic
infinity that is greater than the whole of Chronic time. This is because the instant
in which intensities are perceived necessarily opens up onto a continuum. For as
we have seen, to say that intensities are apprehended instantaneously does not
mean that they occur inside a unit of extensive time.
Like extensive aggregates intensive quantities are multiplicities but they
are composed of intensive rather than extensive parts. They divide, but only into
themselves, in accordance with an order of envelopment whose ultimate term is
absolute continuuum V. In Kant's words, the apprehension of intensities "can
diminish to nothing (the void) through infinite gradations. " (CPR, 206) Thus the
for
the
intensive
provide
matter
a potential
multiplicities
continuous variations of
"infinite subdivision of the abstract moment. (LS, 77) This occurs through a
is
based
that
intensive
on ordinal sequence - of greater
numbering
of
process
Thus,
lesser
than
extensive
magnitudes
while
are
units.
cardinal
rather
and
be
degrees
intensive
the
can
only
quantified as
of
parts,
aggregation
counted as
from
distance
by
determined
their
intrinsically
less,
absolute
as
more or
in
its
degree
in
infinitum.
"
diminish
"can
('0'),
towards
each
which
cessation
(CPR, 207) Though they are comprised of magnitudes, intensive quantities do
but
the
mark an order of
aggregate,
of
an
measure
successive
units
not
163
differences - or irreducible distances - from degree-zero. It is this virtual
2
immanent
instant,
that
the
infinity
Aeon.
continuum,
within each
constitutes
of
Part 2. The Unity of Eternity versus the Multiplicity of Aeon
As has already been noted, the infinity of extensive time is not the only
way in which the concept of eternity operates in the Kantian system. In fact, from
the point of view of the classical tradition, the infinitude of the 'Transcendental
Aesthetic' has more in common with the everlasting than it does with the eternal.
In the 'Transcendental
Deduction', however, Kant comes closer to his classical
predecessors by presenting unity as an essential property of the eternal. In
insisting that the intuition of time be united by the transcendental subject,3 Kant
produces a notion of eternity which can be defined as the whole of time
conceived of as one.
2 This difference between the infinite series of Chronos and the infinitely subdivisible Aeon can
perhaps best be understood through the work of Georg Cantor, a 19th century mathematician
who specialized in the problem of infinity. Cantor's work shows that there are different types of
infinity. The first - and smallest kind - corresponds to Chronos in that it is characterized by any
number line extending infinitely in both directions. Cantor called this a 'countable infinity' or Aleph
null. Cantor realized, however, that there are infinitely more numbers in between two points on a
number line, if one includes the irrationals, then the infinite set of whole numbers. In other words,
there is an infinity greater than Aleph null which exists between any two points on the number line.
Cantor called this greater infinity C for continuum. It is continuum that corresponds to the intensive
infinity of Aeon.
3'There can be in us no modes of knowledge, no connection or unity of one mode of knowledge
with another, without that unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions, and by
relation to which representation of objects is alone possible."(CPR, 136)
164
According to the Kantian system it is a necessary and universal principle
that the everlasting series of time belongs under the transcendental unity of
apperception. This is a result of the fact that for Kant, time is ultimately nothing
more than an epistemological representation. Denied "all claim to absolute
reality" (CPR, 78) time, in Kantian language, is "empirically real but
transcendentally
ideal. "(CPR, 78) That it is to say "when abstracted from its
subjective conditions time is nothing. " (CPR, 78)
Yet in a somewhat complicated twist the transcendental subject is
defined as nothing other than the constant synthesis of time. For despite the fact
that it is almost theological in scope, the Kantian subject is remarkably barren.
Devoid of all logical or qualitative characteristics its identity is a purely numerical
one. (CPR, 136) For Kant then, the I is an empty slot - defined as nothing other
than its ability to remain the same. Conceived of in this manner, the subject - as
has already been noted - becomes inextricably bound to the production of time.
First, because it is only time (which functions both as the form of inner sense and
as the secret of the schematism) which is abstract enough to organize and unite
the heterogenous elements of the system. And secondly, because as the
identity.
This
is
to
the
time
subject's
essential
synthesizer,
system's numerical
bind is in fact so strong that the transcendental unity of apperception can be
seen as synonymous to the operations of transcendental time. To repeat a quote
from Deleuze "I is an act which constantly carries out the synthesis of time. "
165
(KCP, viii)
Thus, in Kantian thought the infinity of temporal succession is
encompassed under a single identity whose unity is conceived of as the whole of
time. It is this unity of time which ensures that the multiplicity of the
transcendental
be formed into an organized totality. It also serves to guarantee
the eternal nature - or transcendental completeness - of the Kantian system
itself.
As we have seen, transcendental materialism breaks from Kant by
viewing unity as a mode of organization produced on the plane of development.
Constructed in accordance with the hierarchical structures and tree-like logic of
this stratified plane, unity always involves a supplementary dimension. Deleuze
and Guatttari thus consider it to be a transcendent synthesis, illegitimate from
the point of view of critical thought. This is not to say that the production of unity
is not materially instantiated.; The power of the strata is real. Rather, it is to claim
that the unity of the transcendental subject, which Kant considers a necessary
presupposition, is itself the product of a contingent structuring principle which
happens to be manifested in the architectonic plan. For Deleuze and Guattari,
then, the unified subject is a stratified mode of individuation which does not
belong to the immanent plane of transcendental thought.
Deleuze and Guattari's critique of unity has important implications for the
Kantian theory of eternity developed in the 'Transcendental
166
Deduction'. For,
according to Deleuze and Guattari, the notion of a subject who unites the whole
of time under a single identity is not eternally given but is rather produced on the
extensive plane of Chronic time. "Chronos, " they write, is "the time of measure
that situates things and persons, develops a form, and determines a subject. "
(ATP, 262) Thus, rather than emanating from a presupposed identity, for
Deleuze and Guattari, it is the extensive units of Chronos which organize
subjects and structure their formations.
Always at work dividing things into parts
and arranging those parts into wholes Chronos, as the time proper to the plane
of organization, constitutes the eternal unity of time as a transcendent illusion.
The eternal time of Aeon, on the other hand, constitutes an immanent
intensive plane that is systematically opposed to the experiential world of
extensive organization. Since this immanent undivided plane is not segmented
into parts, it cannot be unified into wholes. Thus as the time of immanence or
consistency, Aeon knows nothing of unity.
Unable to be captured under the identity of the transcendental subject,
Aeon operates with a mode of individuation that has nothing to do with unified
subjects or entities. 'There is a mode of individuation, " write Deleuze and
Guattari, "very different from that of a person, subject, thing or substance. A
season, a winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking
nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a
subject. " (ATP, 161)
167
Instead of being determined by the higher unity of subjects or things,
Aeon is populated by "machinic assemblages" or "intensive multiplicities" whose
singularity has more in common with the destratified nature of Spinozistic modes
than it does with the structure and form of identity. In Aeon, writes Deleuze and
Guattari, individuation is "a question not of organization but of composition. "
(ATP, 255) Dedicated to exploring this nonunified individuality, Capitalism and
Schizophrenia develops a cartography which maps out the two dimensions or
axis of this composition - the longitude and lattitude of the plane. Drawing on
Spinoza, they discover that these two axis can be characterized first by relations
of speed and slowness between unformed elements (longitude) and second by
the corresponding capacity for affecting and being affected (latitude). (ATP, 507)
According to the Spinozistic materialism of Deleuze and Guattari it is these two
4
immanent
individuality
body
Aeon.
define
the
the
axis which
of a
on
plane of
These intensive singularities, machinic multiplicities or bodies on the
Spinozistic sense are not individuals that remain consistent throughout time.
Rather they are events or Aeonic occurrences that are themselves immanent to
the very nature of time. They are becomings not beings. Comprised of
"continuums of intensities" whose elements cannot change in size without
4 In short, if we are Spinozists we will not define a thing by its form, nor by its organs and its
functions, nor as a substance or a subject. Borrowing terms from the Middle Ages, or from
geography we will define it as a longitude or latitude....The longitudes and latitudes together
constitute Nature, the plane of immanence or consistency, which is always variable and is
168
changing in nature, these events are in a process of "continuous variations,
which go beyond constants and variables. They are becomings which have
neither culmination nor subject." (ATP, 507)
These becomings or intensive events are eternal in the sense that they
involve the whole of time, not by uniting it under a single identity but rather by
constituting a mode of distribution in which time is not segmented into parts. As
flat multiplicities composed on a single undivided plane, intensities fill the whole
of time to a greater or lesser degree.
For these reasons Aeonic occurrences break down the distinction
between the constant structure of time and the changes which occur inside it.
For as we have seen, the plane of consistency has no supplementary dimension
from that which it gives rise. Aeonic events do not occur in time, not because
they belong to a transcendent outside but because they are flat with the single
plane of immanence which collapses the distinction between time and that which
populates it. Equally immanent within any given moment of Chronos, in Aeon
"everything happens at once." (ATP, 297) Operating with a mode of distribution
that is incommensurable to the order of Chronos they cannot help but scramble
5
linear
time.
the
sequence of extensive
constantly being altered, composed or recomposed, by individuals and collectivities. (SPP, 128)
5 For a good pulp fiction account of Aeon see Stephen King's book The Shining which is based
on
Jack Torrence's encounters with the Aeonic singularities that haunt the Overlook Hotel. King,
Stephen. The Shining New York: Doubleday, 1993.
169
The identity of Chronos knows the world as a perpetual present. For
though the plane of organization segments time into past, present and future,
nevertheless
"in accordance with Chronos, only the present exists in time. " (LS,
162) Past, present and future are known only as the present that has been, the
present that is and the present that will be. As Schopenhauer says "No man has
lived in the past and none will ever live in the future, the present alone is the form
of all life" (WWR1 278)
Endlessly decomposing itself in both directions at once," Aeon, on the
other hand, "forever sidesteps the present. " (LS, 77) Enveloping the whole of
time without unifying it, Aeon is, "already past and yet in the future, at once more
and less, always the day before and the day after"6 (LS 77) As the "indefinite
time of the event" it exhibits a power of virtuality irreducible to the actuality of
Chronic time.
Part 3. Aeon or time as thing-in-itself
According to Schopenhauer, Kants great doctrine "is the doctrine that
space, time, causality belong not to the thing-in-itself but only to the
6'Aeon: the indefinite time of the event, the floating line that knows only speeds and continually
divides that which transpires into an already-there that is at the same time not-yet-here, a
simultaneous too-late and too-early, a something that is both going to happen and has just
happened.' (ATP, 262)
170
phenomenon, that they are only the forms of our knowledge, not qualities of the
thing-in-itself'
(WWR 1 134) As we have already noted, it is this notion of the
thing-in-itself, which constitutes the idealism of Kantian thought. It is also, for this
reason, the element of the Kantian system which comes closest to the notion of
the eternal conceived of by classical philosophy. For in distinguishing between
the world that we know and the thing-in-itself, Kant reproduces the classical
disjunction which opposes the temporality of appearances to the essence of
eternity. For, implied in the doctrine of the thing-in-itself is that beyond the
structures of the knowing subject, outside the representation of the mind, and
exterior to the world of phenomena, is another hidden plane of which time is not
a part.
In this doctrine, then, eternity is constituted as the timelessness of the
thing-in-itself. Evoked as a divine essence, Kant considers it to exceed the limits
of critique. It thus operates in the Kantian system as the relic of an older tradition
in which knowledge was based, not on the immanent principles of the
understanding, but on the transcendent authority of faith. Aware that this
contradicts the explicit aims of the critical project, Kant attempts to banish all
questions pertaining to the thing-in-itself by insisting that they are beyond the
7 To quote Schopenhauer "Whatever the thing-in-itself may be, Kant rightly concluded that time,
space, causality...could not be its properties, but could come to it only after, and in so far as, it has
become representation." (WWR1,120)
171
scope of transcendental thought. Yet, from the point of view of the philosophy of
time it is already too late. Kantianism has collapsed into a Platonic vision in
which time is seen as a trap or enclosure, and eternity its transcendent outside.
It is here that transcendental materialism's revolt against Kant is most
starkly apparent. For as should now be clear, Deleuze and Guattari replace the
opposition between our capture in the phenomenon of time and the exterior
essence of the eternal with two different planes of production, governed by two
different times. In Deleuze and Guattari it is the transcendent plane of Chronos
which produces the interiority of time, and the immanence of Aeon which is its
8
outside.
This notion of an immanent outside requires that Kant's 'great doctrine'
be radically transformed. It demands that the idealism which severs what we
know from the thing-in-itself be replaced with a materialist plane of consistency
which no longer segments or divides.
Deleuze and Guattari conduct this transformation through the adoption of
the Kantian theory of intensities. The reason they give so much weight to this
is
it
here that the Kantian
is
because
thought
transcendental
particular aspect of
system becomes fully machinic rather than epistemological. As the 'real of
8 In this sense the difference between Aeon and Chronos corresponds to the Kantian distinction
between the transcendental production of time and the empirical changes in time. Aeon, however,
can only be equated with transcendental time if the transcendental is conceived in the terms set
out by Deleuze and Guattari's materialist revolution. For Aeon, as we will see, corresponds to the
172
sensation' intensive quantities are directly effective, not representational. As
even Kant himself writes, they have a direct "degree of influence on the
senses. " (CPR, 202) A production of the real that stems neither from concepts
nor from the forms of our perception, intensities are what is left when intuition
and the understanding are stripped away.
In that it is exterior to the transcendental structures of representation,
degree zero intensity -a state which is immanent to every perception but is
9is neither a cessation of thought nor a negation
nonetheless never perceived
of sensation but matter as an immanent abstraction. Thus at degree zero
intensity the 'matter of sensation' or 'realitas phenomenas"
constitutes
abstraction as a body which substitutes for any transcendent notion of the
absolute reality of the thing-in-itself. Deleuze and Guattari call this abstraction
the "uninterrupted continuum of the BwO" (ATP, 154)
The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces them and distributes them
in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it
in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree-to the degree
corresponding to the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed,
intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity V; but there is nothing
negative about that zero, there is no negative or opposite intensities. Matter
equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at
zero... (ATP 153)
transcendental production of time only as a body at zero degree intensity.
As Deleuze and Guattari write: You never reach the Body without Organs, you can't reach it, you
173
Since an intensity is nothing but a virtual descent to zero - which
instantiates the distance, difference, or degree which it is - the zero degree body
of intensities functions as an "immobile motor, " reciprocally produced alongside
10
is
immanent
It
it
limit).
this
itself
(for
the intensive sequence
an
provides
which
immanence
for
both
the
and
of
exteriority
which
accounts
of
production
circuit
the BwO. Intensities make their own plane, which nevertheless intrinsically
it
be
to
time
is
this
them,
a
can
subject
untranscended
and
since
plane
exceeds
beyond that which it itself is.
Thus Deleuze and Guattari's intensive mutation of critique invokes a
both
time
is
the
Aeon
of
abstraction
real
temporality ultimate
- which at once
degree-zero.
the
thing-in-itself:
at
matter-time
and
The preceding pages have sought to show that despite the revolutionary
idealism
Kant's
transcendental
time,
had
the
it
impact that
philosophy of
on
Plato,
just
Kant,
For
unity,
as
with
with
the
classical notion of eternity.
retains
identity, being, and transcendence are all aligned with a conception of the eternal
time.
the
is
to
of
phenomenon
which opposed
With the concept of Aeon, Deleuze and Guattari overturn this classical
in
to
that
however,
be
It
assume
the
wrong,
eternal. would
understanding of
are forever attaining it, it is a limit." (ATP, 150)
10See Anti-Oedipus especially pp. 8-9
174
ridding the transcendental of its classical ties to eternity, Deleuze and Guattari
make of it a secularist philosophy. Far from offering a crass materialism or a
naive empiricism, Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a gothic text filled with
demons, sorcerers, werewolves, and traffic with the other side. Rather than a
sad and disillusioned atheism which would discard the eternal archetype in order
to insist that only time exists and there is no outside, Deleuze and Guattari
replace the classical disjunction of time versus eternity with "two readings of
time" - time as Aeon and time as Chronos.
In substituting Aeon for eternity,
however, they discard the traditional associations of unity, being, and identity
which belong to a transcendent realm exterior to time and replace it with the
multiplicity, becoming, and continuous variation of an immanent outside.
Yet though these two notions - Aeon and eternity - are in many ways
diametrically opposed - they can nevertheless be seen, from a certain
perspective, as functionally equivalent.
We have seen in the introduction that Western thought has traditionally
lamented our birth into the phenomenal world of restless matter and temporal
change. Entangled in the multiplicity of becoming the human soul is seen to have
been separated from its real eternal essence by the illusory movement of time.
Thus, the philosophical and religious quest is aimed at transcending the body
and matter, escaping the ever changing illusion of time, and reaching the truth of
eternity.
175
It is clear from their continuous refrain to treat theory as creation,
concepts as tools, philosophy as invention, writing as diagrammatics and books
as assemblages that the work of Deleuze and Guattari is to be used and not
interpreted. In the preface to Anti Oedipus, Michel Foucault, recognizing this,
warns the reader that they will find neither a theory nor a philosophy in the pages
which follow. Instead, he writes, "I would say that Anti Oedipus (may the author
forgive me) is a book of ethics. " (AO, xiii) Like Spinoza's Ethics" then,
Capitalism ands Schizophrenia is best thought of as a 'How To' book, or, as
Foucault says, as a manual or guide to everyday life" (AO xiii)12 The aim of this
guide is to develop a set of practices which construct lines of flight that can
escape sequential order and the interiority of Chronos and make contact with the
13
outside, not so as to transcend matter into the world of spirit but rather to
access the destratified, unformed "Matter of the Plane" (ATP, 72), the body
without organs, and the "singular, nonsegmented multiplicities, or the intensive
continuums" (ATP, 72) that populate it.
" Spinoza's Ethics is a purely practical text in that its aim is to lay down concrete rules for freeing
oneself from 'sad passions' and to thereby map a path to an increase in power (or joyful
encounters). It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari's writings on Spinoza concentrate not
so much on the philosophical argument but rather on how one can 'live in a Spinozist manner."
(SPP, 123)
12On the same theme, Foucault writes: "I think Anti Oedipus can best be read as an art in the
sense that is conveyed by the term erotic art..." (AO-xii)
13 It is this accounts for the strong gothic component that runs through Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, a text that is teeming with references to secrets, sorcery, animal becomings,
werewolves, vampires, blind doubles, and Things from the 'Other Side'.
176
Chapter 4: The Aeonic Occurence
Any event is a fog of a million droplets.
Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues, p. 65
And believe me, friend Infernal racket! The greatest events they are not our
noisiest but our stillest hours.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 153
4.0 Introduction: Anticlimax
In the biblical tradition eternity comes at the beginning and the end of
history. The ongoing passage of time is thus framed, on one side, by the
unformed void which pre-exists creation, and, on the other, by messianic
redemption which acts as history's teleological termination point. To quote from
the Book of Revelations "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,
the first and the last.' (Rev 22: 13) Between these twin limits of time, the eternal
impacts on history only as punctuating moments in which a transcendent God
interrupts the order of time through miracles and divine revelation. In the popular
religious understanding of the West these punctual moments have long since
ceased. The world now waits for the eternal in the form of the apocalypse, which
'
will bring about the end of time. Though most people leave the anticipation of
such a moment to fanatic cults and fiction, at the end of the second millennium a
End of time apocalyptic scenarios which feed the current cultural imagination include: nuclear
war, ecological collapse, asteroid impact, alien invasion, and nanotech or genetically engineered
177
temporal event, brought on by a computer bug known as Y2K, brought the
promise or threat of an eternal envelopment of history to the fore.
As is now well known, when understood technically Y2K stems from the
fact that until only recently computers were programmed to read only
the last two digits of the year -assuming the prefix 19. This programming
convention dates back to the early days of the computer industry when memory
was scarce and expensive and each
2
line of code was a precious resource. At
that time a space saving protocol called for dates to be recorded with 6 digits
(YY/MM/DD) instead of 8 (YYYY/MM/DD). More than half a century later this
it
have
banal
to
consequences,
since
staggering
proved
convention
seemingly
dating
digit
two
become
their
that
system many of the
a
of
clear
as result
soon
jump
the
incapable
necessary to
magnitude
of making
worlds computers were
December
31
the
Instead
treating
2000.
the
of
midnight
stroke
of
year
register
1999 as the end of a unit in a linear succession, cyberspace takes it to be the
for
the
hundred
signal
computer
pre-programmed
year count,
completion of a
(99
+1'
clocks to return to year zero
00). Incapable of recognizing the
difference between the year 1900 and the year 20003 cyberspace needed to be
'fixed' if it was to smoothly process the impending millennium.
virus and mutation.
2 Before technological advances in the early 1990's made high capacity disc storage and memory
design.
in
key
limitations
the
these
system
computer
were
chips affordable
3 Since 19 is the systems cipher the year 00 is treated as 1900 and not 2000.
178
Though no one could predict the exact consequences if this "glitch" was
not dealt with in time, the fact that it was deeply embedded in a globalized
system of date-sensitive information flows meant that, in the premillennium
years, Y2K was the cause of widespread concern - even panic. The ubiquity of
network computing coupled with the hierarchized nature of technological
development (which has tended to add new applications on top of already
existing code) resulted in the fact that the target area of Y2K was practically
unlimited. As zero hour approached, it became clear that the vulnerable areas
included: worldwide finance (especially 'time sensitive' transactions such as
payrolls, pensions, insurance policies, stock options, interest and credit),
transportation networks (including air traffic control), weapon systems (nuclear as
well as conventional), hospitals, power plants and most obviously communication
lines.4 At its most extreme this two digit error in programming code threatened to
shut down planetary networks, erase large chunks of data and severely disrupt
5
depends.
the technological systems on which contemporary civilization
The fact that this threat coincided with the dawn of a new millennium led
to a massive cultural investment in Y2K. What appeared from one side to be a
faith
in
technical
older
a
much
with
collided
glitch
coincidentally
simple
4 In the final stage of panic concern extended to embedded chips, which control everything from
microwaves to elevators.
5 Note the following 1997
quote from the Economist magazine: " Care for a thrill? Consider what
might happen if the Millennium Bug, that tendency for many of the world's computers to mistake
the year 2000 for 1900, is not eradicated in time...Could two measly digits really halt civilization?
179
eschatological
history. In America, at the cutting edge of capitalism, sci-fi
scenarios fused with Christian prophecy. This produced a contemporary myth in
which Y2K ceased to be a mere programming error and became instead the
technical mechanism which would bring about the biblical Armageddon. Thus,
rather than a simple glitch which would occur within the evolutionary structure of
history, Y2K came to be associated with catastrophic empirical events that would
signal history's very ends On the intemet Y2K was designated by another
acronymic term that could capture this apocalyptic aspect of the millennium. The
end of the twentieth century was renamed TEOTWOKI (or the end of the world
as we know it).
On December 31 1999 the world watched, tense with anticipation, as Y2K
made its way across the time-zones. Yet, no matter where, when it was midnight
at the date-line next to nothing occurred. There were no nuclear disasters, no
airplane crashes, no market collapse, no power outages, no rioting, not even a
terrorist attack. Thus, though it was perhaps sufficiently masked by theatrical
gestures and elaborate firework displays, celebrations heralding the arrival of the
21st century were overshadowed by a pervasive sense of anticlimax. The most
Yes, yes - 2000 times yes! The Economist Oct 4th-10th 1997
6 Everyone is by now familiar with the most apocalyptic scenarios which included nuclear
accidents, plane crashes, major disturbances in communication and transportation lines,
shortages of food and other basic resources. These various disasters - so the story went - would
result in spirals of panic which would feed on themselves, leading to riots, martial law and general
social collapse. However farfetched, this basic narrative incited an expansion of survivalist
movements, especially in America, where many have people sold their homes in the cities and
moved to the hills with a stockpile of food, fire wood and weapons.
180
anticipated date in history was a non-event. In the days and weeks that followed
7
a sense of almost euphoric relief was mixed with a strange anger,
even
contempt. Y2K, (or `apocalypse not') is now believed to have been nothing but a
hoax, a conspiracy, a myth.
Yet, it is precisely the inability to associate Y2K with any actual or
empirical incident (especially one of apocalyptic or messianic proportions) that
serves to connect this singular temporal event with the philosophy of Deleuze
and Guattari. The fact that Y2K disappointed those awaiting an inauguration of
eternity does not mean it was not flat with Aeon.
A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of Capitalism and
Schizophrenia is composed of fifteen sections, thirteen of which are marked by a
date. Though these dates correspond to singular events (e.g. the origin of the
be
for
)
to
Genghis
Khan
they
death
the
mistaken
not
punctual
are
etc..
of
state,
moments. For Deleuze and Guattari, dates do not specify points in time but
in
"is
"
the middle not at the
"A
they
tag
always
write,
plateaus.
plateau,
rather
beginning or the end." (ATP, 21) Defined as "self vibrating region of intensities
(ATP,
22)
development
toward
a
culmination
point"
avoids
any
orientation
whose
plateaus substitute the climactic instant for continuums of intensity8and thus
Some maintain that the immediate post-millennium market drop was a result, not of scepticism,
but of an increasing faith, (the idea being that with nothing to stop it the economy would grow too
fast resulting in an increase of interest rates).
181
operate in an exterior relation to the linear sequence of Chronic time.
Like the plateaus singled out by Deleuze and Guattari, Y2K is dated in
its case precisely so - and yet, as the pervasive sense of anticlimax made clear,
it nevertheless cannot be located at any particular point in time. 9 Thus the
question 'When did Y2K occur? ' is inevitably met with a certain degree of
mystification.
A non-event at the time of its arrival, it is further confused by its
unconscious origins and by the fact that it is unclear whether it ever existed as
anything other than hype. The question 'when did it happen? ' thus slides into
more nebulous questions such as `what happened? '10 or 'did it actually occur? '
This ambivalence, or open-ended nature of the event, is a result of the
8 "Bateson cites Balinese culture as an example [of plateaus]: mother-child sexual games, and
even quarrels among men, undergo this bizarre intensive stabilization. Some sort of continuing
plateau of intensity is substituted for [sexual] climax, , war, or a culmination point. It is a
regrettable characteristic of the Western mind to relate expressions and actions to exterior or
transcendent ends, instead of evaluating them on a plane of consistency on the basis of their
intrinsic valuation.' (ATP, 22)
9 The attempt to locate Y2K in time leads to a series of contradictory impulses. On the one hand, it
is tempting to argue that Y2K, as an event, took place - long before anyone was conscious of it in the early days of computing when the two digit dating convention was first introduced. At the
time, of course, no one was aware that this mundane bit of programming code would result in an
end of the millennium catastrophe. If given any thought at all it was assumed - in accordance with
the science fiction visions of the 1950's - that the computer systems that were then being
programmed - would no longer be in use by the year 2000. It is just as plausible, however, to date
Y2K to the more recent past - around the early 1990's - when the world began to awaken to the
problem this dating convention would pose for the millennium and financial institutions, military,
security and traffic control, and companies of various kinds began to realize that the problem had
to be fixed. Yet, another possibility is to claim that Y2K - as an event - took place in 1999 when
media coverage, panic intensity and apocalyptic hype was at its strongest. Finally, it may be the
case that Y2K will only make sense as a significant occurrence in the future when 21 Stcentury
historians use it as an index for changes that are still now unclear.
10Deleuze and Guattari write of the question 'what happened' in relation to the peculiar
temporality of the novella, suggesting that the question itself is an index of Aeonic events. See
'1874:Three Novellas, or What Happened?' in A Thousand Plateaus.
182
fact that -as we will later see
is
for
the
As
name
a
machinic
multiplicity.
-Y2K
such it envelops everything from the revolutions of the planets, to messianic
prophecy, to the history of calendrics, to technological invention, to the cycles or
waves of the capitalist economy. At the most extreme one could view Y2K as
spreading throughout the entire span of history. It thus implies an intensive
temporality which exists outside the successive instants that constitute Chronic
time. Like every intensive singularity, Y2K occupies the whole of time to a greater
or lesser degree.
Y2K will never be anything other than a virtual catastrophe. Though it has
had enormous effects inside empirical history, it impacts on Chronos only as a
pure potentiality. As an immanent machinic accident"
Y2K is intensive rather
than actual. As such it must be considered not as a moment extended or
unfolded in Chronos, but rather as a plateau, or, in other words, as a virtual
occurrence composed on immanent and intensive plane which constitutes the
exteriority of Aeon.
11Y2K has obvious connections with Paul Virilio's theory of the accident. To quote Virilio: "For the
Philosopher, substance is absolute and necessary, whereas the accident is relative and
contingent. So the accident is what happens unexpectedly to the substance, the product of the
recently invented technical object-In fact, if no substance can exist in the absence of an accident,
then no technical object can be developed without in turn generating 'its' specific accident: ship'
shipwreck, plane' plane crash etc. The accident is thus the hidden face of technical and scientific
progress.' Paul Virillio. Politics of the Very Worst. New York: Semiotext(e), 1999 p. 92 The
argument of this chapter, namely that Y2K corresponds to the virtual time of Aeon rather than the
transcendence of eternity, is also in some ways convergent with Virilio's notion of the accident "as
an inverted miracle, a secular miracle, a revelation" (PVW, 90)
183
4.1 Time-Mutations
Throughout this thesis it has been argued that the modern conception of
time - produced in both transcendental philosophy and by the culture and
technics of capitalism - involves a distinction between time as a formal structure
and the historical variations which occur inside it. In previous social regimes,
when calendars were dominant and temporality was inseparable from the
movements of astronomy, this distinction did not exist, and time was itself
inherently connected with the qualitative changes now associated with history.
However, both the Copernican revolution in philosophy and the capitalist
revolution in time-keeping systems have overturned this tradition by liberating
time from its age old subordination to movement. Unhinged from the cardinal
points which it had been so long destined to measure, time became autonomous
from the cyclical patterns of astronomy. There thus emerged a formal time
conceived of as a purely quantitative framework that was considered to be
separate and distinct from the'historical content which happened to fill it.
As we have seen, the culture and technics of modern capitalism emerged
in conjunction with a synthetic temporal regime which served to instantiate this
new form of time. This temporal regime - or the capitalist production of time - can
be characterized by the following features:
1. The invention and development of the mechanical clock.
184
Though sun dials, water clocks and hour glasses have been in use
throughout the long history of time-keeping' it was not until the modern period
that these devices gained any degree of technical or social autonomy. Previous
to this, the practice of time-keeping, like the philosophy of time, had been
inextricably linked to the technical and cultural traditions of a temporality based
on the calendar. Starting from as early as the 14th century, however, with the
invention of the mechanical escapement, growth in the precision, influence and
ubiquity of the clock has ensured that clock time achieve a certain independence
or autonomy from the qualitative time of calendar.
2. The synthesis of clock time with the calendar
Formal time, however, cannot be solely equated with clock-time. For in
order to tell the time, the division of the day into hours, minutes and seconds
the
the
In
days
the
be
the
months
and
of
year.
week
of
synthesized with
must
order to function time-keeping systems require both a beat and a count. Thus,
the ticking of the clock must be combined with the counting system prescribed by
the calendar.
3. The global standardization of time.
Given tolerable accuracy, the decision about which calendar to use is a
purely arbitrary one. Capitalism requires only that the world agree on a
See Chapter2 'The Divisionof the Dayand Time-Keepingin Antiquity'in Historyof the Hour.
185
standardized convention. As a global system from the start ,2 capitalism operates
by drawing lines of communication, trade routes and transportation networks that
criss-cross the globe. The development of a world-wide economy, however,
necessitates that the planet be unified under a universal temporal regime. As we
have seen, this regime was initially created through an international agreement
which divided the planet into a series of standardized time zones, placing the
zero meridian at Greenwich. It also required the word-wide adoption of the
Gregorian Calendar. With these two things in place capitalism was able to
dating
increasing
the
a
unified
system
with
of
clocks
precision
ever
synthesize
which could operate as a virtual standard throughout the globe.
4. The convergence of time with money.
Disassociated from the world of empirical change and standardized
This
being
is
formal
time
the
quantified.
rigorously
of
capable
planet,
across
into
This
directly
be
duration)
to
in
(and
time
money.
converted
particular
allows
in
important
the
is
the
"Time'
Money"
synthesis
most
perhaps
equation,
capitalist regime and is found at the heart of modern analyses of capitalism,
including, most famously, Weber's notion of the protestant ethic, and the labour
theory of value. It is also, as we have seen through our examination of the
2 This claim is supported by the work of historian Fernand Braudel and by world system theory.
See in particular Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism 15"' -181hcentury. London: Collins,
1981-1984, and the work of Immanuel Wallerstein.
186
economist Bohm-Bawerk, crucial to phenomena such as interest and credit, two
features that are essential to the capitalist economy and its mode of production.
These characteristic features of formal time are not static, but are rather
the result of an ongoing machinic process that produce the formalization of time.
In the capitalist regime it appears that this process (the machinic production of
time) converges with the path of technological development. Thus, in
contemporary or postmodern capitalism, formal time is considered to be
instantiated by the digitization of both time and money that takes place in
cyberspace.
In keeping with the capitalist trajectory, cyberspace time synthesizes
clocks and calendars in such a way that the length of calendric intervals are no
longer determined by the revolutions of the planets but are governed instead by
the ticking of the clock. Cut off from astronomical movements, calendars are a
pure counting convention that can be programmed into a digital system from the
start. With the digitization of time, clocks and calendars have thus become part
of the same technical machine. In cyberspace, the beat and the count, the two
aspects of time-keeping systems have become so intermeshed that it is
impossible to say, for example, whether Y2K was a glitch in computer clocks or
an error in computer calendars.
The universal nature of Y2K (no country, however "undeveloped" was
187
thought to be spared) is evidence of the ever-increasing importance of the global
standardization
of time. Cyberspace, as the technological system of global
capitalism in its contemporary phase, supplements (and in part even replaces)
the previous dependence on physical trade routes and transportation networks
with a virtual web in which geographical boundaries have become redundant.
Dependent on instantaneous communications
irrespective of place, this virtual
web makes the demand for a standardized time that accompanied previous
technological grids even more urgent. For cyberspace, like the capitalist system
itself, is a distributed network which can only be united by a precisely
synchronized and globalized time.
Cyberspace's emphasis on temporal precision and accuracy is primarily
due to the intimate interactive dynamics which have developed between
technology and economic systems. In cyberspace flows of capital - which are
never anything other than digital code - are continuously subjected to virtual
transactions that are sensitive to minute variations in time. As digital code, time
and money have converged on a single numerical and technical plane making
the conversion between the two ever more immediate and immanent.
All this is to say that the constitution of formal time is a continuing process
it
itself 'falls
development
in
its
historical
which
conjunction
own
constructed
with
back upon'. This history, however involves only a very limited conception of
follows
the smooth
For
it
is
determined
by
that
advance
an
empirical
change.
upward curve of technological progress. The history of the clock, for example,
188
tells the story of an evolutionary growth that progresses from the mechanical
escapement, to the pendulum, to the quartz crystal, to the atomic clock. 3 As a
result of this growth curve there appears to be an underlying constancy to
change. Transformations are subordinated to development such that change
only occurs to heighten the accuracy and efficiency of the same basic device.4
Capitalism's construction of historical progress is much more than a
5
ideology.
For the notion that an underlying constancy to change
convenient
produces a predictable trajectory is a necessary part of the capitalist machine.
This is primarily due to the time-lag that is inherent in capitalist production. This
time-lag, as we have seen, manifests itself in such phenomena as the
investment in constant capital for future gains (roundabout production) credit,
interest and debt. Absolutely reliant on phenomena such as these, it is essential
that capitalism treat history as a smooth upward curves6 For it is only with a story
3 The atomic clock
beats
by
the
time
of a ceasium atom.- is timeof
metric
measures
way
-which
keepings most current manifestation
4 This progressive history of technology has reached unprecedented heights with the development
of Information Technology. As everyone is all too aware, the cycles of obsolescence maintained
by the computer industry happen at an ever increasing speed. The trajectory of smaller and
smaller machines capable of processing more and more data for increasingly diminishing costs
seems itself to be continuously intensifying. For example, Moore's Law which states that
processing speeds will double every eighteenth months is itself now outdated.
5 That is to
say that the 'myth' of historical progress is not constructed in order to fool the masses
or as a mystification of underlying real value.
6 The most absurd
examples of the prevalent notion that as time passes things remain basically
the same were evident around the time of the millennium when newspapers and magazines were
filled with predictions of how are lives would be improved by a series of technical inventions
intelligent clothes, robotic vacuum cleaners etc - that would undoubtedly be in place for the year
189
such as this that the difference between the present and the future can remain
open to rigorous quantification.
The problem with this particular construction of the passage of time,
however, is that it hides the fact that capitalist history is discontinuous, based
more on "ruptures and limits" than on the smooth continuity of empirical
advance. Underneath the mask of evolutionary development lies a series of
radical innovations. As Fernand Braudel writes "is it not in the nature of
capitalism, a sort of rule of the game, that it thrives on change, drawing strength
from it". (CC, 620) Capitalism, then, produces the appearance of a continuous
history while simultaneously feeding off unplanned, uncontrolled, unconscious
'
mutations.
For Deleuze and Guattari social formations are defined not by modes of
production but by'machinic processes', (ATP, 435) and machines work, " they
write, "only by breaking down. "(AO, 8) Crises, ruptures, accidents and anxieties
are misunderstood when one regards them as threats. In order for a machine to
function "it must not function well". (AO, 151) Abandoning the rigid form of the
finely tuned, well oiled, mechanisms of a previous age, Deleuze and Guattari - as
3000. Surely Bill Joy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems is much closer to the mark when he wams of
the inevatibility of unpredictable mutations arising from a convergence of Artificial Intelligence,
nanotechnology and genetic engineering.
7 As Deleuze writes: 'Those
who continue to have recourse to History and protest against the
indetermination of a concept such as 'mutation' should bear in mind the perplexity of real
historians when they have to explain why capitalism arose at such a time and such a place when
so many factors could have made it equally possible at another time and place ."[F, 21]
190
we have seen - define machines through the principles of a post cybernetic
abstraction. No longer dependent on the smooth functioning of clearly
distinguished parts, cybernetic machines learn and adapt through their mistakes.
Feeding on their own misfirings, they "operate only by fits and starts, by grinding
and breaking down, in spasms of minor explosions". (AO, 151) Capitalism, an
intelligent social machine, has learnt this rule. As Deleuze and Guattari write,
"The more it breaks down, the more it schizophrenizes, the better it works, the
American way. " (AO, 15)
Yet these accidents, ruptures and mutations are more than just breaks in
the linear order of developmental history. For as we have seen in our discussion
of Foucault, real discontinuities are mutations not only in time but to time.
Evolutionism," write Deleuze and Guattari, has been challenged in many
different ways (zigzag movements, stages skipped here or there, irreducible
overall breaks)" (ATP, 429) Capitalism and Schizophrenia's anti-evolutionism,
however, relies on none of these challenges. Instead it presents a `contingent,
singular, ironic, and critical' version of "universal history" (AO, 140) in which the
great social formations - the primitive machine, the state, and capitalism itself do not evolve in time but coexist together as Aeonic virtualities.
Each formation
is thus haunted by the others. These "stages" are mutually entangled by
191
8
strategies of anticipation and warding off. The linear narrative that bases itself
on the building blocks of history (successive instants or moments) is thus
replaced with a story of flows and their blockages, convergent waves and
cybernetic processes that defy linear causation. To quote from A Thousand
Plateaus:
Physics and biology present us with reverse causalities that are without
finality but testify nonetheless to an action of the future on the present, or
the present on the past, for example the convergent wave and the
anticipated potential, which imply an inversion of time. More than breaks
and zigzags, it is these reverse causalities that shatter evolution. (ATP,
431)
For Deleuze and Guattari, history is constituted by the extensive time of
Chronos. Its tendency towards evolutionism, teleology and an internal dynamic
advance is a result of the fact that it is necessarily subordinated to a one
dimensional time-line - whose subjectivity is the states - that progresses
successively from one moment to the next. Yet this successive, extensive
temporality belongs, as we have seen, solely to the plane of organization and
development, which - though it presents itself as transcendent cause - operates
through the stratification of an immanent plane of consistency. The
°'In a sense,' write Deleuze and Guattari, capitalism has haunted all forms of society, but it
haunts them as their terrifying nightmare, it is the dread they feel of a flow that would elude their
codes.' (ATP, 431)
9According to Deleuze
and Guattari, 'history is always written from the sedentary point of view
and in the name of a unitary State apparatus... ' (ATP. 23) In A Thousand Plateaus they oppose
this state centred narrative to a'nomadology, the opposite of a history. " (ATP, 23) Though this
topic relates to many of the themes of the thesis it is far too complex to be dealt with in detail here.
For a complete discussion see '1227: Treatise on Nomadology: -The War Machine' and '7000 BC:
Apparatus of Capture' in A Thousand Plateaus.
192
developmental structure of history, then, like the plane to which it belongs,
masks its reliance on an underlying temporality that is intensive in nature. "The
system in extension is bom of the intensive conditions that make it possible, but
it reacts on them, cancels them, represses them, and allows them no more than
a mythical expression. " (AO, 160)
For Deleuze and Guattari, then, the production of Chronic time is
generated through the capture of Aeon. "All history does", they write, Is to
translate a coexistence of becomings into a succession" (ATP, 430) In
Capitalism and Schizophrenia's anti-evolutionism lines of flight, flows and
thresholds of intensity and the continuous process of Aeonic becomings "have
replaced history, individual or general." (ATP, 162)
The great geographical adventures of history are lines of flight. it is
..
lines
flight
This
line
flight
that
of
of
primacy
we create...
always on a
of
must not be understood chronologically, or in the sense of an eternal
time
the
fact
the
It
is
a
which
the
untimely:
of
right
and
generality.
rather
is non pulsed, a haecceity like a wind which blows up, a midnight, a
midday... (D, 135-36)
The unexpected line' or 'imperceptible rupture' of the untimely - what
Nietzsche called "the vaporous region of the unhistorical" (UM, 63) - constitute,
in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, singularities, machinic multiplicities, or Aeonic
It
is
draw
the
that
on this
consistency.
of
plane
events
populate, and mutually
themselves.
take
however
histories
that
and
extend
place
plane suppressed History is made only by those who oppose history (not by those who insert
themselves into it, or even reshape it)... The dividing line passes not
between history and memory but between punctual 'history-memory'
193
systems and diagonal or multilinear assemblages, which are in no way
eternal; they have to do with becoming; they are a bit of becoming in the
pure state; they are transhistorical. There is no act of creation that is not
transhistorical and does not come up from behind or proceed by way of a
liberated line. Nietzsche opposes history not to the eternal but to the
subhistorical or superhistorical; The Untimely which is another word for
haecceity, becoming, the innocence of becoming (in other words, forgetting
as opposed to memory, geography as opposed to history, the map as
opposed to the tracing, the rhizome as opposed to arborescence). "The
unhistorical is like an atmosphere within which alone life can germinate
and with the destruction of which it must vanish... What deed would man be
capable of if he had not first that vaporous region of the unhistorical? "
Creations are like mutant abstract lines that have detached themselves
from the task of representing the world, precisely because they assemble a
new type of reality that history can only recontain or relocate in punctual
systems ... (ATP, 296)
History seeks to dismiss Y2K as an accidental incident. For in
accordance with the capitalist investment in the production of developmental
time, it was necessary to present Y2K not as a mutation but rather as a glitch, an
error, an accident, a bug. In the post-millennial period even this has been
but
Y2K
Yet,
history
an over hyped
as
nothing
questioned.
while
may remember
mistake, on the plane that underlies history Y2K has always been much more.
Imperceptibly interrupting developmental time with a singular mutation, it
introduced a break in the predictable trajectory of technological advance. This
break was itself a temporal event made even more powerful by the fact that
existed primarily as a virtual catastrophe. Like the reverse causalities that
Deleuze and Guattari evoke, it operated on the virtual plane that haunts history,
empirically realized as a future that acts on the present and a present that acts
on the past.
194
In so far as it was ever present, Y2K manifested itself most strongly in the
years and months leading up to the millennium. Yet even at that time, Y2K was
at least when understood abstractly - primarily a challenge to the past. An act of
calendric insurgency, Y2K threatened the authority of the Gregorian calendar by
replacing it with cyberspace's own cyclical count-10 Operating in this manner it
constructed itself as a time bomb that permeated the distributed network of
contemporary technology by directly targeting the pre-existing unity of capitalist
time. Yet, though it contested the past, it functioned most effectively when it was
thought to be in the future, incurring massive costs even as a pure potentially.
As has already been noted, capitalism is a distributed network united not
by the dominance of a particular region, culture or ideology but rather by the fact
that is enveloped under a single and standardized time. This global temporal
standard is, as we have seen, a synthesis between clock time and the world"
Gregorian
wide adoption of the
calendar. The fact that computers were
10 Put most
simply, the problem with Y2K was that it threatened to replace the year 2000AD with
the year 00. This threat, though ultimately unrealized, was an unprecedented challenge to the
authority of the Gregorian calendar. For, as year 00, Y2K indexes the fact that cyberspace, rather
than reinforcing the temporal regime of modem capitalism, had surreptitiously installed a calendar
of its own. Thus, while human culture and nation states had all agreed on the Gregorian calendar
as a secular convention, until it was'fixed' cyberspace had not. It is the discrepancy between
cyberspace's own calendar and the calendar developed by Pope Gregory XIII reforms that is
signaled by the sign Y2K. From the point of view of a radical calendrics, then, the attempt to
achieve 'millennium compliance' was not merely the reversal of a technical glitch but a geopolitical strategy aimed at the imposition of the Gregorian calendar on cyberspace. Fixing' Y2K
required the abandonment of an existing calendar, one that had worked successfully around the
globe for half a century.
11Having achieved this
standard, the regime of capitalist time insists that it is universally imposed.
Thus, by the turn of the millennium there was not a single act or location that could escape this allencompassing envelopment No matter how obscure, all local, religious and culturally specific
195
operating - however imperceptibly - with a calendar which challenged this
standard, resulted in a virtual time-bomb that threatened the entire global
temporal order. Thus Y2K - at least as a potentiality - achieves the dream
parodied in Conrad's Secret Agent. A timer so perfected that the timer is the
bomb, it operates as if aware that the vulnerability of the system comes from its
underlying unity and constructs itself as a sort of retrochronic bomb aimed
directly at capitalism by targeting the pre-established order of time.
As a temporal mutation - or reverse causality that "shatters evolutionism"
Y2K
but
the
the
upon
past,
not
only
also exemplified
an
effect
of
present
and even more starkly - an operation of the future on the present. This is most
evident in the instability it introduces into the equation of time and money, an
instability generated by the exposition of the pseudo transcendence of Chronos.
In modem capitalism, whether it be in Marx's labour theory of value, Weber's
protestant ethic or Boehm-Bawerk's analyses of round-about production, the
The
duration.
is
inevitably
`time
cost of Y2K,
with
equation
associated
= money'
however, was only indirectly determined by how long it would take to fix. For the
amount spent on labour time and upgrading technology was continuously
from
the
an error or
result
measured against
potential cost which would
discrepancy in the semiotic system which marks the date. By revealing that a
time-keeping practices are regularly converted into the Gregorian count. In this way the production
of capitalist time concretely implements the Kantian assertion that *different times are but parts of
one and the same time" (CPR, 75)
196
date - even as a virtuality - has immense economic consequences Y2K indexes
something that is apparently new in the economy of formal time. For what is
crucial in the convergence of time and money on the digital plane is not only the
immanence and speed of quantitative conversion but also the increasing
importance of systems and transactions that are hypersensitive to the date.
Thus, far from operating as a transcendent grid, Y2K makes clear that the
dating system - or formal expression - of capitalist time is a component of the
socio-technical apparatus that is itself in need of constant construction. It thus
interrupts the apparent stability and continuity of Chronos by conflating the
history of time (as technological development) with the variations intrinsic to
time's own production.
As early as 1997 it was clear that Y2K was going to be "the single most
12
"
irrespective of what did or did not occur on
time.
expensive accident of all
midnight December 31 1999. What makes this so critical for the abstract
production of capitalist time is not only how much money was spent but the fact
that it was spent on 'fixing' the date. For in introducing the date as an accident or positive force - in the capitalist production of time Y2K constitutes itself, not
only as a historical, but as temporal mutation.
12 The World in 1998. Economist Publications,
p. 135
197
4.2 Dates and the Semiotic of Aeon
We have already noted in chapter two that there exists an extremely
tight mesh between calendric convention and cultural tradition. Far from a
neutral device in the technology of time-keeping systems, calendars have
consistently been aligned with a particular type of centralized control. This is
why they have been traditionally managed by the priests and by the guardians
of the state. For unlike clock time, all the elements of calendrics - the type of
numeracy involved, the length and structure of the cyclical patterns, the
astronomical revolutions which are chosen to be emphasized, the dates
which are ritualized and the determination of when to start the count inevitably upholds and consolidates a particular cultural tradition.
It is no surprise, then, that there was an attempt by the Christian
religion to claim the date 2000AD as their own. Yet, though this attempt was
in many ways successful', it nonetheless inevitably led to a series of revealing
confusions. For though it is true that Pope Gregory's reforms emerged from
within the Christian tradition, according to the calendar he developed midnight
of December 31st 1999 does not coincide with any particular festival, has no
specific commemorative relevance and does not (as Gregorian year MM)
even mark the beginning of a new millennium.
The most radical, but nevertheless extremely pervasive, attempt to
1This is evident, for example, by the case of the religious section in London's 'millennium
dome' which, though it was primarily funded by a Hindu family, nevertheless took pains to
emphasize the Christian religion.
198
fuse the end of the twentieth century with Christianity involved as we have
seen - treating Y2K as the mechanism through which the prophecies foretold
in the Book of Revelation would come to be realized. This required the
creation of a contemporary myth in which the coming of the second
millennium as a moment in a calendric count was consistently confused or
interchanged with the notion of the millennium as found in Christian theology.
This latter signifies an eternal battle at the end of time when Satan is chained
and sealed in the Abyss and Christ is able to rule on earth for a period of a
thousand years. (Rev-XX). Needless to say, the idea that Y2K is the sign of
the programmic fulfilment of these prophecies has no doctrinal basis, nor is
there anything in the Revelation th at is even remotely suggestive of the year
2000AD.
Less fervent - or imaginative - believers sought to claim the connection
between religion and the date by insisting that the millennium was a
commemorative sign for Jesus 2000 year birthday. Though many people the
as
to
this
a valid assertion it has no historical,
world over seemed accept
calendric or religious legitimacy. For even if one accepts the dubious claim
that Jesus birth coincides with the starting point of the Gregorian calendarz,
still the only defensible date for the two thousandth anniversary of Christ's
birth is Christmas day 2001.
The tendency to conflate New Years with Christmas seems to occur
2There is a great deal of debate over the exact year of Jesus birth. The dates that are most
commonly accepted, however, is either. 04 B.C., or 12 B.C.
199
because they follow each other so closely in time. The Christian religion,
however, attributes no particular significance to this temporal proximity. The
move to place January Ist as the first day of the year was amongst the
amendments introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in his attempt to improve the
accuracy and precision of the Julian calendar. Yet these gains in accuracy
were made at the expense of religious significance. It is in the Julian
calendar, that New Years is a much more commemorative date since it falls
on March 25th, 'Annunciation day' which celebrates God's revelation to Mary
that she would give birth to Jesus.
More serious, however than the confusion between New Years and
Christmas is that to celebrate the year 2000AD as the dawn of the second
millennium depends upon the arbitrary conversion of Roman numerals into
Hindu-Arab ones. The Gregorian calendar is originally based on a system of
alphabetical numerals developed by the Romans and derived from archaic
tallying systems. 3 The most crucial feature of this system, from a
before
developed
the
it
is
that
was
since
contemporary point of view..
European acceptance of the decimal system - it does not have zero sign or
function. Lacking a year zero, the Gregorian calendar moves directly from I
BC to 1 AD and thus marks the passage of two thousand years on January
1st 2001 (MMI). The current system of dating which synthesizes the
'
is
Gregorian count with elements of decimal numeracy4 relatively recent.
3See Georges Ifrah The Universal History of Numbers, p. 196.
The decimal aspects of the contemporary use of the Gregorian calendar include the adoption
200
European culture and in particular the church was extremely resistant to
Hindu-Arab numeracy and it was only due to their obvious superiority in
precision, accuracy and efficiency that they were finally, reluctantly, absorbed
by the western world. 6 More than anything else, it is this adoption of the
Hindu-Arab numerals, that is celebrated in the date 2000.
These systematic confusions
between
the
calendric millennium and
-
millennialist beliefs, between New Years Day and Christmas, and between
the Roman and Hindu-Arab number systems - suggest that the massive
investment in the millennium was more about the date as such than it was
about anything that the date was purportedly meant to represent. As Y2K
starkly dramatized, the sign 2000AD had much more to do with the technosocial apparatus involved in the global standardization of time than it did with
7
tradition.
upholding any particular religious, cultural or calendric
All this is to say that what many believed to be a celebration of the date
as representative sign - in this case one that signals the apocalyptic end of
of the Hindu-Arab numerals, and the emphasis on decades, centuries and millennium.
5 The Arabs had introduced decimal numeracy to Europe as early as the ninth century. The
development of the Gregorian calendar, however, makes clear that up until as late as the
sixteenth century the church still preferred to use the - much less efficient - numeracy of
Rome. See The Universal History of Numbers p. 537-543
6 Ifrah writes how resistance to Hindu-Arab numeracy was based on a class dynamic. For the
'infinitely complicated use of the classical (Roman) counter abacus' (UHN, 577) allowed
knowledge of arithmetic to be confined to a privileged class who could afford the long and
intricate training necessary to master such a baroque numerical system. Faced with a number
system that could not fail to make arithmetic more democratic, the ruling classes derided it as
a diabolical heresy and refused to engage with it for centuries. See The Universal History of
Numbers pp 571- 581
7The threat of Y2K was completely indifferent to any specific cultural belief or time-keeping
practice. Any given nation or state could insist on their distance from the Gregorian calendar
but this made no impact on their immunity to the danger of Y2K. Cyberspace thus ensured
201
history - served to mask an unconscious cultural investment in the date as
number.
As the illegitimacy of any particular cultural claim to the year 2000
made clear, the libidinal energy that accompanied the millennium was
inspired primarily by decimal neatness of the numeral 2000 and by the
substantial - if unconscious - cultural sensitivity to the zero sign. Millennial
excitement, then, had less to do with the Gregorian calendar or the religious
events prescribed by the Christian tradition than it did with a decimal delirium
indifferent to creed. What was celebrated at 00hrs. 01/01/00 was the instant
when the numbers change. To quote from Time magazines "Commemorative
Issue":
Many cultures celebrated despite the fact that most follow completely
different calendars, and despite the fact that too many people were
pointing out that the millennium doesn't really start until next year and
that our system is all messed up anyway, because Jesus was born
2,004 years ago. They celebrated because the most famous
displaying
It's
three
has
zeroes.
was
created
ever
odometer mankind
exciting enough when it happens to your own car; when it happens to
the world, it makes you downright giddy. (Time. January 1 2000, p 26)
According to Deleuze and Guattarri, the plane of consistency has its
immanent
Intensive
machines, or
multiplicities,
semiotic.
own particular
singular occurrences are, for them, marked by a very specific use of signs.
Two of the most crucial components of this semiotic are the proper name and
the date. 8There is, of course an 'extensive usage' of names which belongs
that the millennium was, unquestioningly, a world-wide event.
202
to the plane of organization and development. On this plane, names function
as common nouns "ensuring the unification of an aggregate they subsume. "
(ATP, 27) On the plane of consistency, on the other hand, names function
intensively. Tagging singularities rather than unifying aggregates or indicating
subjects they "designate something that is of the order of the event, of
becoming or of the haeceity. " (ATP 264)9
Dates too, are sometimes used as if they mark points in an extensive
temporality. Yet, as we have seen, this is only when they have already been
captured by Chronic time. In relation to Aeon, on the other hand, dates are
the intensive markers for threshold events or singular becomings, and thus do
not indicate a moment in time but index instead a plateau or continuum of
intensity. 10
Y2K as a sign, is a remarkable condensation of this semiotic. With just
two letters and a numeral it operates intensively to produce an 'asignifying
11
that is at once both a proper name and a date. What this sign
semiotic'
6 The other components are the indefinite article and the infinitive verb. The latter is
particularly relevant because, as Deleuze and Guattari write, it "expresses the floating,
nonpulsed time proper to Aeon, in other words the time of the pure event or becoming, which
articulates relative speeds and slownesses independently of the chronometric or chronological
values that time assumes in the other modes. (ATP, 263)
9 'It is the military men and meteorologists, write Deleuze and Guattari, who hold the
secret
of proper names, when they give them to a strategic operation or a hurricane. The proper
name is not the subject of a tense but the agent of an infinitive. "(ATP, 264)
10In this way, they act as nomad numbers which populate a smooth space without dividing or
segmenting it.
11In the plateau'587 B.C. D. On Several Regime of Signs' Deleuze and Guattari speak
of
-A.
the coutersignifying semiotic which `proceeds by arithmetic and numeration. " (ATP, 118) as
the semiotic system of the nomad war machine.
203
designates is an event that is neither technical nor culturalt2 but machinic.
Singular and immanent, virtual but not at all vague, abstract and creative,
here and now, real yet nonconcrete, actual yet noneffectuated, A (ATP, 511)
Y2K, as a date and a name, is the index of an abstract machine. 13
According to Deleuze and Guattari, abstract machines cut across
Chronos, the time in which experience is caught, as a "leap in place, an
incorporeal transformation occurring at a zero hour". Instantaneous and
immediate they interrupt the development of history with transformations that
are recognizable by "the simultaneity of the statement expressing the
transformation and the effect the transformation produces; that is why [these
machines] are precisely dated, to the hour, minute, and second and take
effect the moment they are dated. (ATP, 81) "The abstract machine does not
function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is
yet to come. Thus when it constitutes points of creation or potentiality it does
not stand outside history but is instead always 'prior to' history. " (ATP, 142)
This is why - as Deleuze and Guattari write, - 'history will never be rid of
dates. (ATP, 81)
12Y2K has both a technical and cultural dimension in the sense that, on the one hand, it
concerned the incompatibility of calendric systems (a purely cultural concern), and, on the
other, a technical glitch in computing code. It is It is for this reason that Y2K should be
considered as a machinic syndrome, a term which is precisely meant to avoid the
segmentation between technical and cultural systems.
13Abstract, singular and creative, here and now, real yet nonconcrete, actual yet
noneffectuated -that is why abstract machines are dated and named (the Einstein abstract
machine, the Webern abstract machine, but also the Galileo, the Bach, or the Beethoven,
etc. ). Not that they refer to people or to effectuating moments; on the contrary it is the names
and dates that refer to the singularities of the machines and to what they effectuate (ATP, 511)
204
As an abstract machine, Y2K puts a (virtual) end to the arbitrariness of
signs. For though it is entirely semiotic it has a direct and instantaneous
effects. Occurring at a zero hour it 'takes effect the moment it is dated'
mobilizing the worldwide economy in an event that is no different from its
date. 14 Y2K thus brings an end to the assumption that the numbers which
'° It can be argued that the importance of Y2K stems from the fact that it indexes the 'year
zero' of cyberspace time (a claim whose legitimacy can only be tested in the future). It seems
plausible, however, that Y2K will be remembered as a time-marking index of this kind, both
because in the years leading up to the millennium when Y2K hype was at its strongest
there was a huge expansion in the world -wide use of the Internet, and also because Y2K was
directly responsible in ensuring that billions of dollars were spent in the pre
-millennium years
to ensure that cyberspace - and in particular cyberspace time- was fully in order for the dawn
of the new millennium.
The most obvious characteristic of cyberspace time is its speed or miniaturization.
For just as the clock divides the day (the smallest unit of the calendric time) into hours,
minutes, and seconds, so the computer divides the second (the smallest unit measured by the
clock) into a series of gradations (the nano- second, the pico-second etc... ) that are - at least
potentially - infinitely subdivisible.
Yet, just as it would be a mistake to reduce the distinction between calendric-time and
clock-time to a difference in scale so too would it be inaccurate to presume that cyberspace
time is no different from clock-time with the exception of being more finely articulated. For, as
we have seen, on the intensive plane where time is produced changes in size do not occur
without simultaneous changes in nature.
It thus becomes possible to say, that Y2K inaugurated - what will later be seen - as a
fundamentally new regime in the production of time. However, as Foucault maintains, radical
discontinuities are necessary accompanied by a certain degree of blindness. For there is an
inevitable failure to see that which is conditioning one's own experience of the world. For this
reason it is unavoidable that a degree of uncertainty surround questions of what cyberspace
time is and what it will eventually become. Any outline of the contours of this new'postmodem'
time, however, must take into account following characteristics:
First, cyberspace time can no longer be considered in any way human. For not only
does it follow the clock in ceasing to measure 'natural' rhythms of the organisms, but it also
operates with speeds that are below the level of human perception. It is for this reason that
cyberspace time appears instantaneous.
Second, cyberspace time has less to do with a clockwork universe and more to do
with machines of simulation. (It is because of its power to simulate other devices that Turing
called the computer the 'universal machine'). This link between simulation and time has
already led to some surprising experimentation. For example, in the summer of 1999 a group
of international financial institutions simulated time-travel -a practice that until then existed only
in the realm of science fiction - in order to arrive in the future and ensure that their systems
were millennium compliant.
Third, since cyberspace is nonlocalizable, cyberspace time must be considered as
transglobal or. postglobal rather than as operating with a globalized standard which coordinates various localities in space.
Fourth, cyberspace time constitutes an immanent machinic culture in which time
measures nothing outside its own inner workings. (Crucial to this is the correspondence
between processing speeds - measured in Hertz or cycles per second - and the ever-
205
mark the time are nothing but an empty representation. A statement no
different from its effect, Y2K marks a singular occurrence which operates on
an immanent plane in which the distinction between the formal expression of
time and the events which happen to fill it has been dissolved. No longer an
expression independent of its content, Y2K operates on a plane of exteriority
which eradicates the difference between quantity and quality, content and
expression, constant and variable. On this exterior plane, the plane of
consistency, body without organs, or Aeon the transcendental nature of time
can no longer be separated from the empirical nature of change.
increasing subdivisions of the second). This machinic immanence is evidenced by syndromes
such as Y2K which, as we have seen, are in themselves neither technical nor cultural, and
which constitute events flat with the production of time.
206
S. Conclusion
In its most general terms, this thesis aims to connect abstract
philosophical thought to concrete material practices. It does so by concentrating
on the convergence between, on the one hand, one of the most abstruse areas
of philosophy, that is the transcendental analyses of time and, on the other, on
the actual or concrete changes in the technology of time-keeping systems (and
the socio-cultural and economic transformations that necessarily accompany
these shifts). However, despite obvious isomorphies and interlinkages between
these two 'spheres' the topics are rendered irreconcilable by a process of
reciprocal interiorization that opposes the nature of time (conceived of as an
epistemological
subjectivity) with the innovations or changes which occur within
history (understood as a narrative unity).
Thus to connect the transcendental philosophy of time with the sociotechnics of time-marking processes requires the disorganization of both terms
onto a plane of exteriority - or absolute immanence - where change occurs not in
time but to time. This involves the reanimation of a systematic philosophy of
abstraction which is drawn primarily from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. This
systematic abstraction is a materialist philosophy, not in the sense that it is a
theory about matter but rather due to its practical or pragmatic orientation which
treats concrete material events as the instantiation of abstract machines which
are themselves 'philosophical' in nature.
The thesis begins by outlining the discussion of time found in Immanuel
208
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It seeks to show how, through the discovery of
the transcendental, Kant constructs an account of the abstract production of time
which is freed from its ties to variation and movement. Time thus becomes a
formal structure which is constant and exists in an exterior relation to the
changes which occur inside it.
In the second chapter this notion of transcendental time is linked to the
temporal transformations which have occurred under capitalism by way of the
invention of the mechanical clock. It does this by mapping the Kantian notion of
formal time onto the quantitative and homogenous time of the clock, a time
which is characterized by its autonomy from the calendar, its standardization
throughout the globe and its rigorous identification with money.
Yet, despite obvious parallels, the socio-history of capitalist time and
Kant's critical philosophy remain separate and opposed. This separation
corresponds to the fundamental distinction - which both sides insist upon between historical change and the epistemological structure of time, an
opposition which results in each side seeking to envelop the other by way of its
by
the
transcendental
is
(which
unity
constituted
side
on one
own superior unity
of the subject and on the other the unity of the historical process)'. Linking them
together, thus always seems to occur at the expense of one side or the other,
(whether this be through the subordination of the nature of time to historical
1 For Marx this unity culminates in the universality of proletarian class consciousness.
209
variation or vice versa).
Nonetheless, both Kantian thought and the production of capitalist time,
involve - perhaps despite themselves
relation of mutual transcendence.
dissolution
the
distinction,
this
of
or
-
For both are aspects of a singular event, or
revolution, which occurs not in time but to time. Thus, though they appear as
revolutions in history, they are not in themselves historical. For in altering time
itself, both have accessed an abstract realm which conditions experience, and
which impacts the smooth succession of history only from the outside. Thus, the
Kantian and capitalist revolution introduce a mutation or radical discontinuity in
both the thought and the material practices of time.
In the classical western tradition the only thing capable of changing the
very nature of time, was the exterior and transcendent power of the eternal.
Since it is eternity which is ultimately responsible for the production of time,
changes in the nature of time - if they were ever possible - could only be
transcendentally produced. Restricted to initiations and terminations, these
changes were a matter of faith not reason. For they occurred only as the
2
divine
revelation.
apocalyptic or miraculous events which accompany
Both critique and capitalism, however, are intrinsically opposed to
transcendent impositions. Though they push aside any explicit engagement with
the question of eternity, they nevertheless reject this classical conception of the
2 In Christianity the intrusion of the eternal in history is ultimately realized through the incarnation
of Jesus, or the idea of the Word made flesh.
210
exteriority. Operating with consistent circuits of abstract and effective production
they tend to the construction of immanent systems which obsolesce structures of
faith, essentialized authority, and arbitrary and supplementary dimensions.3
Dedicated in their principles to an immanence of criteria, both imply
however
-
implicitly - the necessity for an immanent production of time to replace the faith
in transcendent creation.
However, due to the stratified distinction4 in both, between, on the one
side, an idealist structure of time (whether that be the logic of historical
development or the universality of a priori synthesis) and on the other, the
variations which occur in time, neither Kant nor the social history of capitalist
time can provide the conceptual immanence which their principles require. In
retaining the notion that the interiority of temporal variation is constituted by the
intrinsic unity of a higher and more primary structure, they dismantle the
traditional faith in eternity but nevertheless leave a quasi transcendence in place.
Incapable of conceiving of a variation that is flat with the construction of time,
and that abstract synthesis are consistent with the multiplicity and becomings of
material innovation,
they deny the very possibility of time mutation. Blind to the
implications of their own respective revolutions they thus conceal the intensive
3 Capitalism's tendency to monetarize power differentiates it from other social systems, in which
power is based primarily on coded and territorial structures of organization. According to Deleuze
and Guattari capitalism is defined by these processes of decoding and deterritorialization, and it is
this which is responsible for its great affinity with immanence.
4 As has already been noted, stratification acts as double pincer, operates through double
articulation, and constitutes the world through binary distinction. (See A Thousand Plateaus esp
p. 40)
211
plane on which time is immanently produced.
In order to uncover this plane, the thesis turns to the writings of Deleuze
and Guattari whose work Capitalism and Schizophrenia calls for a materialist
revolution in the name of transcendental thought. Pushing the Kantian system
further in the direction of immanent critique, Deleuze and Guattari manage to
dismantle the distinction between conceptual abstraction and material
innovations. Though they retain the exteriority of transcendental synthesis they
cease to locate these syntheses inside the mind of the knowing subject and see
them instead as the operations of abstract machines. Deleuze and Guattari thus
discover a plane of consistency on which the nature of time is flat with the
variations and mutations that are intrinsic to its own production.
A philosophy based on the immanent production of time requires, as we
have seen, not only a reformulation of the nature of time but also of the relation
between time and eternity. To reach the plane of consistency the implicit faith in
transcendent exteriority must be replaced with the participation of an immanent
between
division
time
the
Guattari
Deleuze
thus
and
substitute
and
outside.
time
the
temporality;
between
two
difference
extensive
the
of
modes
eternity with
Chronos
to
the
While
intensive
Aeon.
time
Chronos
the
corresponds
of
and
of
the
its
division
between
(with
time
and
change),
structure
stratified nature of
temporality of Aeon is constituted by becomings, intensive variations, machinic
between
differentiate
the
do
abstract
not
which
and
singular
events
multiplicities
212
production of time and material innovation (which is generally considered to
occur in time).
Composed on the plane of consistency or immanence, Aeon does not
transcend, interrupt or break into time in the same way that eternity does.
Rather, as we have seen, it constitutes the virtual field upon which Chronos is
continuously being constructed. Functioning in this way, Aeon is not to be
Instead
the
virtuality or
generality.
or
abstract
as
an
eternal
understood
be
the
through
Aeon
singular events out of
accessed
can
only
of
abstraction
which it is composed. The final chapter of this thesis thus explores the concept
dawn
third
the
the
focusing
by
Aeon
of
singular
event,
such
on
one
of
in
time-keepings
time
in
juncture
the
fundamental
and
of
passage
millennium, a
Y2K.
by
be
known
the
has
to
This
sign
come
event
socio-technical apparatus.
Post millennium cynicism is such that it seems absurd to even mention
Y2K, never mind speak of it as an event of fundamental philosophical
importance. For it is now generally agreed that, though it was hyped to
Though
if
Y2K
glitches
non-event.
was - anything -a
apocalyptic proportions,
transportation
in
exchanges,
stock
as
were reported - even such crucial areas
these
of
was
each
companies
card
credit
networks, emergency services, and
to
to
did
basis
individual
add
up
anything
dealt
seem
not
and
with on an
easily
that
like
the
it
was
(certainly
catastrophe
global
was nothing
significant
its
inconsequential
that
diffuse,
Y2K
As
so
so
quiet,
was so
an event,
predicted).
213
very existence has been retrospectively called into question. After all, despite
months and even years of anticipation January 1st2000 seems to have been just
another day.
The real nature of Y2K still remains a puzzle. No one is sure whether the
hundreds of billions of dollars spent were wasted or whether they were crucial in
the prevention of a catastrophe. While some maintain that the risk was wildly
exaggerated, the few 'glitches' that did occur are sufficient to give evidence that
there was indeed a problem. Yet, the fact that countries which appeared to do so
little to fight the bug (i. e. Russia and China) encountered no more disturbances
than countries like United States and Britain which reacted early and poured
huge resources into ensuring 'millennium compliance' makes the conclusion that
the problem was fixed highly improbable. The alternative, however, that Y2K was
a vast conspiracy by the computer industry, is even more preposterous.
The confusion which - even now -surrounds Y2K is a result of the fact that
it
Y2K
that
to
though
seemed
was
an
event
never
actualize.
real
was,
entirely
and always will be, a virtual catastrophe, a pure potentiality, a non-event. The
final chapter of this thesis argues that the virtual nature of Y2K - which allowed it
to be entirely effective (as a potentiality) and yet never empirically manifest, suggests that it cannot be understood through the successive temporality of
Chronos.
Rather, Y2K is a sign - which operates as both a name and a date -
for an event composed on the intensive plane of Aeon. This, as we have seen is
evidenced by its efficient nonsignifying (numerical) semiotic, its resilient virtuality,
214
its disorganization of linear succession, and its dissolution of such stratified
distinctions as content and expression, quantity and quality, constant and
variable, and technics and culture.
It is as an Aeonic event that Y2K makes the connection between the
transcendental
philosophy of time and the socio-economics of capitalist time-
keeping practices. Flat with an exterior plane of machinic abstraction, it dissolves
the distinction between time and the materiality of time-keeping systems. For this
reason, Y2K has been used as an exemplary event in addressing the central
problematic of this thesis.
There is no question that despite the pervasive sense of anticlimax, Y2K
For
it
though
time.
in
history
the
acted only as a
capitalist
of
event
was a crucial
be
it
had
whose
effects
can
consequences
material
concrete
potentiality,
measured in billions of dollars. As a technological 'glitch' in cyberspace time,
Y2K moblized the global economy in an unprecendeted fashion. Operating within
the context of an ever-increasing convergence of time and money, it turned the
date that marked the end of the second millennium into the most expensive
accident the world has ever experienced.
What makes Y2K crucial to the philosophy of time, however, is that it is
The
word abstraction
abstraction.
also a near perfect example of systematic
instantiation.
from
to
concrete
any
particular
extract, remove or withdraw
means
It thus involves a process through which a particular dimension or aspect of any
from
Deleuze:
To
is
quote
autonomous.
made
and
subtracted
given context
215
The way people talk about abstraction is absolutely amazing, they have
absolutely no idea what it is. Philosophy has a kind of technique or
terminology like mathematics. Generally the word abstract is used for
things in which there is no abstraction. The problem of abstraction is how
can I make two things out of what only exists as one in my
representations. It's not difficult to make a thing into two when I have two
representations, but when I say the back of the piece of paper, I am not
abstracting at all since the back is given to me in a representation which
itself exists. When I say a length without thickness, there I am abstracting
because I am separating two things which are necessarily given in each
other in my representation. (TLK, 5)
Y2K functions as a model of abstraction in that it subtracts the first two
digits from the date. Through this subtraction, it serves to extract the decade,
making it autonomous from the interiority of the century. It thus separates out
two things from what - until then - had appeared only as one (rupturing the
apparent unity of historical time). Y2K - like every abstraction - is a schism. By
fracturing the semiotic expression of dated time, it abstracts a scale of time from
the history within which it is previously embedded (the year 00, for instance,
could belong to any century whatsoever). The anticlimactic character of Y2K
only confirms its nature as an abstract event, through which time has escaped
from the concrete interiority of history.
As this thesis has argued the tendency of capitalist chronometrics - from
its inception - has been affined with the transcendental in its trend towards the
(thus
from
the
'liberation'
time
change
of
measurement
of
ambiguous
establishing the autonomy of the clock in relation to the calendar). In this respect
Y2K figures as a culmination, although a paradoxical one, since it machinically
216
extracts an abstract temporality from dates themselves. With Y2K, dates cease
to function solely as the expressions of celestial cyclicity and implicit historical
unity. Instead they are activated as numerical indices for pure - or Aeonic events, marking absolute historical schisms which correspond to thresholds of
innovation in the abstract production of time.
Lecturing on the Critique of Pure Reason, Deleuze maintains that
fundamental to Kant's discovery of the immanent plane of the transcendental is
that "true lived experience is an absolutely abstract thing... once you have
reached lived experience, you reach the most fully living core of the abstract. "
"Nobody, Deleuze continues, "has ever lived anything but the abstract. " (SLK, 5)
This thesis has focussed on transcendental philosophy in order to
investigate the abstract nature of time. What it has discovered, is that this most
obscure and seemingly distant topic is encountered in the technology or sociois
For
time
life.
the
not some
nature
of
economic practices of contemporary
eternal given that has descended from above, but is rather a process that is itself
continuously under production, though not - as Kant believed - in the interiority of
thought, but rather on the exteriority of an unconscious, immanent, and material
plane of machinic transformation.
217
Appendix
Table I
synthetic a
analytic a priori
priori
Transcendental
analytic a posteriori
synthetic
a posteriori
logic
n/a
experience
Table 2
Judgements
Category
Schematism
Universal
Unity
Number
Particular
Plurality
Number
Singular
Totality
Number
Affirmative
Reality
Being in time
Negative
Negation
Not being in
time
Infinite
Limitation
Intensive
degree
Categorical
Of Inherence and
Subsistence
Permanence
in time
Hypothetical
Of Causality and
Dependence
Succession
Disjunctive
Of Community
(reciprocity between
agent and patient)
Coexistence
Problematic
PossibilityImpossibility
Determination at some
1. Quantity
(Time Series)
II. Quality
(Time Content)
III. Relation
(Time Order)
IV. Modality
(Scope of Time)
time or
another
ExistenceNonexistence
Assertoric
Existence in
some
determinate
time
NecessityContingency
Apodeictic
218
Existence at
all time
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