in what time do we live?.pdf

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n What Time Do We Live? [1][#N1]

cques RancireOPEANGRADUATESCHOOL

ume 4, 2013

: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/pc.12322227.0004.001[http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/pc.12322227.0004.001]

[http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/]

ve been asked to speak in the framework of a series entitled The State of Things. Such a title suggests a

iminary remark. Strictly speaking, the state of things is a fiction. A fiction is not an imaginary tale. A fiction is

construction of a set of relations between sense and sense, between things that are said to be perceptible and

sense that can be made of those things. A state of things includes the selection of a number of phenomena

t are said to be characteristic of our present, the use of an interpretive frame within which they take on their

nificance, and the determination of a set of possibilities and impossibilities that derive from that given and its

rpretation. In that sense, a state of things is a form of what I have proposed to call a distribution of the

sible: a set of relations between the perceptible, the thinkable, and the doable that defines a common world,ning thereby the way in which, and the extent to which, this or that class of human beings takes part in that

mmon world.

ry description of a state of things gives priority to time. There is a simple reason for this. A state of things

sents itself as an objective given precluding the possibility of other states of things. And time is the best

dium for exclusion. When Plato describes the first components of his Republic, he says that artisans must be

nd only in their workplace because work does not wait. As a matter of fact, work often keeps people waiting

it. It is time that does not wait, and times impatience transforms everyday experience into the experience of a

rarchy of positions.

ll return to this issue shortly. But there is a still simpler way in which time works as a principle of

ossibility: the very simple separation of the present and past.

rmula such as times have changed seems quite innocuous, but it is easy to convert it into a statement of

ossibility. Times have changed does not simply mean that certain things have disappeared. It means that

y have become impossible, no longer belonging to what the new times make possible. The empirical idea of

e as a succession of moments has been substituted by an idea of time as a set of possibilities. Times have

nged means: this or that is no longer possible. And what a particular state of things readily presents as

ossible is, quite simply, the possibility of changing the state of things. That impossibility thus works as an

rdiction: there are things you can no longer do, ideas in which you can no longer believe, futures that you canonger imagine. You cannot clearly means: you must not.

present provides us with a fine illustration of this point. When we ask what has changed in our world since

turbulent sixties we are offered a ready-made response encapsulated in the word end. What we are

posed to have lived is the end of a certain historical period: not only that of the division of the world into a

italist bloc and a communist bloc, but also that of the end of a vision of the world revolving around class

ggle and, more broadly, of a vision of politics as a practice of conflict and as a horizon of emancipation. This

ot only the end of specific revolutionary hopes or illusions, but of utopias and ideologies in general, or, in its

st comprehensive formulation, of the grand narratives and beliefs regarding the destiny of humankind. This

he end not only of a particular historical period but of history itself understood as the time of a promise to be

illed. The time in which we live can thus be described as the time that comes after the end, a post time.

ink we must take a closer look at that narrative of the end and ask the question: What precisely has come to

end? What exactly are those grand narratives that are said to be over? A grand narrative means an all-
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market. Historical necessity has become all the more necessary to the extent that it has become disconnected

m faith in an immanent principle of self-destruction. Accordingly, the narrative that both justified the system

omination and announced its death has been divested of its second function. It has become the mere

ification of that order and the demonstration that any form of struggle against it is both reactionary and

otent.

same can be said of the second aspect of the grand narrative previously mentioned: namely, its ability to

k as a form of intelligibility in relation to our lived world. The strength of the grand Marxist narrative rested

nly on its ability to provide an explanation of all the phenomena of our lived world that appeared as effects of

global process. More precisely, it rested on its ability to identify the effect of the process with theimulation of that effect. The core of this logic was to be found in the Marxist analysis of the commodity as

h the completion and dissimulation of the process of exploitation. The Marxist tradition of the 20th century

borated extensively on the correlation between the process of commodification of social relations and the

struction of a whole world of images and appearances designed to structure the thoughts, desires, and

aviours of individuals. Adornos critique of the aestheticization of everyday life, Greenbergs denunciation of

ch, Barthes analysis of mythologies, Baudrillards analysis of consumer society and Debords denunciation of

spectacle are some of the landmarks on the long road toward that elaboration. All these analyses have

tributed to the constitution of what can be called a critical common sense, an entire network of descriptions

interpretations of the lived world that have served as a common matrix for sociological analysis, artisticctice, and political denunciation. The uncovering of the colonization of the lived world via the critique of

mmodification, ideological inversion, and the spectacle was supposed to demystify the illusions that subjected

viduals to the rule of domination, and to empower those who struggled against that rule by providing them

h knowledge of its inner mechanisms. It is clear that this body of descriptions and interpretations has not

ished as a result of our postmodern loss of belief. On the contrary, it is more active than ever. Every day we

hear innumerable voices denouncing the way in which everythingeveryday life, art, politics, sex,

mmunication, and so onhas become mere commodity and spectacle. The body of interpretation has not

nged. What has changed is the way it is staged and the sense of the possible it entails. Denunciation has

ply been disconnected from its horizon, that is, from the perspective of a revolutionary change that made itk, at least in the imagination, as a weapon in a struggle. On the contrary, denunciation now demonstrates that

mmodification and the spectacle have accomplished the colonization of individual life in such a way that the

n of the commodity and the market is today nothing more than the reign of mass individualism. In this way,

at was formerly denounced as the vice of a system that subjected individuals is now denounced increasingly as

vice of the individuals themselves. Capitalism is said to be nothing other than democracy, which in turn is

d to be nothing other than the reign of narcissistic individuals greedy for any, and every, form of consumption

enjoyment. This statement lends itself to two forms of narrative: there is the narrative of repetition that

cribes the system as eternally reproducing its conditions without any possible disruption, and there is the

rative that describes the so-called democratic reign of the commodity and spectacle as a disastrous disruptionll social bonds, and indeed as the destruction of the symbolic order that orients human societies. Critical

course on commodification and the spectacle in this way becomes the resentful denunciation of a world in

ch greedy democratic individuals lead us all toward apocalypse. This inverted account thus becomes a spiral

t denounces all forms of struggle against the existing order as accomplices to disaster. This is indeed the very

y in which the anti-capitalist students movements of the 60s and, more specifically, the French movement of

were accused, in retrospect, of having paved the way for the triumph of the market. Through their criticism

uthority and of authoritarian institutions (or so the argument goes) the students attacked the only institutions

t were capable of limiting the power of the market such as religion, family, or schools. By doing this, they

ned up all doors to the empire of the marketplace. They allowed our societies to become free aggregations of

ound molecules whirling in the void, deprived of any affiliation, and entirely available for the empire of

rket forces. This is also how in 2005 the spokespersons of the left intelligentsia in France stigmatized the

ent riots that burst out in poor Parisian suburbs populated mainly by families hailing from the Maghreb and

-Saharan Africa. They explained that the desire of the young rebels was merely to eliminate all that stood

ore themselves and their objects of desire: the TV images of consumer societies ideal goods. In this way the


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abitants of the poorest suburbs were said to embody the narcissism and hedonism of consumer society. And

so-called democratic hedonism was staged as the possible forerunner of a new totalitarianism.

he two main aspects of the modernist grand narrative are still with us. The end of this narrative is in fact a

w montage of its elements and an inversion of its meaning. It proposes two alternative versions of the same

rall account: either the progressive and optimistic discourse, which combines Marxist historical necessity with

h in economic liberalism through the invisible hand that makes evil serve good in the end; or the pessimistic

reactionary version that shows us democratic humankind destroying itself as a result of its passion for

sumption. The two versions may look contradictory. How is it possible, for example, to stigmatize the

kward elements that resist the need to install the global market yet simultaneously accuse them of criminalmplicity in the disastrous triumph of the same global market? Both storylines lead however to the same result:

y conclude with the impossibility of resisting the law of time. Both make time a principle of impossibility.

y do so because, in spite of the opposite directions they take, they put to work the same storyline about time.

y construct a time that is unique and linear and that always goes in the same direction. This time is said to

ermine what is possible and what is not. But it is not the whole story. This homogeneous time is also a

nciple of inner differentiation, for it is a time that makes those who live in it unable to master it; unable to

erstand what it makes possible or impossible. Both accounts construct a global one-way time as well as an

er differentiation of that time that renders the individuals who live in it unable to understand how it proceeds

where it leads, for they are always moving too quickly or too slowly to find themselves contemporaneous withntelligibility.

his sense, both accounts highlight a combination of alternative models of historical time that are internal to

dernist narrative. On one hand, modernist thought thrived on the model of a timeforged in the age of

ightenmentthat rendered human history a one-way process moving from barbarism to civilization just as

child moves from ignorance to knowledge. It also thrived on the belief in a global harmony that makes evil

ve good, in such a way that egoism and misery end up contributing to common prosperity. On the other hand,

so retained something of the antiquated vision of a historical time understood as a succession of cycles

inning with a golden age and devolving into an increasingly corrupt period of decadence capable of initiating

ew revolutionary cycle. The counter-revolutionary thought of the end of the 18 century created a specific

rtwining of a plot of historical necessity with a plot of decadence. That account made the French Revolution,

example, into the accomplishment of a process of dissolution of all social bonds deemed inherent to

dernity. That process tore to pieces the old fabric of material and spiritual bodies that had previously

hered, protected, and educated individuals (namely, religion, monarchy, aristocracy, and corporations), and

nsformed society into an anarchic whirlpool of unaffiliated individuals available for both industrial

loitation and political terror.

point is that this account was more or less accepted as an adequate description of modern society, even by

se who were at odds with the ideology of counter-revolution. From this point on, the thought of historical time

ame a combination of the narrative of progress and of the narrative of decadence. Marxist narratives

mbined the progressive plot about the development of common wealthvia private appropriationwith the

nter-revolutionary narrative about a common social fabric torn to shreds by individualism. Even now, the

me Marxist principles can cultivate the apocalyptic account of the destruction of Humankind alongside

rmations of a new revolutionary thought. The development of immaterial production and cognitive work has

n interpreted either as the development within capitalist production of a communist form of property

tined to explode the capitalist relations of production, or as the last step in the dispossession of human labor

which even the cognitive power of the human psyche has become captured in the process of industrial

duction, now objectified as a technical power beyond the human mind itself. Conversely, the apocalyptic

ount of the destruction of all social bonds hand in hand with the self-destruction of humanity has been

hrased as the last stage of nihilism; a prelude to the coming insurrection that will make the future emerge

m within the impossibility of futurity itself. But what is most important is not this endless dialectic of progress

decadence. It is the temporal account that makes it possible: the account that makes time both a

mogeneous principle of possibility and impossibility, and a principle of division of times and capabilities. The

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osition between the champions of historical necessity and the prophets of the impending disaster rests, in the

l analysis, on the very conjunction between the plot of homogeneous, one-way time, and the inner splitting

t renders it impossible for individuals to be contemporaneous with the time of this process and with the

wledge of what it makes possible. One Step Forward, Two Steps Backis not only the title of a well-known

k by Lenin. It is the core of the modernist account of time and of the science it presupposes: that is, of

wledge regarding the divergence of the time of the global process and that of the lived world of individuals.

one hand it is the strategic knowledge of the ways of making these divergent temporalities coincide while, on

other, it is the exploitation of the power that lies in the assertion of non-coincidence. This double-edged

wledge was once the privileged perspective of the revolutionary avant-garde. But now it has been

ropriated by the forces of domination, and this appropriation is at the core of the construction of the time in

ch we live.

me, this is the blind spot in most of the discourses about our time, including those that propose to provide

adical critique, for they all presuppose an immediate common identity between global time and the time of

viduals. They construct this in the simplest terms as a common identity between the time of capitalist

duction and that of individual consumption. That identity is presented as the reign of an absolute present in

ch everythingproduction, consumption, information, production of images, etc.proceeds at the same

elerated pace. I would like to counter these analyses of the reign of the present from a completely different

spective: that of a time that is not framed by the sole speed of the development of capital. This perspective ismed in relation to the institutions that make temporal coincidence and non-coincidence their main affair. Our

ld does not function according to a homogeneous process of presentification and acceleration. It functions

ording to the regulation of the convergence and divergence of times.

can distinguish at least three main procedures within this regulation: the first establishes the divisions of

e; the second organizes the imaginary convergence of times; the third constructs the divergence between the

e of the individual and the time of the global process. The first is the establishment of the calendars that give

thm to the time of public life, which also means that they constitute the time of the common as such. For

ance let us consider the function of elections. It is possible to dispute endlessly whether elections embody the

power of democratic choice or whether they are the mere artifice of formal democracy masking the realityomination. But the main point about elections is the way in which they construct the visibility of a time for

political that, in the end, is reduced to two periods: pre-electoral and post-electoral time. In this way, the time

he political coincides entirely with the time of the state. Let us remember the promise made by Hosni

barak at the beginning of the Egyptian uprising in 2011; he promised to change the results of the previous

tions in order to afford greater representation to the opposition. For Mubarak, acknowledging electoral fraud

still a way of asserting the power of the state as the master of time, which included of course the power to

nge the past.

second procedure addresses the construction of the long-term convergence of times. We are often told that

have done away with the times and politics of state interventionism. But what about the way in which our

es create supranational institutions harmonizing the time of the economy, the time of the institutions, and the

d time of individuals? Let us consider for instance the so-called Bologna Plan for the harmonization of higher

cation systems in Europe. It is not simply a question of establishing common legibility and equivalence of

omas. Equivalence becomes the point around which a whole fictional correspondence between the time of

cation and the time of the global economic process is constructed. In this process equivalency between the

vidual acquisition of skills and employment opportunities provided by equivalency are in turn equivalent to

cific forms of economic growth. This is a fiction. But again a fiction is a reality: it structures the relationship

ween the time of individuals and the time of the system.

third procedure is the construction of the divergence of times, which refers to the construction of the barrier

arating those who know from those who do not. I think it is from this angle that one must consider the role of

mass media. This point of view is quite different from the mainstream denunciation of the media. The latter

s us that they are the reign of the absolute present: they overload us with images, making us live every event as

e were present, thereby nurturing an emotional relationship to the event that makes us unable to understand


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ut it is not true. On the contrary, the media cannot show us an event without splitting it, introducing a

ance between the fact and its meaning. In my country, specifically, a new doctrine has been formulated in

tion to journalism which states that its role is not to provide information because people already access

nts through other sources. Rather, it is to decipher information. Concretely, this means that the very things

t are supposed to be considered empirical facts immediately become enigmas; effects or causes in a causal plot

ymptoms of the evolution of our world. For this reason any event can immediately be turned into an object of

mmentary and discussion by experts. An interesting case emerged in France some years ago in the case of a

man travelling with her baby on a suburban train who received no help from her fellow commuters when she

victim to a savage, anti-Semitic attack perpetrated by a group of black and Maghrebi adolescents. The

tality of the attack, together with the indifference of her fellow commuters, gave rise to a myriad of comments

arding the sad evolution of our civilization until, that is, it was discovered that the woman had fabricated the

ole story. This may be an extreme case, but it stages the construction of the divergence of times and capacities

t the system of information utilizes in the regulation of the relations between time and the structural

ribution of the sensible today. The forms of critical thinking that obtain today smoothly follow the dominant

ount since the logic of domination has integrated the logic of its own critique by asserting both the

mogeneity of a global process of historical evolution and the inner splitting that allows those who live in this

e to understand the way in which they are swept along by that same process.

s is why, in my view, a way out of that logic should be a way out of its time, a way out of the plot of themogeneity of time and of the incapacity of those who live in it. It has to call into question the thesis of the

mogeneity of time. There is no global process subjecting all the rhythms of individual and collective time to its

. There are several times in one time. There is a dominant form of temporality, for sure, a normal time that

he time of domination. Domination gives it its divisions and its rhythms, its agendas and its schedules in the

rt and long run: time of work, leisure, and unemployment; electoral campaigns, degree courses, etc. It tends

omogenize all forms of temporality under its control, defining thereby what the present of our world consists

which futures are possible, and which definitely belong to the pastthereby indicating the impossible. This is

at consensusmeans: the monopoly of the forms of describing the perceptible, the thinkable, and the doable.

there are other forms of temporality, dissentious forms of temporality that create distensions and breaks int temporality. We can distinguish two main forms. I will call them intervals and interruptions.Intervalsare

ated when individuals and collectives renegotiate the ways in which they adjust their own time to the divisions

rhythms of domination; they adapt it to the temporality of workor to the absence of work, to the forms of

eleration and deceleration dictated by the system. At the beginning of my talk, I evoked the role that Plato

es to time in the determination of the place of the artisans in the community. Their lack of time was said to

heir specific aptitudewhich meant in fact their inability to be elsewhere and to do anything other than

k. But the point is that although work does not wait one does very often wait for work, and individuals and

ectives are determined by this fact as they dissociate their time from the time that does not wait, distancing

mselves from the aptitudesand inabilitiesthat adjust them to that time. In my research on workersancipation, I set out to illuminate the ways in which 19 century artisans constructed their forms of

jectivization in relation to a broken temporality determined by the accelerations and stoppages of work.

ead of being subjected to the will of their masters via the acceleration and stoppages of work, they could take

antage of them and incorporate into their workers time that which had always been the opposite of work,

mely, leisure. A very old distinction already formulated by Aristotle opposes rest, which is an interruption in

time of work, to leisure, which is the use of time by those who are not subjected to the constraints of work.

ancipation therefore meant using the breaks in the time of work to blur the distinction between the time of

and the time of leisure. In that sense, the re-distribution of times went hand in hand with a re-distribution of

aptitudes and inabilities tied up in the possession or dispossession of time. The reappropriation of intervals

tantamount to the experience of living in several times at once, and sharing in several worlds of experience.

t re-partition created a breach in the logic of domination by separating aptitudes from their destination.

m this point on, succumbing to exploitation could also be a means of refusing it ones mind; exercising ones

acities for the tasks commanded could equally become a means of training those capacities for other uses.

s is what emancipation means: the practice of dissensus, that is, the construction of another time in the time

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omination, the time of equality within the time of inequality. That experience of living in several times at once

been more or less erased by the Marxist vision of the education of the working class through the discipline of

factory. But contemporary forms of work once again foreground the issue of the intervals of work and their

nsformation into intervals of subjectivization: constant shifts from employment to unemployment, the

elopment of part-time work and all forms of intermittence; the multiplication of people taking part both in

time of salaried work and in the time of education, or in the time of cultural creation; the multiplication of

ple doing a job other than the one for which they have been trained, of people working in one world and living

nother (which is also what immigration means). Rather than trying to define the unique figure of the

ker, such as the cognitarian worker, we should investigate the multiplicity of the lines of subjectivization

the forms of rupture produced by the reappropriation of all those intervals that put the seemingly outdated

porality of emancipation back on the agenda. Thirty years ago I published a book calledNights of Labor(also

edProletarian Nights) examining forms of workers emancipation and their relation to the question of time

9 century France. A week ago an Indian art collective, The Raqs Media Collective, premiered a video

jection in Paris calledStrikes at Timewhich was based on the experience and words of contemporary part-

e workers and writers who had read the Indian translation of that book.

re are intervals and there are interruptions: moments when one of the social machines that structure the time

omination break down and stop. It may happen with trains and buses; it may happen with the school

aratus, or perhaps with some other form of machine. There are also moments when crowds take to the streetsrder to oppose their agenda to that of the state and its temporality of exploitation. It is from this point of

w, I think, that we must consider the Arab insurrections of 2011 and the European movements such as the

dignados in Spain, or the protest of the Geraao Rasca (The Precarious Generation) in Portugal. What

se movements have in common is that they weave together a combination of times that disrupt the dominant

onsensualcombination of convergence and divergence. They oppose the time of the immediate presence of

people to the time of the people organized by the state. In Tunisia and Egypt the movement affirmed that

sence is incompatible with the time of power. In Spain, the takeover of La Puerta del Sol made evident the

osition between the time of the electoral process and the time of real democracy. This conflation of times

indicates a short circuit in the time of the dominant mainstream media. The role of social media in thesevementsFacebook, Twitter, and othershas been emphasized. If social media could send so many people

onto the streets at any one given time, providing them with a new courage and a new sense of dignity, it was

east in part because they short-circuited the time of the mainstream media which constantly makes people

front their own incapacity as a result of the continued reproduction of the distance between event and

aning. Thinking does not take so much time, nor does the courage of taking to the streets, and this is the

on that those events have opposed to the dominant logic of explanation that separates the present from itself.

s means that what the new media and the social media provided is not only a form of acceleration. It is

a redistribution of capacities, new forms of expertise that can be appropriated by anybody in order to help

stitute a people of the anonymous, a people of indeterminate individuals at odds with the people governed bydominant system. We have been told of the heterogeneity of the crowds gathered at Tahrir Square and La

rta del Sol, meaning that it is impossible to break them down into specific identity groups. We have also seen

way in which global claims about democracy have been linked to claims about unemployment (particularly

eworthy is the role played in the Portuguese and Spanish movements by college graduates to whom the global

opean politics of education had promised a bright future as managers and scholars, while the reality of the

em has left them unemployed or with only part-time or provisory jobs). This is the other significant character

hese demonstrations: they denounce the lie that is the ideal convergence of the time of individual life and the

bal economic process that is implied in national and supranational education policies. As they denounce the

of temporal convergence, those unemployed graduates also illustrate the way in which the contemporary

thms of employment and unemployment open up gaps in which the capacities that were supposedly destined

the job market can be diverted and possibly used for constructing alternative times from within the holes in

minant time; that is, another possible world within the existing world. At this point, it is possible to think of a

vergence between the time of intervals and the time of interruptions. This means for me that it is possible to

d a way out ofthose forms of criticism that denounce interruptions as ephemeral outbursts after which

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rything returns to the normal order of things, and the exploration of intervals as an unwitting contribution to

liberal logic. Critical as it strives to be, that monotonous denunciation of any creation of intervals as an

ustment to the logic of the market, and of any interruption as a contribution to the reign of the spectacle, is

rely consonant with the dominant distribution of times and capacities. It is a convenient way of forgetting the

e of the paradox: that emancipation is in fact a way of putting several times into the same time; it is a way of

ng as equals in the world of inequality. The forms of subjectivization by which individuals and groups distance

mselves from the constraint of normal time are at once ruptures in the sensory fabric of domination and

ys of living within its framework. That is why it is so easy to capture them in the ready-made discourse that

uces the contradictions of emancipation to tricks of domination. However, it may be more interesting to

mine the dynamism of that contradiction and the extent to which it can construct forms of temporality

ependent of the agendas of domination.

ould like to examine some consequences of these reflections in relation to what is called the politics of art.

s politics can also be viewed as a way of addressing the convergence and divergence of times. From this

tage point we can distinguish three main figures. The first gives radical form to the demand for convergence.

the figure of historical Modernism, that is, the figure of an identification between art forms and life forms.

privileged medium for that identification is that of a time that turns all differences into manifestations of one

the same global movement. For many years the synchronism of movements was the privileged form of the

ntification between art and life. One art form in particular embodied that synchronism: namely, cinema, theof the direct correlation between human movements and the movements of the machine. Moreover, one

mmaker emblematized that identification more than any other: Dziga Vertov. He was the filmmaker who most

licitly thought of cinema as the movement linking all movements, equalizing them all by absorbing them into

ngle all-encompassing rhythm. This is howMan with the Movie Cameracaptured the movements of a dancer,

gestures of a woman working on an assembly line, traffic in the streets, the gestures of a manicurist in a

uty parlour, the flight of airplanes, or the tricks of a magician, all in the same rhythm. The synchrony of all

vements thus constitutes a homogeneous time without intervals or interruptions, and without any distinction

ween life, work, and leisure. The result is the production of communism as the synchronicity of all

vements. Communism is thus the emancipation of movement as suchan emancipation that presupposes thatmovements lose their specificity and are torn away from those who perform them, who are reduced to their

re temporal measure.

ithdraws from the politics of absolute contemporaneity fabricated for the success of the opposing politics,

ch accentuates the divergence of times and the incapacities it produces: namely, the critical or dialectical

del that found its privileged place on the theatrical stage, even though it proved itself capable of overcoming

limits of that stage. The latter conceived of the stage of artistic presentation in general as the site for the

struction of a specific time in which movement could be modelled and rendered intelligible. For instance, the

mented time of the Brechtian plot was intended to allow spectators to understand Historywith a capital H

he meaning of the appearances and movement that had expelled them. But what was staged was much moredivision of the visible that we see captured in two well-known formulas: the Brechtian formula found at the

ofArturo Ui: Learn to see instead of gaping ; and Roland Barthess sentence about Brechts Mother

rage; Because we see Mother Courage blind, we see what she does not see. But the fact of seeing that

mebody is blind has never provided the vision of what he or she does not see. On the contrary, one must

ady know what he/she does not see; one must know where the movement leads in order to see that he/she is

d. In addition, Mother Courage is not blind. On the contrary, she adapts herself cynically to what she sees as

law of history, namely, the law of profit. And the critical art that was intended to teach us through her

orance may end up joining her in her cynicism. This is often what art does today as it endlessly accompanies

exercise of domination while purporting to reveal its secrets to people who are far from ignorant of whatse secrets are.

exhaustion of these formulas of critical art may give a new visibility to a third politics of art; a politics that

rtwines different times within miniscule machines or dispositifsthat construct alternative possibilities for

ressing the present, at a remove from both the absolute convergence of times and the critical construction of


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r divergence. I propose to call these dispositifs heterochronies, a term that Michel Foucault coined in

allel with the term heterotopiasthat he proposed in order to designate spaces that do not fit within the

mal distribution of territories. Heterotopias, he said, are combinations of spaces that are normally

ompatible. In the same way, heterochronies are combinations of times that are normally incompatible. Among

heterotopias that are linked to heterochronies Foucault listed the theater box and the cinematographic

een, together with the colony and the graveyard. Those four heterotopic spaces are literally or figuratively

sent in a cinematographic sequence that I would like us to consider, for I think it gives us a good sense of what

eterochrony is. It is a sequence ofJuventude en Marcha(Colossal Youth), a film by the Portuguese filmmaker

ro Costa. This is the third film of the trilogy that he dedicated to the lives of a small number of marginalized

th and immigrant workers from Cape Verde living in the suburbs of Lisbon. While the film follows their

ryday existence, first in the shanty-town that is being demolished and then in the new white cubes to which

y are re-housed, it may at first glance appear to be a documentary chroniclea genre that seems most suitable

the poor, for those who live in the everyday and only encounter History through misery, pain, or distress.

it soon appears that this chronicle actually provides us with a fabric of heterochronies. I would like us to

sider one of the most troubling. It is an episode at the end of the film that focuses on two people. The first is

tura, the main character of the film, a former mason who through the course of the film has assumed the

of a king in exile rather than that of a poor immigrant. In contrast his pal, Lento, offers us the face of the

rse illiterate immigrant worker who is incapable of learning to write the love letter he wants to send, in spite

Ventura desperately trying to teach him. In the final sequence Lento opens the door of his charred apartment

seems to become transfigured. He stands theatrically, hand in hand with Ventura, before an imaginary

ience. Their dialogue takes on the tone and rhythm of tragic psalmody. He then recites the love letter he had

herto been unable to pen. Meanwhile, he tells us about the fire and how he jumped through the window with

wife and children. The problem is that the Lento we have known up to this point had neither wife nor

dren. In addition, we had already seen him die after having fallen from an electric pole. The character we see

w is a living dead, an inhabitant of the Inferno returning to our world. His body is now able to condense all the

nts that happen, or may happen, in relation to all those who share his condition of living deadwhich is also

case of the family that was actually burned in that apartment during the shooting of the film.

episode presents us in the final analysis with the interweaving and conjunction of two incompatible times:

time of documentary and the time of tragedy; the time of the immigrant worker come from afar, who, at the

of a life of work and unemployment, has received an ID card and an apartment with water, gas and

tricity; and the time of the living dead haunting our suburbs and living within the reign of shadows. That

junction is condensed by the love letter the characters recite, a letter that Pedro Costa composed by

rtwining fragments of letters written by immigrant workers with fragments of the final letter penned by the

nch poet Robert Desnos as he was on his way to his death at Terezn concentration camp. This temporal

ntage composes a scene from The Last Judgment, but this last judgement is not a narrative of disaster.

ead, it is a form of suspension of the usual plots that absorb every situation into the global process, on they dispossessing those who live in our time of the ability to understand it. A heterochrony is a redistribution

mes that invents new capacities for framing the present.

ve proposed an illustration of what I call a heterochrony. This does not mean that I have proposed a model of

tics for art today. It would be difficult to propose such a model today even for people who are generally more

ustomed to saying what has to be done than I am. But I think that it is possible to investigate the potentialities

rt forms that work at the crossroads of temporalities and worlds of experience. I think it is possible to explore

r capacity to echo what happens in the intervals and interruptions that tend to distend or disrupt the time of

mination. Today, just as yesterday, the tension of living in several times at once remains unsolved. This means

t it remains at work.

otesThis inaugural lecture by Jacques Rancire was given on June 1st, 2011 at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze,

Lettere ed Arti in Venice, officially opening the conference 'The State of Things', commissioned by the Office


10/10

for Contemporary Art Norway. This event was organised by its Director, Marta Kuzma and OCA's Associate

Curator, Pablo Lafuente in coordination with Peter Osborne, Director of the Centre for Research in Modern

European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. [#N1-ptr1]

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