Article

Time & Society

2014, Vol. 23(1) 28–48
! The Author(s) 2013
The politics Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
of temporality: DOI: 10.1177/0961463X11425224
tas.sagepub.com
Autonomy, temporal
spaces and resoluteness
Craig A. Clancy
The Open University, Nottingham, UK

Abstract
While many theorists and projects raise the notion of creating more ‘free time’,
the implication that this will somehow be ‘beneficial’ is inadequate without a
deeper understanding of how time is related to the individual and psychological
well-being. This article offers some considerations for the raison d’etre of what
can be termed a politics of time, taking as its trajectory the phenomenological
understanding of time in Heidegger, and the view that restricted experiences of
time in contemporary capitalist society fragment the phenomenological unity of
individual temporalities. A politics of time is posed here as the necessary inter-
vention to alleviate the subsequent inability to experience an authentic temporal
orientation in such conditions. The article offers that any such temporal project
must place such an understanding of temporality as its theoretical basis, and
apodictically, the creation of ‘temporal autonomous spaces’ (TAS) as its political
purpose.

Keywords
temporal autonomous spaces, Heidegger, Gorz, politics of time, temporality

A multidimensional view of time grants us an area of freedom, which a pre-

determined chain of ‘nows’ withholds from us. (Cohn 2002: 69)

Corresponding author:
Craig A. Clancy, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Clarendon Park, Clumber Avenue,
Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, NG5 1AH, UK.
Email: c.a.clancy@open.ac.uk
Clancy 29

Introduction
It is ten years since the inception of the 35-hour working week in France,
and the future of the policy, which Nicolas Sarkozy has called ‘an historic
error’, is now deeply uncertain. Yet this particular struggle is just one, albeit
significant, part in the long debate around time and time poverty that argu-
ably seems to have reached a political and cultural impasse, by which the
5-day working week paradigm seems likely to remain as reified normality.
Yet work, understood here as paid labour time, remains the key compo-
nent to both the perpetuation of capitalist economic processes and the lived
experience of the individual. As Zerubavel states, ‘ . . . the evolution of the
schedule of the West has always been embedded within a pronouncedly
economic philosophy of time’ (1981: 54).
Time use remains the key component of work, both in the need to quan-
tify tasks and in the qualitative aspects of duration within work: ‘the
number of working hours and their distribution in the lifecycle and the
annual, monthly, and weekly cycles of people’s lives are a central feature
of how they feel, enjoy, and suffer’ (Castells, 1996: 439). Yet, as Lodziak
highlights, the absolute dependency of individuals for necessary resources
resides upon employment, which becomes ‘the most basic and fundamental
way in which the capitalist system manipulates our autonomy. This can be
demonstrated most clearly by considering how dependency on employment
controls the individual’s time’ (1995: 57).
Work, then, is the key temporal component in people’s lives, and thus
this temporal structure becomes a key point of analysis of the individual
(and their culture). It is in this sense that many theorists have posed the
importance, with varying emphases, of freeing time.

The politics of time

As an issue, the reduction of working hours to increase ‘time for the self’
can, of course, be identified as a fundamental political issue within capital-
ism at least as far back as Marx,1 who famously wrote that beyond the
realm of necessity ‘begins . . . the true realm of freedom . . . (and) the short-
ening of the working day is its basic prerequisite’ (1968: 820). This idea –
that of having more time by working less and therefore enhancing personal
freedom and general well-being,2 or simply concerns over, for instance, the
impact of ‘the culture of speed’ (Tomlinson, 2007) or what Szollos (2009)
terms ‘chronic time shortage’ – has been raised by numerous theorists and
within actual policies (see Adam, 1995; Basso, 2003; Gorz, 1989; Hayden,
1999; LaJeunesse, 2009; Lodziak, 1995; Nowotny, 1994; Nguyen, 1992; Sen,
1999; Schor, 1991; Sève, 1978).
30 Time & Society 23(1)

Conceptually, political interventions with time are often discussed under

the rubric of a ‘politics of time’.3 However, this can be a rather difficult
notion to pin down. Politically, it can of course be most recently linked to
the French 35-hour working week4 and other reduced working-hours direc-
tives.5 The actual term seems to have come into common use with one of its
most well-known exponents, André Gorz, who uses it in his early social/
political works Paths to Paradise (1985), Farewell to the Working Class
(1982) and subsequent writings. Following Gorz’s trajectory, the concept
can be seen as a socio-political intervention, not only into working hours
practices but also into social and individual time(s) themselves, where freed
time (rather than free time) must become the basis for the expansion of
autonomy itself. Yet such a philosophically considered view is, at the polit-
ical level at least, uncommon; and there is a tendency rather to see a politics
of time as being just the shortening of the working week with a subsequent
increase in the time for ‘leisure’ and self-reproductive tasks. There is little
articulation about what this could mean beyond the tacit acceptance that
this is ‘positive’. As Hayden states, even the Aubry Plan was quite restricted
in the scope of its eventual perception, while the plan was ‘ . . . certainly not
limited to a reduction of the workweek . . . that option attracts the bulk of
the attention’ (1999: 105).6
The reasons for such surface understandings, politically, are twofold.
Firstly, there is little desire to articulate the deeper meaning of how time
relates to the individual, and secondly, such proposals are largely politically
motivated and primarily designed as job creation schemes (which therefore
have inadequately theorized co-proposals for the resulting social/individual
benefits of ‘freed’ time). This can be seen with the Aubry laws7 and, for
instance, the British Socialist Labour Party, who advocate a 4-day working
week, or within Goodin et al.’s (2005) problematic conceptualizing of ‘tem-
poral autonomy’.8 Within such confines, ‘freed time’ becomes simply what
Gorz terms as ‘empty time’ and remains essentially as Adorno’s (1998) ‘free
time’ – purely subservient to the sphere of heteronomy surrounding it.
Further to this, although the notion of reduced hours has always been
popular, especially with trade unionists, it has commonly been used as a
diversionary tactic.9 That is, demands for cuts in hours have often been
used merely to create pressure for higher wages. Another problem has been
the marginalization of such plans through the subtleties of working hours
reorganization (or annualization) rather than reduction (Basso, 2003). This
is something that workers have highlighted within the ‘Aubry law’ (Foster,
2005). Interestingly, reorganization of hours is often connected to those
emancipatory projects that pose an initially ‘radical’ politics – the sort
espoused within those thinking systems that reject capitalist production
methods in favour of a culture/productivity based upon, for instance,
Clancy 31

ecological (rather than environmental) policies. Here, productivist rational-

ity, division of labour and so on, within capitalist production, is rejected as
both alienating and ecologically unsound. This of course is also reflected
within ‘classical’ socialist accounts of ‘de-alienating’ labour by workers
taking control of the means of production. The issue here, however, is
that this ignores that temporally (and the corresponding psychological
issues relating to this), labour is still labour. Eight hours of work is essen-
tially eight hours of work no matter where one is, or even what it is – that is,
the experience of different forms of working is, arguably, both sociologically
and, most importantly, psychologically equivalent, at least throughout the
industrialized world.10
It was precisely this insight that led Gorz to look at the possibility of
finding freedom not in work but from work, in the form of significant
reductions in working hours and the subsequent and essential ‘resourcing’
of this freed time. Indeed, this is seen as vital to the success of an overall
politics of time, and is a point much emphasized in Gorz’s work where his
proposal for reduced working hours can only exist alongside other radical
social and political prerequisites. Gorz and others (Bowring, 2000; Lodziak,
1995; Bauman, 1998; Hayden, 1999) highlight, for example, the importance
of, amongst other factors, a universal guaranteed income, trade union
involvement, reduced trade, and various factors relating to the encourage-
ment of new socialities, new modes of co-operation, exchange and eco-
active strategy. Most importantly, as mentioned, Gorz emphasizes the
importance of freed time being the site for the exercise of autonomous activ-
ities. Indeed, as I will return to, the exercising of an expanded autonomy
becomes the key aim of a politics of time.

The temporal basis

Yet in raising a possible intervention into time, there are, of course, areas of
divergence into whether a thinker only really offers a ‘political/economic’
analysis or ‘blueprint’, as opposed to, or including, more abstract or phil-
osophical theorizing. The E_ changes et Projects11 manifesto (which influ-
enced the Aubry Plan) leans more to the former, as does Gorz, although
the philosophical origins of his work are easy to trace.12 Others, such as
Osborne, allow for discussion into more specific philosophical areas, how-
ever, such as,

. . . ethics (Levinas), tradition (Gadamer), chronology (historicism) or moder-

nity (Heidegger and Benjamin), respectively. Furthermore, insofar as these
forms are themselves the products of historically specific practices, they are
possible objects of transformative practice. We are thus able to begin to give a
32 Time & Society 23(1)

more concrete meaning to the idea of a politics of time. A politics of time is

a politics which takes the temporal structures of social practices as the
specific objects of its transformative (or preservative) intent. Benjamin’s
and Heidegger’s philosophies are themselves part of their authors’ (radically
conflicting) politics of time. (1995: xii, my emphasis)

What Osborne is raising is the necessity of conceiving how relatively

abstract or philosophical notions are interconnected to political interven-
tions – the point being that making such a connection is essential. This is
especially with regard to possible ‘transformative practice’, most vitally in
increasing well-being. Yet, this conclusion is rarely made. While many
policies and thinkers have considered freed time (following Marx) as the
‘time for the full development of the individual’, what this really means
and what its basis is has not always been considered in enough depth in
socio/political debates. Important questions such as ‘why do we need time’
and ‘how do we use our time’ have been mostly understood within the
context for the ‘need’ for rest, recuperation and time for family matters.
Empirical studies have similarly focused on ‘mundane’ issues such as the
length of the working week, amount of ‘leisure time’ and time for the
‘self’. Adam (1990, 1995) has shown how time is often only grasped in this
sense even within the social sciences, while specialized studies, such as into
the various conceptions of cultural and gendered time(s), for instance,
only obscure a primary issue.
The point is that there is a fundamental question to be raised prior to
any of these issues: ‘how are we temporal?’. Until this is fully understood,
the multitude of questions about time, life, work and the meaning it has
for us remain unanswered. Traditional conceptions of a politics of time
thus ignore the fundamental phenomenological understanding of time at
their basis, whilst philosophical investigations into time, and even those
discussing transformative practice, rarely focus on specific political solu-
tions. Therefore, while the primary temporal issue of a politics of time is
to create freed time and maybe even to resource this freed time, the impli-
cation that this will be beneficial is simply inadequate without the under-
standing of how the individual intrinsically is temporal, and how this
relates, within the context of contemporary temporal conditions, to psy-
chological well-being.

Heidegger and temporality

There is no space here to provide even a summation of Heidegger’s position;
suffice to remind ourselves that for Heidegger temporality is the originary
Clancy 33

fact (Urfaktum) and is the primary feature of significance of the Being of

Dasein:

Dasein is in such a way as to be something which understands something like

Being . . . whenever Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something like
Being, it does so with time as its standpoint. Time must be brought to light –
and genuinely conceived – as the horizon for all understanding of Being and
for any way of interpreting it. (1980: 39)

What is to note here is that Heidegger’s discussion of temporality

(mainly, but not exclusively, in Being and Time (1980)) has proven extraor-
dinarily fruitful for subsequent investigations of a more practical nature
(Binswanger, 1963; Boss, 1979; Cohn, 2002; Laing, 199013). The desire to
advance beyond philosophical insights – at least to the level of individual
therapeutic practice – was also something that Heidegger (2001) was very
keen to be involved with at the Zollikon seminars with Boss. Heidegger, in
Boss’s words, ‘saw a possibility that his philosophical insights might not
remain stuck in the attics of philosophers, but might benefit a much greater
number of people, particularly those in need of help . . . ’ (cited in Cohn,
2002: 13). Throughout their work at Zollikon, the main focus was with the
individual’s relationship to ‘time’. Boss recognized, as did Heidegger, that
the analysis of temporality in Being and Time could provide an essential
basis in understanding patients and their ‘world’.
Yet initially, Heidegger may seem inappropriately abstract for socio-
political application. Indeed, as Philipse (1998) argues, Being and Time is
usually characterized as an apolitical book, due primarily to the distinction
Heidegger draws between the ontological and the ontical. In other words,
the existential structure of Dasein’s Being as a hermeneutic ontology of
humans is proposed as being both ahistorical and ageographical and thus
as an a priori existential feature. Therefore, the ontological features of
Dasein would seem unrelated to any political (ontical) system. However,
as Philipse argues, the ‘received’ view of Heidegger’s work as apolitical is
flawed. He states, ‘the ultimate objective of Heidegger’s ontological enter-
prise in Sein und Zeit is practical, or rather existenziell: to become more
authentic in one’s actual life’ (Philipse, 1998: 258). Heidegger defines this
himself as gaining the ‘freedom of choosing (oneself) and taking hold of
(oneself)’ (1980: 229) – of confronting Angst and ‘our’ finiteness.
Philipse goes on to propose that the political nature of one of the primary
themes – (temporal) authenticity – of Being and Time is implicit in its anal-
ysis; after all, Heidegger’s initial notion of authenticity is articulated as
‘resoluteness’. That said, the ‘formal’14 proposal of resoluteness posited
by Heidegger, although it avoids any ‘blueprint’ of action, ‘induces us to
34 Time & Society 23(1)

‘‘resolute action’’; regardless of traditional moral considerations . . . it pre-

disposes(s) Heidegger and his readers to some form of political radicalism
or ‘‘decisionism’’’ (1998: 256).15 Indeed, this takes us back to Osborne’s
point of philosophical concerns leading to possible ‘transformative
practice’.

From abstraction to transformative practice

Following this, the issue is that the ontological analysis of authenticity, and
its fundamental requirement of resoluteness towards the acceptance of mor-
tality, i.e. as authentic being-towards-death that will allow for a life of
‘existentiell consistency’, cannot address at the individual level ‘what I
should do’. Instead, this can only be resolved at the ontical level, since
again, as Philipse states, ‘the ontological notion of resoluteness refers us
back to the actual situations of life, and encourages us to be resolute in our
individual existence’ (1998: 257). This ‘decisionism’ is backed by
Heidegger’s own notion of formale Anzeige (formal indication), where gen-
eral ontological categories are articulated to incite personal transformative
action. Thus, resolute (and further authentic) temporalizing puts one into a
situation from where one can choose a more authentic life within the ontical
setting one is in.
It can be argued, then (despite Heidegger’s own apparent protestations),
that this indicates that temporal authenticity – or rather its possibility – is
not so much just desirable, but fundamentally essential, to the extent that
projecting oneself authentically becomes an invariant need. This attainment
is, in a sense, a priori with regard to understanding what Dasein ontolog-
ically should be, or even is (in the sense of being ecstatically stretched from
birth to death). Therefore, the pursuit of this temporal authenticity can be
posed as a universal need for Heidegger and, as I discuss briefly next, the
theorists who followed him.

De-temporalization
Phenomenological time, following Heidegger, poses that an ‘originary tem-
porality’ underlines all other everyday temporal experience and cognizing.
Essentially, such a position is stating that originary temporality is an invari-
ant universal feature, which underlines all cultural and historical temporal
variations and thus forms the basis of any manifestations of ‘time(s)’. The
latter are for Heidegger ‘inauthentic’; however,

The ordinary representation of time has its natural justification. It belongs to

Dasein’s average kind of Being, and to that understanding of Being which
Clancy 35

proximally prevails . . . this interpretation of time loses its exclusive and pre-
eminent justification only if it claims to convey the ‘true’ conception of time
and be able to prescribe the sole horizon with which time is to be interpreted.
(1980: 478)

Therefore, Heidegger is not arguing that Dasein must (or even could)
‘return’ to originary temporality; the point of temporal authenticity rather
is to orientate closer to its ‘uncovering’, to its trajectory, to be less occluded
by the ubiquitous ‘clock/now-time’ of contemporary society. Or, in other
words, Dasein can be resolute only when ‘running ahead’ to its own death
and when ‘stretching’ back to the past in order to choose and act in the
present:

Dasein does not fill up a track or stretch ‘of life’... It stretches itself along in
such a way that its own Being is constituted in advance as a stretching-along.
The ‘between’ which relates to birth and death already lies in the being of
Dasein. (1980: 426)

Resolute Dasein has a future that ends with its death, a past that extends
back to birth (and beyond in its historicity) and a present that are unified in
the Being which is itself originary temporality. It is this that unifies Dasein
within the structure of care and articulates the possibility of authentic tem-
poralizing. However, the fragmentation of this authentic ‘stretchedness’ pro-
duces the ‘irresoluteness of inauthentic existence’ (Heidegger, 1980: 463),
whence Dasein becomes preoccupied with the present: ‘he who exists
inauthentically is constantly losing time and never ‘has’ any’ (1980: 463).
If follows that a range of thinkers and practitioners have posed that the
ability to temporally orientate oneself authentically is fundamentally linked
to psychological well-being (and, ultimately, issues of civic participation).
Indeed, the implication that a strong relationship exists between one’s tem-
poral experience and psychological well-being has been of prime importance
to various other psychologists and psychiatrists (Cohn, 2002; Kern, 2000;
Levin, 1987; May et al., 1967; Melges, 1982; Straus, 1966; Twenge et al.,
2003):16

We are coming to the understanding in medicine that some diseases are the
result of a disorder of time perception . . . The chronic misjudgement of the
nature of time should be seen for what it really is: chronic disease itself.
(Dossey, 1982: 166)

The point being made by such therapists is that the future orientated
nature of temporality, i.e. in Heideggerian terms, time’s ‘ekstatic
36 Time & Society 23(1)

stretchedness’, can be lost. These therapists are essentially describing the

phenomenology of the problem of Being that Heidegger articulates and that
clock/now-time has obscured.
Understood in a range of therapeutic terminology, this is a vital point: as
Burrows and Brown’s (1991) research proposes, an individual’s ‘temporal
perspective’, i.e. an individual’s qualitative perception of their past, present,
and especially their future(s), is inextricably connected to psychological
well-being. This issue has for them a ‘direct relevance to health status mea-
sures . . . (and) particular relevance to those quality of life variants that
require comparisons of past, present and future time’ (1991: 4). Similarly,
as Karniol and Ross argue (1996: 594), ‘temporal focus’ (as they term it) is
essential to the success of motivation and goal-achievement.
One can elaborate here to say then that a problematic quality of life
damages the ability to posit successfully, resolutely and therefore authenti-
cally. As Karniol and Ross’s study shows, in a problematic social setting, an
individual is ‘pushed and pulled’ to behave according to their conceptions
of their futures and recollections of their pasts. Thus, as Bloch (1996)
warned, in problematic social situations, projection becomes fantasizing17
rather than planning, while the past becomes a set of obstacles prohibiting
present action and future planning.
Obviously, while such thinkers are primarily discussing the ‘extra-ordin-
ary’ position of the condition of the ‘mentally-ill’ patient, their analysis can
be refigured, and this does follow their own work, to be applicable to all
individuals cast under the same societal/cultural/epochal conditions, who
will then display a range of intensities of this inauthentic orientation. That
is, we are all susceptible to the restricted temporalities of contemporary
society. It follows that the ‘clock/now-time’ of capitalist conditions ‘kettles’
individuals into a restricted ‘present’. The ‘futures’ it forces the individual
into, by way of accomplishing, through heteronomous necessity (writing a
report, cleaning a hallway or another task within a work situation), under-
mines any authentic ‘futures’ potentially posited. That is, the ‘future’ that is
being forcibly projected under the direction of the ‘clock’ is rarely self-
chosen, and most importantly it is set in an immediate future. This is the
alienated future of the abstract heteronomous task; it bears little relation to
the ekstatic stretchedness that links one’s present to one’s whole life span
and what is meant by, in the phenomenological sense, an authentic future.
The ability to authentically orientate oneself, then, is more restricted
when one mainly experiences those ‘ordinary representations of time(s)’
most removed from originary temporality. ‘De-temporalization’ is, then,
the description of the situation that highlights both our unequivocal tem-
poral nature made static and fragmented with, most vitally, the more authen-
tic self-projecting of our future becoming problematized or broken.18 This is
Clancy 37

not, therefore, a matter concerning just the ‘surface’ issues of important and
related concerns such as chronic time shortage (Szollos, 2009); rather, de-
temporalization signifies the deep conflict between the derivatives of, and
originary temporality, itself.
Moreover, as Levin argues, the ‘collapse of temporality’ is not only an
individual issue, but by extension a societal and political one. In this sense,
de-temporalization can be linked to forms of civic privatism:19

When we reflect on our cultural experience with time; when we consider how
temporality is lived at the level of cultural history, we will discover a pattern
strikingly similar to the pattern played out in individual depressions . . . Our
cultural experience of the future is distorted or collapsed in ways that are
analogous to the ways in which the experience of the future is modified in the
lives of people suffering from severe depression. (1987: 493)

Thus for Lasch, ‘a profound shift in our sense of time has transformed
work habits, values, and the definition of success . . . self preservation has
replaced self-improvement as the goal of . . . existence’ (1991: 53). His basic
premise is that there is a general inability to feel secure about the future,
alongside ‘a widespread loss of confidence in the future’. These are different
in that the former means an insecurity about what is coming ‘at’ you, while
the latter is an insecurity about what you can potentially do, or more
importantly ‘not do’ in your future. Again this has both individual and
societal implications for, as Lasch says, the impact is not just felt on the
individual psychic level but also on varying levels of societal (and ecolog-
ical) apathy and improvidence – what Spencer (1982) terms the quality of
‘future-consciousness’. The nature of individual temporality has, then, a
great impact upon ‘civic’ privatism and the potential of political
participation.

The ‘call of conscience’

The argument here, therefore, is that the ability to orientate oneself suc-
cessfully will be based upon the possibilities (or not) of experiencing and
exercising autonomy within time(s) less restrictive than clock/now-time. The
success of this dictates the measure of one’s temporal authenticity, which is
very much dictated by one’s experience of different time(s), or access to
what Geißler (2002) terms ‘temporal diversity’.
However, the discussion has not yet revealed any real political dimension
yet, i.e. can individual temporal authenticity link to social transformative
practice? If we go back to Osborne’s point about this possibility being
extrapolated from philosophical exegesis, then the recognition of the
38 Time & Society 23(1)

importance of authentic temporalizing to psychological well-being – and the

subsequent insight of how the success (or not) of such a trajectory is based
upon the situation one is in, or rather the society/culture one is in – reveals
that any existentially meaningful political intervention into time must have
this insight as its ontogenetic starting point. The pursuit of the trajectory of
‘originary temporality’ and thus more authentic temporalizing then
becomes the ‘grounding’ for a meaningful politics of time. However,
while the discussion of what such a politics would look like and its feasi-
bility is for another debate (one only has to think of the problems of tying
to ‘sell’ existential issues on the political field), it is possible here, briefly, to
pose some essential issues.
That is, can a political project disclose Being? Can a politics, in
Heideggerian terms, invoke the awareness, what Heidegger terms the ‘call
of conscience’, of authentic temporalizing? Could the possible successes of
individual therapeutic work, such as at Zollikon, be in some way made
social?
Yet, posing a social basis for any notion of authenticity seems at first
problematic, as authenticity is most often understood at an individual
level – it is ‘inner’. Yet as Golomb argues, ‘attaining authenticity is by
no means a solitary pursuit. Indeed, what seems incontrovertible is that
authenticity cannot be achieved outside of the social context’ (1995: 201).
Once again, our very being-in-the-world makes even ‘innerness’ a part of
‘the whole’. A solution resides within Heidegger’s notion of the ‘call of
conscience’. That is the ‘cry of potential’ that Dasein makes to itself from
within its own self. This ‘call’ is the inner, authentic ‘awareness’ of one’s
Being, occluded by the ontical world, but still capable of expression in
order to rouse the potential of Dasein’s resoluteness. Yet, as Dasein is
most usually ensnared within the fallen mode (Verfallen) how does Dasein
recognize ‘itself’ in this mode? That is, how does one recognize oneself as
being what one is not?
The answer resides in understanding the social/political potential of
interventions based on the therapeutic insights previously raised. Mulhall
(1996), for instance, proposes a way out of Heidegger’s conundrum by
offering a modification of this particular element. He argues that a solution
is engendered, and is implied within Heidegger’s work, if an external third
party in the role of friend, guide or teacher externally invokes the ‘call of
conscience’. Such an intervention would avoid sui genesis – the necessity of
the spontaneous self being its own starting point of authentic awareness.20
Mulhall also makes the important point, to which I will return, that the
interventionist cannot impose any ‘specific blueprint’ for how to live; rather,
the ‘only aim would be that of recalling us to the fact of our capacity for
individuality, and urging us to listen to the specific demands it makes upon
Clancy 39

us’ (1996: 132). Following this trajectory, I argue that the ‘call’ can thus be
engendered by a socio-political intervention.
The intervention needed to invoke the ‘call’ can be achieved by the polit-
ical creation of temporal autonomous spaces (TAS) – spaces not just of freed
time, but also of resourced time, which allows practical conviviality – the
essential issue being the promotion of varying and different experiences of
previously occluded temporalities (Geißler’s diversity).

Temporal autonomous spaces

If we begin for a moment from the assumption that savings in labour time
can be created21, then one can posit the possible creation of ‘temporal
spaces’. Conceptually, these are similar to what Gorz (1989; 1994) proposes
in discussing the savings made in time by a reduced working hours policy to
create significant tracts of freed time that are also resourced by a range of
polices for the possible exercise of self-chosen activities. Gorz’s aim is to
ultimately expand the sphere of autonomy. This is completely laudable, of
course, but it does not, I argue, go far enough. Rather, the teleological
purpose of TAS is to affect the experience of time(s) in order to change
the orientation to one of more authentic temporalizing. Ultimately, the
primary purpose of a politics of time becomes the creation of the conditions
where different and varied temporalities can be experienced and perceived.
Time, at least here, becomes one’s own time – a personal and sovereign
creative control (yet within the still existing heteronomous limits).
Following the trajectory of Mulhall’s point, TAS becomes the interven-
tionist for the ‘call’ by virtue of their experiential nature. Importantly, as
mentioned, TAS are also ‘under-prescribed’ temporal environments that are
(as far as is possible) relatively free of clock/now-time temporal meanings
and associations. What this means is that these durations of ‘freed’ time
must be ‘conditioned’ to be both autonomously resourced (in Gorz’s sense)
and open to being conceptually and experientially convivial to subjective and
peripheral temporalities distanced from the meta-temporalities of capitalist
society. Of course, this is not meant in some transcendental way: the ontical
reality cannot be ‘bracketed’. Rather, these spaces are left as open from the
‘expected’ temporal, political and cultural interferences as is possible.
Realistically, this is about relegating the dominance of clock/now-time.
The reason, of course, is to enable and allow individuals to exercise their
own meanings within an experiential temporal space. In Heideggerian terms,
TAS engenders ‘disclosure’. By ‘giving’ Dasein an experiential temporal
space ‘outside’ the confines previously experienced, the unlayering of the
temporality of Verfallen becomes possible. TAS ‘unsettles’ Dasein, engen-
dering the moments of vision (Augenblick), allowing Dasein to ‘see
40 Time & Society 23(1)

through’ the normal comprehensions of time. The potential of authentic

positing, of course, is already within us. It does not have to be learnt, but
rather revealed and then allowed to prosper instead of sinking back into the
forgetfulness of Verfallen.
However, trying to avoid conceptual and experiential prescription is a
problem for all emancipatory projects. As Gorz himself notes, ‘the interven-
tionists’ of any politics’ have to avoid prescription in as far as that can be
possible . . . All we can ask of politics is to create the spaces in which the
alternative social practices can develop’ (1999: 79, my emphasis).
This requirement is even more fundamental to the concerns here.
Because of the so deeply reified notions of clock/now-time that are so ubiq-
uitous and the very subjectivity and diversity of personal temporalities, a
specifically temporal space cannot be defined in any precise way. Individuals
must simply be allowed to comprehend and apprehend time differently from
what is normally experienced in contemporary conditions. Thus, like Boss’s
hopes for therapy, a politics of time must have within it the possibility for
opening up the experience and the ‘concept’ of time itself. Not only must
there be more freed time, there must be more ‘conceptualizing’ of time to
complement this. Comprehending time must be re-invigorated, both con-
ceptually and practically.
Yet, as van Loon argues, ‘ . . . any attempt conclusively to ‘fix’ . . . time
falls prey to the metaphysics of ‘totality’ (1996: 82). This makes clear
that individuals must be able to experience a multiplicity of temporal-
ities. Any system and politics that inhibits this runs the risk of simply
structuring a temporal experience that does ‘fix’ time as a ‘totality’,
with all the subsequent risks to the psyche already raised. If the concept
can never exhaust its object (Adorno, 1973), then the traditional notion
of time, especially, has not been allowed to come anywhere near a
more comprehensive realisation. Since time is, relatively speaking, so
‘pre-conceptual’, in the sense that one cannot so easily ‘hold it’ (without
totalizing it), or examine it in the way one can with an ‘object’ or
phenomena, then one can also hold the assumption that the idea of
time, as a conceptual problem, is potentially magnified relative to other
concerns. Heidegger has shown how easily ‘time’s’ diversity and abstrac-
tion has been, necessarily, simplified and occluded with the need for
datability and World-Time. However, further to this is the significant
result of the rationality of capitalist temporal structuration (notably
clock/now-time). Therefore, both the ‘thinking’ of, and the practices
of, conceptualizing time and then experiencing it have been debased
due to their being positioned within the extraordinary replicatory deter-
minism (that is, the domination/colonization of certain social spheres by
the logic of others) of the capitalist temporal framework.
Clancy 41

This is why these temporal spaces are also autonomous spaces; in tem-
poral terms, they are left as conceptually empty as possible, not least
because their duration and size will already have been circumscribed by
necessary heteronomy. Yet, as mentioned, such spaces will require various
resources with which to ‘fund’ them. These resources will, of course, have to
be largely prescribed since they must come (at least initially) from a cen-
trally allocated structure – ultimately government. Ideally, they would be
chosen to present their possible utility in multiple and different ways, and
thus their conviviality is potentially open along multiple paths. That is,
although there must be a relatively large amount of prescription in relation
to acquiring these background resources (for example, musical instruments,
tools, community centres/spaces, training, artists materials, co-counselling
and aid, and so on), the point is that there is a very wide range of available
resources. This ‘range’ is important as it allows, in Gorz’s (1999: 72) terms,
for ‘multi-activity’ – a rejection therefore of the more mono-dimensional
aspects of the capitalist environment. Ultimately, one can envisage that the
spaces be decided by micro-collectives according to a community’s wishes
and depending upon overall allocation. There will, of course, be much scope
for individual decisions;22 this is essential, although the details/possibilities
of this are open to varying speculations and democratic decision-making.
The ‘point’ here, then, is not ‘perfection’, but rather a graded improvement
on existing conditions. These resources are to be used within the new tem-
poral limits, durations and experience that the ‘spaces’ will allow.
Fundamentally, as long as there is a marked change in the phenomenology
of the lived experience of time(s) both collectively and individually, then the
‘intervention’ would be successful within the parameters I am concerned
with.
The ‘hope’ of more freed time exists, then, in that with the acquiring of
more time as a resource, people will be able to experience a greater diversity
of time(s). It will allow people to do more things for themselves – to enlarge
their sphere of autonomy (this is not, of course, to pose that this increased
autonomy is somehow outside the overriding temporal heteronomy of the
capitalist system, but it does mean that significant spaces are created to
allow for possibilities previously unfelt and unexperienced23). Individuals
would have the time to take control of those aspects of their lives (and their
responsibilities) which current temporal structuring make problematic or
undesirable. People can be more creative and more self-sufficient, and
potentially take more care of relatives, children, communal activities, neigh-
bours and themselves. This is contentious, of course: as Basso argues, there
is no proof that this would occur, since ‘free time by no means has an
automatically ‘civilizing’ and egalitarian effect’ (2003: 217). However, he
does situate this comment within the context of the market economy,
42 Time & Society 23(1)

thus leaving open the notion that a ‘resourced free time’ with TAS at least
has a greater chance of this civilizing, or rather autonomous, effect than just
‘empty freed time’ would have. The possible impact upon civic privatism is
also a major potentiality here.

Conclusion
Notwithstanding the debate on the possibility of a successful reduced work-
ing hours policy in itself, as Basso (2003) argues, this means dealing,
amongst other factors, with the entire capitalist system. There is, despite
the long history of political concern with ‘time’, little evidence that the
deeper concerns identified here are adequately accepted in any practical
context except within certain therapeutic circles, the resulting issue being
that this understanding is then not used to satisfactorily inform political
policy. This is not surprising, however, as society itself, and its ‘thinking
systems’, are structured to ignore it. This is apparent, for instance, when one
regards the seemingly illogical disregard for current ecological concerns,
which remain improvidently ‘backgrounded’. This can be at least partially
explained as a reflection of the separation from authentic temporalizing –
that is, between one’s past, present and future and how this allows one to
connect to the ‘world’. Rather, this is magnified and represented as a rela-
tional aporia with the temporalities of the individual/communal setting.
Since current generations are unable to relate authentically to their own
futures, then they are concurrently unable to empathize with the future of
their own society or any future generation’s situation. Similarly, there is no
strong link even to an authentic present; many individuals live in a ‘now’,
relatively unconnected to the wider concerns linked to one’s unified com-
prehension of life.
This inability to ‘see the whole temporal picture’ is reflected, at least
partially, in the emphasis upon those issues usually cited as primary
within a politics of time: job creation and more ‘free time’. Although the
latter, at least, is an important issue as part of the overall process towards
authentic temporalizing, it is usually only comprehended in itself. The link
to providing a basis for unifying and maintaining temporal coherence is not
reached, and such issues remain, in this respect, backgrounded. A relevant
politics of time should reflect, then, the tension between the individual
unable to reconcile their ‘originary’ bias within the temporality of the pre-
vailing social structures. A politics of time should not just be a policy to
reclaim the materiality of physical time and to make use-time convivial. It
also involves changing how to think about and feel time(s). In this way, a
politics can define itself not just as a struggle over time as a resource but as a
struggle over the self as temporal. For a politics of time to ignore this can
Clancy 43

establish it as only part of the larger de-temporalizing structures prevalent

in the clock/now-time society. A temporal policy must therefore change the
experience of time on several levels, as a physical resource, an existential
resource and as the apprehension of ourselves as temporal and futural.
Gibbs (2010) recently posed in this journal, in a related proposal, that the
task for ‘the development of a connectedness of Dasein’ (2010: 401) could
take place in universities. I am less convinced, however, that ‘resoluteness’
can be learnt as Gibbs proposes (or that it should be the preserve of ‘intel-
lectuals’). Ultimately, it is not pedagogy or psychoanalysis that the individ-
ual needs to become temporally authentic. Rather, it is the experience of
lived time itself that will be the ‘interventionist’ needed to bring personal
(and potentially social) change.

Notes
1. Various nineteenth and early twentieth century thinkers and luminaries held
related concerns: in the UK notably William Morris, Kropotkin, Mumford
and Russell (see Richards (ed.), 1997).
2. Defining ‘well-being’ is of course problematic, yet we are not totally at sea here,
as Mobasser argues in discussing the varied interpretations of Marx, despite
conflicting analysis and often serious divergence: ‘there is almost universal
agreement as to the value he hoped future society would promote: human
self-realisation’ (1987: 119). This area of Marx’s trajectory has been very influ-
ential to later mainly humanist (and non-Marxist) theorists sharing an emanci-
patory interest. Such terms may, of course, be subjective and vague but in
general terms we can, as Soper (1981) argues, make a clear enough case both
for the existence of post-survival needs and the need for their actualization.
3. I am not interested here with the feasibility of a Politics of Time. There are,
obviously, many problems to address; for example, as Aronowitz and DiFazio
argue, ‘reducing working-hours without simultaneously addressing the issue
of capital flight is unthinkable’ (cited in Hayden, 1999: 181). Any process
of re-alignment must take place gradually, in order to, at least initially,
‘work with’ the existing production process and to avoid the immediate with-
drawal of popular support and capital that a ‘radical solution’ would no doubt
engender.
4. In June 1997, the Socialist-led government of Lionel Jospin (with a coalition of
communists and Greens) had been elected upon the popularity of a proposed
35-hour working week. Within a year the Aubry laws (after the then Minister of
Labour, Martine Aubry) were being passed. The primary feature was a stan-
dardized 35-hour week and, further to this, the law provided financial aid for
companies to hire more workers in lieu of there being freed hours with which to
employ more staff (and thus address unemployment), further financial aid for
workers to cover lost income, and various other incentives for both employee
and employer. This was an important event in that it was a watershed in terms
44 Time & Society 23(1)
of a genuine attempt, by a large and influential nation-state, to pose a political
intervention into ‘time’.
5. See Hayden (1999) for a good overview of recent directives and policies in the
West.
6. Yet, as Alis argues, historically, French concerns with reducing working hours
have undergone various changes with the objectives modified over time. Thus,
‘improvements in working and living conditions were the driving principle in the
1960s and 1970s, [while] since the 1975 recession, the question of working time is
linked in the French debate with the question of unemployment’ (2003: 512). In
the 1980s, this changed to notions of temporal flexibility in order to increase
competitiveness, while addressing unemployment resurfaced again following the
recession of 1993. Thus, with regard the concerns of this article it is reasonably
certain that ‘temporal authenticity’ is hardly, and has not been, the underlying
raison d’être.
7. However, for a range of other thinkers and pressure groups, the ‘need’ for more
time translates into more varied and interesting issues, often related to ideals of
social and individual ‘justice’. Schor thus argues when discussing the possibili-
ties of the Aubry Plan, ‘together with vacation times, flexibility, rationality and
autonomy, we have the core of a new politics of time, one which is driven by
concerns for gender, environmental sustainability and social equity’ (1998: 124).
I would argue however, that, admirable as this is, it still ignores the fundamental
temporal issue that needs to be the basis of an intervention.
8. Goodin et al.’s (2005) notion of ‘temporal autonomy’, which is introduced as
part of ‘discretionary time’, simply introduces an impoverished notion of the
concept of autonomy and turns a potentially valuable term (temporal auton-
omy) into a problematic one. Autonomy here is understood without adequate
reference to the confines and lack of resources structuring it.
9. Think of the Italian Government’s decision, in light of the French proposals in
1997, to also legislate a 35-hour week. The reality, however, as Hayden argues,
fell far short of what it initially seemed to promise (see Hayden, 1999: 159).
Other countries, most notably Britain, have been less concerned to hide their
antipathy to such proposals.
10. Such an insight does, of course, go against the received wisdom of classical
socialist thought. As Sève stated, ‘while it might be permissible from the socio-
logical point of view to classify under the same heading of labour-time in pro-
duction both alienated labour . . . and socially emancipated labour . . . so that
eight hours of social labour of a metal-worker in Gorki are sociologically equiv-
alent to eight hours of social labour of a metal-worker in Detroit, this represents
in the psychological perspective . . . a simple absurdity. (1978: 335)
11. The Echange et Projets group was led by Jacques Delors and produced an
influential text entitled (in English) The Revolution of Choosing Your Time
Schedule (La Revolution du Temps, Paris 1980). The piece formed an intel-
lectual backdrop for the Aubry Plan (and was regularly cited by Gorz), but
much of its insight was relinquished by the time the practical project was
developing.
Clancy 45
12. Gorz’s strong philosophical background has been clearly articulated elsewhere
(see Bowring, 2000). Gorz is aware, of course, that political possibilities need to
be outlined for the sake of potential concrete action, yet he is keen to stress that
he will not offer ‘blueprints’ so as not to fall prey to ‘prescriptive politics’.
13. Of course, this is not to say that practitioners have followed Heidegger to the
letter. See, for example, Heidegger’s comments on Binswanger’s interpretation
of his work in the Zollikon Seminars (2001).
14. Formal concepts are ontological, in that ‘they will never connote the individual
ontical content of the life of each of us’ (Philipse, 1998: 257).
15. This point can also be made following Aho’s discussion of Heidegger’s contri-
bution to modern psychology in the Beitrage (see Aho, 2007).
16. As Young (1988) discusses, mental disorders related to the destabilization of the
‘inner clock’ are often termed ‘cyclopathologies’. He goes on to discuss the work
of the psychoanalyst Arlow and the psychiatrist Melges, whose work ultimately
suggests that ‘there is hardly a neurotic or psychotic disorder in which the
relationship to time is not out of balance’ (1988: 247).
17. As Bowring discusses, Gorz gives various examples of inauthentic pursuits of
the future. He discusses, for example, utopian and religious ‘futurists’ who
pursue an ideal which bears no practical relation to their factual circumstances
and possibilities, which is disconnected from the past which they are, and from
the empirical conditions which they must employ as resources and means.
Such a future is neither objectively feasible nor subjectively their own
(Bowring, 2000: 57).
18. This is similar to what May et al. discuss as presentification in French theory
and Eigenktivitat in German therapy (1967: 105).
19. There are numerous forms of privatism: by civic I mean, as Lodziak uses the
term, ‘. . . social and political withdrawal and abstinence . . .’ (1995: 74–75).
20. This spontaneous awareness, the moment of vision (Augenblick), comes upon
one, for Heidegger, in moments of anxiety. However, we cannot simply rely on
this for a politics.
21. As I have mentioned, there are a range of complex issues to be addressed with
regard to a ‘politics of time’, one being the machinations of actually bringing
about savings in labour time and in what form (4-day week, 3-day week, 6-hour
day etc.). However, such questions are for another study and, as I have said, I
am taking for granted that ‘temporal spaces’ can be created, and start from this
assumption.
22. The exercise of autonomy does not just occur because structural elements within
a system are changed. Individuals, and indeed ‘society’, must recognize their
freedom in order to use it. This is not just the freedom of having extra physical
time (hours, days and weeks). Even if ‘resourced’, the freed time must not just
be, as Gorz warns, ‘empty time’. Individuals must recognize the ‘authentic
potential’ related to freed time and from this be able to recognize and exercise
themselves as authentic temporal beings. Individuals must be able to recognize
that they can take and make their own meaning from their own time and in their
own time. This is another topic in itself, of course.
46 Time & Society 23(1)
23. There is no suggestion here that the spheres of autonomy and heteronomy are
somehow separate (as some commentators have wrongly accused Gorz of argu-
ing). One must accept the limits in which any potential intervention is (at least
initially) set.

References
Adam B (1990) Time and Social Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Adam B (1995) Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adorno TW (1973) Negative Dialectics. New York, London: Continuum.
Adorno TW (1998) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Aho KA (2007) Acceleration and Time Pathologies: The Critique of Psychology in
Heidegger’s Beitrage. Time and Society 16(1): 25–42.
Alis D (2003) The 35-Hour Week in France: The French Exception? Personal
Review 2(4): 510–525.
Basso P (2003) Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-first
Century. London: Verso.
Bauman Z (1998) Globalisation. London: Polity Press.
Binswanger L (1963) Being-in-the-World. New York: Basic Books Incorporated.
Bloch E (1996) The Principle of Hope (3 vols.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Boss M (1979) Existential Thought and Therapeutic Practice. London: SAGE.
Bowring F (2000) Andre´ Gorz and the Sartrean Legacy: Arguments for a Person-
Centred Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Burrows C and Brown K (1991) Time Perception: Some Implications for the
Development of Scale Values in Measuring Health Status and Quality of Life.
Paper presented at the Australian Health Economists’ Group Conference,
Canberra, 5–6 September 1991. ISBN 1 875677 20 8.
Castells M (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cohn H (2002) Heidegger and the Roots of Existential Psychotherapy. London:
Continuum.
Dossey L (1982) Space, Time and Medicine. Boston and London: Shambhala.
Foster C (2005) French Workers Defend 35-hour Week. Available at Worker’s
Library Online, www.workersliberty.org/node/view/3749 (accessed 12 June
2010).
Geißler KA (2002) A Culture of Temporal Diversity. Time & Society 11(1): 130–159.
Gibbs P (2010) Heidegger: Time, Work and the Challenges for Higher Education.
Time and Society 19(3): 387–403.
Goodin R, Rice JM, Bittman M and Sauders P (2005) The Time-pressure Illusion:
Discretionary Time vs Free Time. Social Indicators Research 73(1): 43–70.
Golomb J (1995) In Search of Authenticity: From Kierkegaard to Camus. London/
New York: Routledge.
Gorz A (1982) Farewell to the Working Class. Boston: South End Press.
Gorz A (1989) Critique of Economic Reason. London: Verso.
Gorz A (1994) Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology. London: Verso.
Clancy 47
Gorz A (1999) Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Hayden A (1999) Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption
and Ecology. London: Zed Books.
Heidegger M (1980/1927) Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell.
Heidegger M (2001) Zollikon Seminars. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press.
Karniol R and Ross M (1996) The Motivational Impact of Temporal Focus:
Thinking about the Future and the Past. Annual Review of Psychology 47:
593–620.
Kern S (2000) Time and Medicine. Annals of Internal Medicine 132(1): 3–9.
Laing RD (1990) The Divided Self. London: Penguin.
LaJeunesse R (2009) Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full Employment
Strategy: The Social Effort Bargain. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lasch C (1991) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations. New York/London: W. W. Norton.
Levin DM (1987) Pathologies of the Modern Self: Postmodern Studies on Narcissism,
Schizophrenia and Depression. New York: New York University Press.
Lodziak C (1995) Manipulating Needs. London: Pluto Press.
Marx K (1968) Capital, Volume III. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
May R, Angel E and Ellenberger H (eds) (1967) Existence: A New Dimension in
Psychiatry and Psychology. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Melges FT (1982) Time and the Inner Future: A Temporal Approach to Psychiatric
Disorders. New York: Wiley.
Mobasser N (1987) Marx and Self-Realisation. New Left Review 161(1): 119–128.
Mulhall S (1996) Heidegger and Being and Time. London/New York: Routledge.
Nguyen Dan Thu (1992) The Spatialization of Metric Time. The Conquest
of Land and Labour in Europe and the United States. Time & Society 1(1):
29–50.
Nowotny H (1994) Time. The Modern and Postmodern Experience. Cambridge:
Polity.
Osborne P (1995) The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde. London/New
York: Verso.
Philipse. (1998) Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Richards V (ed.) (1997) Why Work: Arguments for the Leisure Society. London:
Freedom Press.
Schor JB (1991) The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New
York: Basic Books.
Schor J (1998) Work, Free Time and Consumption. Time & Society 7(1): 119–127.
Sen A (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford: OUP.
Sève L (1978) Man in Marxist Theory and the Psychology of Personality. Trans.
McGreal J. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Soper K (1981) On Human Needs: Open and Closed Theories in a Marxist
Perspective. Brighton: Harvester Press.
48 Time & Society 23(1)
Spencer ME (1982) Social Science and the Consciousness of the Future. Theory and
Society 11(5): 683–712.
Straus E (1966) Disorders of Personal Time in Depressive States. In: Straus E (ed.)
Phenomenological Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 290–295.
Szollos A (2009) Toward a Psychology of Chronic Time Pressure: Conceptual and
Methodological Review. Time and Society 18(2–3): 332–350.
Tomlinson L (2007) The Culture of Speed. London: SAGE.
Twenge JM, Catanese KR and Baumeister RF (2003) Social Exclusion and the
Deconstructed State: Time Perception, Meaninglessness, Lethargy, Lack of
Emotion, and Self-Awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
85(3): 409–423.
van Loon J (1996) A Cultural Exploration of Time: Some Implications of
Temporality and Mediation. Time and Society 5(1): 61–84.
Young M (1988) The Metronomic Society: Natural Rhythms and Human Timetables.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Zerubavel E (1981) Hidden Rhythms: Schedules and Calendars in Social Life.
Chicago: Chicago University Press.