“This is a major piece of theoretical, conceptual and analytical work which yields

substantive and highly relevant insights across the humanities and the social sciences.
Torres impressively succeeds in formulating a new approach to conceptualise
social time through the notion of ‘temporal regime’ in a way that avoids diagnostic
reductionism: as he rightly points out, approaches which insist that there is only
standardisation, unification and homogenisation in modern temporality overlook the
differences, divergencies and multiplicity of social time, while those which insist on the
latter tend to miss the strong ‘meta-trends’ such as time-compression or acceleration.
Torres’ notion of temporal regimes avoids both pitfalls but allows for the integration of
both trends into one concept. On its basis, he also succeeds at presenting a convincing
account of late modern social temporality. It will stand as an innovative and original
contribution to the notoriously difficult conceptualisation of social time. It is well
written, plausibly structured and clearly argued and as such obviously deserves the
highest consideration.”
Hartmut Rosa, Professor of General Sociology at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
and Director at the Max-Weber-Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in
Erfurt, Germany. Author of Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity

“Fluid, highly readable and profound. This very important book brings together
classical and contemporary scholarship in the social studies of time in inventive and
synergistic fashion. The notion of time regimes will undoubtedly become indispensable
for exploratory and explanatory inquiries across the social sciences that strive to
tackle emerging socio-technical phenomena and the process of 21st century capitalist
modernity. A must read for sociologists, cultural and social theorists, historians, STS
scholars and other researchers interested in how time structures complex dynamics of
the present era.”
Filip Vostal, Senior Researcher, Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies
of the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences. Author of Accelerating
Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time

““Time has time” is a phrase that will stay with you long after you have read Temporal
Regimes: Materiality, Politics, Technology. This book locates an ongoing and seemingly
incommensurable tension within the burgeoning field of Temporal Studies: how to
reconcile singular generalized narratives of time against the reality that time is multiple
and differentially experienced. Torres urges the reader to consider equally the material
dimensions of both approaches and reveals how to marry them. We learn that both
belong to the other as time’s other time! What emerges is an offering to the field of
Temporal Studies: a time that is “simultaneous but non-synchronous”. It will delight
the temporal theorist that the main characters in this book are in fact other theories of
time. Temporal theories emerge as lively characters - vivid and robust. It turns out that
time theories are a rather motley crew of hot takes, long-views, ethnographies, and
philosophies. The Temporal Regime becomes a way to bring them together in order to
account for the complexity of contemporary social time.”
Sarah Sharma, Associate Professor of Media Theory at the University of Toronto
and Director of the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, Canada.
Author of In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics
Temporal Regimes

Temporal Regimes provides a theoretical framework for understanding the

temporal structures of society; a conceptually rich, empirically nuanced and
culturally embodied account of temporal phenomena in contemporary world.
What does temporal regimes imply? How the everyday life as well as the
global mobilities coordination requires temporal underpinnings? The answers
to these questions mean more than simply understanding the general thesis on
acceleration or space–time compression, on the one hand, but also a micro-
multiple-localised time experience by gender, class or age, on the other hand.
They also mean understanding in an integrative way the very structural tem-
poralities within the everyday lived, embodied and situated ones. They require
both a robust and flexible epistemic analysis considering their material bed-
rock through political and technological forefront dimensions.
Advancing a rigorous, well-grounded theoretical understanding and
offering a useful way to analytically conceptualise the temporal dynamics on
our societies, this book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars
enquiring a rich set of topics ranging from time and politics, new materialism,
conceptual history as well as technology, collective action and social change.

Felipe Torres is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Pontificia

Universidad Católica de Chile, and Doctor in Advanced Cultural and Social
Studies from the Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt, Germany. He has
published several articles on temporal studies and social theory in Time and
Society, RIS, Isegoría and Cinta de Moebio.
Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

157 The Fascist Temptation

Creating a Political Community of Experience
David Ohana

158 Accumulating Capital Today

Contemporary Strategies of Profit and Dispossessive Policies
Marlène Benquet and Théo Bourgeron

159 Critical Rationalism and the Theory of Society

Critical Rationalism and the Open Society Volume 1
Masoud Mohammadi Alamuti

160 Functionalist Construction Work in Social Science

The Lost Heritage
Peter Sohlberg

161 Critical Theory and New Materialisms

Hartmut Rosa, Christoph Henning and Arthur Bueno

162 Max Weber’s Sociology of Civilizations: A Reconstruction

Stephen Kalberg

163 Temporal Regimes

Materiality, Politics, Technology
Felipe Torres

164 Citizenship in a Globalized World

Christine Hobden

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RSSPT

Temporal Regimes

Materiality, Politics, Technology

Felipe Torres
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Felipe Torres
The right of Felipe Torres to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Torres, Felipe, author.
Title: Temporal regimes : materiality, politics, technology / Felipe Torres.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Routeldge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in social and political thought |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021010342 (print) | LCCN 2021010343 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032018720 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032018744 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003180876 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Time–Sociological aspects. | Social sciences–Philosophy. |
Social change. | Technological innovations–Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HM656 .T67 2021 (print) |
LCC HM656 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/37–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010342
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010343
ISBN: 978-1-032-01872-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-01874-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18087-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003180876
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents

List of figures x
Foreword by Hartmut Rosa xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii

Introduction: towards temporal regimes 1

1 Temporal regimes 20
2 Temporal politics: politicisation of time and history 47
3 Temporal technologies and technologies of time 82
4 Conceptualising future(s): progress, utopia, acceleration 110
Conclusions: between homogeneity and heterogeneity –
simultaneous but non-synchronic times 137

Index 158
Figures

2.1 Time perspectives over mainstream political framework 75

4.1 Scheme of the dialectics from Enlightenment to change 126
C.1 Global society in a temporal division scope 144
C.2 Generality and specificity levels regarding homogeneity
and heterogeneity 151
Foreword

Temporal regimes: a new approach for cultural

and social studies
There are numerous, or better innumerable, studies on social time which
almost invariably start by claiming that the social study of time is in disorder
and disarray, lacking a coherent conceptual framework. This, however, is a
state of affairs that the social sciences share with other disciplines, and with
philosophy in particular. When it comes to questions about the ‘true’ nature
and essence of time, not just the humanities but even the natural sciences are
still caught in Augustine’s enigma trap: if no one asks, we know exactly what
time is, but if we are asked to conceptualise it, we are lost. Nevertheless, it is
obvious that any comprehensive account of modern or late-modern society
needs and requires a thorough analysis of its temporal structures, and for this,
a coherent conceptual framework is needed.
This book now offered by Felipe Torres aims to precisely present such a
framework and hence to close this apparent research desideratum. As the
title of his study suggests, he attempts to solve the conceptual enigma by
developing and defining the notion of ‘temporal regimes’ as the core element
of a conceptual framework for the analysis of temporal structures.
As he diligently carves out in his argumentation, the notion of a ‘regime’
allows to conceptually combine a number of contrasting and sometimes even
contradictory facets of temporality such as persistence and change, homogen-
eity and heterogeneity but also the normative/prescriptive and the material/
descriptive elements of time.
The book thesis is framed by an exploratory introduction, in which Torres
sets out the problem, the goals of the study and its methods, and by a conclu-
sion that sums up the argument and secures its results. In between, the sub-
stantive argument is developed in four consecutive steps: in Chapter 1, the core
notion of ‘temporal regime’ is introduced and developed. Torres constructs it
by drawing on, and connecting, a number of different approaches across the
social sciences. Thus, one of the main sources is François Hartog’s concept
of regimes of historicity, but Torres goes well beyond it in various respects
xii Foreword

across several disciplines ranging from philosophy and conceptual history

(Koselleck, Löwith, Blumenberg) to sociological accounts such as the ones
presented by Harvey, Castells or Giddens and to poststructuralist approaches
in the vein of Foucault or Deleuze.
As a starting point, Torres observes a ‘duality’ in sociological analyses of
time between approaches such as the ‘macro-theoretical’ ones developed by
Virilio or myself who identify one ‘homogenous’ trend (i.e., acceleration)
across different social spheres and other studies which pinpoint an (increasing)
multiplicity, plurality or heterogeneity of social temporalities. Hence, Torres
insists, temporal regimes need to be conceptualised in a way that allows for
both the identification of homogenising trends and general traits which then
allow for the identification and definition of differences and divergencies. By
defining temporal regimes through the aspects of iterability, articulability and
governmentality (Chapter 1), Torres’ concept of ‘regime’ indeed manages to
combine Hartog’s historical-diachronic sense of time with responsiveness for
social differences and a sensibility for the normative-political dimension of
temporalities as a decisive element of ‘governmentality’.
This political dimension is the focus of Chapter 2 in Torres’ argument.
Here, the author substantiates why he believes that time always is historic-
ally, socially and materially situated. It is framed in and through (micro- and
macro-) political struggles and strategies and always connected to political
conceptions of history – of past, present and future. Time politics in this
sense is always entangled with ‘biopolitics’, too.
The materiality of time, however, also is manifested in, and shaped by,
technological developments. This aspect is explored in Chapter 3. Here,
Torres aptly reconstructs how modernity brought about a standardisation
and unification of ‘world time’, and as such a homogenisation of time, which
then allowed for the observation, identification and preservation of social and
cultural differences in the experience, use and structure of time. One most
interesting argument Torres arrives at is that digital technologies in particular
allow for a ‘simultaneity’ of events and processes which are nevertheless non-
synchronous: simultaneity without synchronicity for Torres thus appears to
be the defining element of late-modern temporality (see Conclusions too).
In the concluding Chapter 4, Torres reconstructs and connects the ‘temporal
regimes’ of progress, utopia and acceleration and plausibly demonstrates that
they are connected by a common or similar conception of the future – and
with it of the past and the present. It is precisely this shared conception of the
future which serves to integrate those regimes into something that could be
called a ‘macro-’ or ‘meta-’ regime (of modernity).
In sum, Torres impressively succeeds in formulating a new approach to
conceptualise social time through the notion of ‘temporal regime’ in a way
that avoids diagnostic reductionism: as he rightly points out, approaches
 Foreword xiii

which insist that there is only standardisation, unification and homogenisa-

tion in modern temporality overlook the differences, divergencies and multi-
plicity of social time, while those which insist on the latter tend to miss the
strong ‘meta-trends’ such as time compression or acceleration. Torres’ notion
of temporal regimes avoids both pitfalls but allows for the integration of both
trends into one concept. On its basis, he also succeeds at presenting a convin-
cing account of late-modern social temporality.
To be sure, the study nevertheless allows for critical questioning. I would
like to mention three aspects here: first, it is astonishing how easily Torres
overcomes the relevance of space, given that he draws on authors such as
Harvey, Giddens or Castells (and myself, for that matter) who, when talking
about distanciation (Giddens) or compression (Harvey), all insist that it rather
should be ‘space-time-regimes’ than just ‘time-regimes’. To simply insist on
processes of deterritorialisation might be too quick here (Chapter 3). Second,
and most importantly, despite all his impressive efforts, the notion of ‘tem-
poral regime’ still keeps certain blurriness. The problem in part stems from the
fact that Torres also talks about temporal patterns, temporal schemes, regimes
over time, etc., without discriminating the use of these terms sufficiently. But
the main problem is in the fact that it is unclear whether Torres thinks of one
regime allowing for diversity within its framework (as he rightly points out,
differences can only be identified when there are common points of reference)
or multiple overlapping regimes which create difference. He actually seems
to want it both ways, and this creates confusion: for example, he talks of a
regime of progress, a regime of acceleration and a regime of utopia, but they
all seem to be part of an over-arching ‘future-regime’ (Chapter 4). But for
this, he would need a conception of a meta-regime, as suggested above, which,
unfortunately, is not yet sufficiently developed.
Finally, one recurrent source of confusion is created by Torres’ insistence
that one and the same nucleus ‘produces’ heterogeneity as well as homo-
geneity (Conclusions): only because of such a shared origin the notion of a
‘paradox’ between the two trends is justified. However, as Torres also admits,
the temporal differences between cultural practices and conceptions of time
are not (necessarily) ‘produced’ by modernity; to a large extent, they were
pre-existing, so the idea of a ‘common nucleus’ becomes questionable. Having
said that, Torres seems to solve this blurriness at the end: it is the macro-
trend of homogenisation which makes many of these differences identifi-
able, observable and politically relevant (because of the simultaneity of the
non-synchronous), and this, obviously, is a highly original and most valuable
insight.
Thus, to sum up this short prologue, even though there inevitably remain
some open points for future discussion, this is a stunning piece of theoret-
ical, conceptual and analytical work which yields substantive and highly
xiv Foreword

relevant insights across the humanities and the social sciences. It will stand
as an innovative and original contribution to the notoriously difficult concep-
tualisation of social time. It is well written, plausibly structured and clearly
argued and as such obviously deserves the highest consideration.
Erfurt, January 2021
Hartmut Rosa
Preface

There is a fruitful distinction in Spanish between the verbs ser and estar. In
English and German, both meanings are subsumed into the same verb: in
English to be and German sein. In Spanish, however, there is a conspicuous
distinction between ser (‘to be’; ‘sein’) and estar (‘to be’, ‘sein’, but also ‘be-
there’ and ‘da-sein’).1 In the first case, ser refers to a general condition, e.g.,
to be is always to be in time. In the second case, estar indicates a more spe-
cific moment: refers to the ‘now’ as well as the ‘current process’. This is why
questions referring to the current historical situation such as What time do
we are? or What time do we live in? in Spanish is ¿En qué tiempo estamos?
And not ¿En qué tiempo somos (‘are’)? This contextualisation is relevant as it
explains two ways of conceiving time: the first as a transcendental fact (being
in time is always the condition of being) while in the second case is a condition
always embedded in contingent situations of a precise moment. Therefore,
the first case is more related to an ontological approach, while the second to
an historical one. In the first case, there are reflections about the meaning of
time and its definitions, whereas the second is the characteristic of an histor-
ical period: to be on time is to have an end, finitude (as every historical event
does), but to be ‘out of time’ is to be eternal (as a good or divinity). The use
of time is thus a threshold for finitude or eternity. Whenever there is reference
to a place beyond time, there will be eternity, natural laws or structures that
are impossible to be changed. Conversely, everything in time perishes, mutates
and is also permeable and transformable. As I will show, the distinction is cru-
cial for this work since it serves to justify both orders and transformations. In
each case, this distinction implies also normative outcomes.
This book is mainly focused in both a descriptive and a politico-normative
dimensions. The present work is an attempt at an inquiry on the material
conditions of being in time, which is another way of saying to be historical.
Not an abstract nor eternal character of time, but rather the ‘mundane’ forces
that set it up. From concepts to work conditions, the temporal dimension is
coupled with the rest of its material basis. Not all the temporal experience
has been the same, and precise historical moments have their own prevalence
xvi Preface

regarding the past, traditions and memories, as well as expectations, forecasts

or projections. Therefore, time has time. The present work will pursue an
explanation on how its uses and conceptions create speeches and practices
by influencing the historical process. I propose to grasp those discourses and
actions under the light of temporal regimes.
Felipe Torres
Erfurt, February 2021

Note
1 There are some similarities with the English verb to stay and German stehen, but
they are more tied to the moment ‘right now’ (‘I stay here’) or to objects (‘der
Kühlschrank steht in der Ecke’) meanwhile estar is always both spatial and
temporal.
Introduction
Towards temporal regimes

A quest for integrated temporal studies

This book is focused on inquiring temporality as a structural dimension of
contemporary societies. In order to do that, this writing represents an intro-
ductory study for an approach on temporal regimes.
Due to the connectivity of today’s world facilitated by progressive advances
in media and technology, it is possible to conceive a global atmosphere in
which space and time acquire new states. Coordination among diverse cultural
spaces requires the emergence of universal mechanisms of interaction, from a
standardised global timetable to mobile communication devices with internet
access (such as laptops, cell phones, smartwatches). All these account for a
world that is increasingly globalised, which, in turn, requires the generation
of unified frameworks for interaction. Moreover, the plurality of lifestyles
that are proposed through advertising, identity construction and the con-
sumption of certain distinguishing products points out a reality opposed to
the standardisation or homogenisation of uniform frameworks for interaction,
with diversity as value, a search for cosmopolitanism, and an enhancement
of originality and innovation. Thus, heterogeneity is also a mainstream claim
in contemporary society. This work suggests that this paradox is observed in
a privileged way through an analysis of the experience of modern times: as
a mechanism of social coordination, according to Norbert Elias (1992), time
tends to standardise social relations beyond elements that seek to make it
measurable in order to coordinate societies. At the same time, modern time
has no ‘centre’ to the extent that society is not governed by the existence of
only ‘One’ time: time is experienced differently whether we are in the East or
West, North or South, as well as depending on social classes, age groups and
gender. An illustrative work on the matter is Johannes Fabian Time and the
Other (1983). Then, those diversities allow one to speak about a multiplicity
of times, coexisting with homogeneous trends. How is this apparent contra-
diction possible? What are the possible causes of this phenomenon? Is there
something that ties them together? These are some of the questions which the
following work proposes to address.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003180876-1
2 Introduction

Life and its manifestations work in different times. The standardised global
clock-time, both homogeneous and linear, is only one of them. Life unfolds
through a variety of time frames: cyclical and linear, repetitive and cumu-
lative, slow and fast, measured and experienced, short and long. And yet,
during the last few years, a series of new times have emerged due to global-
isation, technological innovation and climate change, e.g., the instantaneity
of digital communication, the many time scales of CO2 emissions and tem-
perature rise along the collapse of the idea of unilineal global progress (or
increased awareness of its unintended consequences at least). To be sure, time
has become a matter of interest of social theory, as well as a field of cul-
tural frictions and political struggles. Hence, it is no wonder that the con-
temporary emerging plurality of overlapping and intersecting times requires
further investigation. Time has become a topicality of scholarly interest and
investigation across disciplinary borders and is opened to dialogue in several
fields, such as history, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, science and
technology studies, philosophy and even biology, in order to understand and
to explore the conflicts and hierarchies of the ‘different times’ present in the
multiple forms of life.
For a long time, humanities and social sciences have been concerned with
understanding how temporality works in the so-called modern world. On the
one hand, they have produced macro-theoretical arguments to explain what
has happened to temporality and its order within the onset of modernity.
They are focused on general tendencies rather than particular temporal
patterns. For instance, Paul Virilio (1977; 1986) and Hartmut Rosa (2003;
2005; 2010; 2013a; 2013b) have written extensively about a long tendency
towards the ‘acceleration’ of societal processes, whereas Anthony Giddens
(1981), David Harvey (1989)1 and Hermann Lübbe (1992) suggest the con-
cept of “space-time compression” to explain what happens to structures and
experiences within the modern world. On the other hand, theorists such as
Doreen Massey (1994: especially Chapters 6 and 11), François Hartog (2003;
2015) and Sarah Sharma (2014) have emphasised the plurality and diversity
of times simultaneously present in the contemporary world, providing an
overview of the modern experience but from an angle that captures the vari-
ability of this experience. In this scenario appears Johannes Fabian’s germinal
work Time and the Other (1983), which uses an anthropological perspective to
indicate how time constructs borders and cultural differences. In this regard,
differentiated temporal patterns are constituted.
Within this framework comes the following picture: (a) the lack of dia-
logue between the two approaches fosters the understanding of time as a
paradoxical phenomenon; (b) this leads to understand the homogenisation
and diversification of modern times inside a more comprehensive concept of
temporal regimes (Chapter 1). What we gain is an approach to understanding
the temporal constitution of contemporary societies and their frictions. And
this paradox has a privileged place in the observation of the political and
 Introduction 3

technological development through which, (c) on the one hand, the multicul-
tural encounter allows for a decentralised, pluriversal and multiple experience
of time that can be rendered in political terms (Chapter 2) and, on the other
hand, old spatio-temporal barriers are narrowed, homogenising a global
society via technological devices (Chapter 3). For the latter, a notion of tem-
poral regime holds a central place, to the extent that the structure of time as
a homogeneous-general trend is grasped, while in parallel enables the exist-
ence of more than one temporal logic. In others words, by using the concept
of temporal regimes, it is possible to grasp the compression of old spatio-
temporal barriers and its homogenising global society factor, on the one hand,
as well as the multicultural clash that initiates a decentralised, pluriversal and
multiple experience of time, on the other hand (Chapter 4 and Conclusions).
In short, this work focuses on the study of temporal processes in contem-
porary societies from a theoretical viewpoint. More specifically, it explores the
paradoxical situation of temporal phenomena that are homogenised through
the proliferation of global technological mechanisms related to the econom-
ical process that triggers universal cultural patterns and diversified through
an archetypal global society that encourages cultural exchange, pluralism,
autonomy and cosmopolitanism, along respect of the difference minorities
within liberal democratic values, giving rise to an endless number of poten-
tial temporalities coexisting. For the latter consideration, I take as a starting
point that modernity is an historical moment characterised by the coexistence
of divergent, even contradictory, cultural flows (the simultaneity of the non-
simultaneous).2 Georges Gurvitch was one of the first thinkers to introduce
the idea of multiple times. In The Spectrum of Social Time (1964) particularly
in the section titled “Varieties of Social Time”, he describes eight temporal
types by which the diverse manifestations of time can be expressed in a socio-
historical manner. These different types grasp social temporal structures
as well as their structuring and structured3 character. In the present work,
I opt to classify the temporal varieties as regimes. As I develop the concept
in more detail further on (Chapter 1), there are two main reasons for this
decision: (1) first, temporal phenomena are structured, meaning that they are
outcomes of contingent social processes as well as goal-oriented efforts to
govern and control social life; and (2) the variety of temporal phenomena are
not just circumscribed to groups but it also envelop historical processes which
make the categories of use an emergent phenomena with regularities along
disruptions. Therefore, the workability of the term regime resides in at least
two main conditions: on the one hand, regime is related to particular repeti-
tive and stable conditions that constitute a unity that envelops a homogeneity
within regular patterns in which time is involved. For instance, as I will show,
regularities as linear conceptions of time with evolutionary perspectives and
secularised conceptions in history create conditions for a regime of time in
terms of progress. Instead, perspectives about possible futures and human
incidence on the fate of history make possible a political temporal regime in
4 Introduction

terms of utopia (Chapter 4). On the other hand, as mentioned above, the con-
cept of regime has the potential to account for more than one stable pattern.
In this sense, various regimes can be analysed as homogeneities simultan-
eously interacting with each other. Consequently, we can identify patterns of
‘acceleration’ coexisting with ‘slow food’ movements or decelerated pandemic
contexts; measurable-standardised global clock-time in parallel with sacred,
mystic and non-rational temporal perspectives; ‘futurist’ environmental care
stances with ‘presentist’ economic concerns; urban rhythms with rural paces;
as well as times differentiated by gender groups, job occupation or between
generations.
Hence temporal regimes are not obvious or self-evident. For this reason, a
specific study of the dominant as well as the less powerful temporal structures
becomes necessary. Perspectives on time and its uses, concepts, experiences
and practices are gaining attention since the necessity to ‘understand our
times’ spawn inquiries about the future of Anthropocene, Bioethics or Global
Warming. Considering the future, expectations involve several social fields
crossing temporal concepts and practices. Rather than provide a specific def-
inition about what time is, such approaches are less oriented to time itself
than focused in what are the conditions for particular temporal conceptions
and experiences within theoretical explanations and material practices. Time
is less an object by itself than a precise approach to reach explanations about
the historical moment and to determine its characteristics on socio-political
terms at a local and global level. Thus, this work attempts to thematise
perspectives on time in a large scale.
There is a furnished number of theories about social and cultural time in
contemporary scholarship (Adam 1990; Elias 1992; Osborne 1995; Stiegler
1998; Koselleck 2000; 2004; Nowotny 2005; Rosa 2013b; Sharma 2014;
Wajcman 2015). In all those works, social time is revered as crucial con-
cept. However, all these works do not deal with time in ‘itself’, but rather
with how several phenomena are related to time in an indivisible manner.
In other words, time is not a problem to deal with ‘directly’, but as a social
configuration that affects socio-historical conditions. In this sense, time-
related meanings settle the background that influences social and cultural
processes throughout epistemologies, politics or technologies constituting
specific materialities. Accordingly, time is a conceptual point of convergence
for different fields which connects them and differentiates them concurrently.
Now, in what sense does time connect different spheres? Does it mean that
time is a ‘bound’ for homogenising? The short answer is yes and no. Time
works as a crucial condition for almost every aspect from lifespan to cos-
mogonies about the universe. This might be called the global or homogeniser
level by which macro discourses describe and influence general perspectives
throughout several fields on contemporary history. Among those tenden-
cies, it is possible to point out the emergence of a global standardised time,
processes of acceleration, linear perspectives about history such as progress
 Introduction 5

or evolution and time–space compression. But also mechanism of distinction

between regions labelled as ‘developed’ vs ‘developing countries’ or ‘first’ and
‘third’ world. Such distinctions are related to non-neutral judgments about
evolution stages on the universal history in terms of forward and backward-
ness levels.
However, on the other hand, every field has its own regime. While every
subject relates to general waves, they are at the same time highly structured
by their own conditions, stabilising mechanisms of differentiation. Therefore,
another tendency characterised by the emergence of plural, diverse, cosmo-
politan and democratic values is also possible to be identified. In this sense,
each tendency towards homogenisation always deals with diversifications.
Time is settled up differently whether we are in the ‘East’ or ‘West’, ‘North’
or ‘South’, and also it depends on social class, age group (Altergott 1990;
Droit-Volet 2019; Schilling 2020), gender (Stier and Lewin-Epstein 2000;
Sayer 2005; Arber and Chatzitheochari 2012) or political preferences (Pierson
2004; Coffé 2017). These characteristics indicate a heterogeneous constitution
of temporal reality which paradoxically goes along with a homogenised one.
To sum up, I propose to explain how this paradox can be described as
relations between, and inside, temporal regimes. This notion furnishes the
social and cultural studies of time with a temporal scheme that, on the one
hand, allows the observation of regularities that the very idea of regime
presupposes as a set of rules governing a given field regarding homogeneity.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, pinpoints the coexistence of regularities that
do complement and oppose each other. The latter is relevant in order to con-
sider the regimes heterogeneity and their political implications in terms of
frictions and power struggles.

Temporal regimes relevance

Social sciences and humanities have described time in many ways. It is not
necessary to repeat a long list of major thinkers that have dealt with the notion
of time. To mention a few, during the last century, Henri Bergson (2013),
Edmund Husserl (1928; 2006) and Martin Heidegger (2006 [1927]; 2019)
have developed crucial theories on the issue from a philosophical point of
view. In many ways, more contemporary contributions inherited those philo-
sophical perspectives trying to go beyond them. Those efforts cross various
fields, studying the relationships between technics and time (Stiegler 1998;
Birth 2012); the social composition of times (Adam 1990; Nowotny 2005);
the studies upon modern temporal concepts from a socio-political perspective
(Blumenberg 1974; 1983; 1986; Koselleck 2004); and, more recently, the con-
temporary high-speed quality of society (Virilio 1986; Rosa and Scheuerman
2009; Rosa 2010, 2012, 2013b; Glezos 2012, 2020). All these influential
approaches have been digging directly over temporal characteristics. They
have paid attention to specific aspects of time that have emerged mainly in the
6 Introduction

Western world during the last two centuries and they can be extensible today
in a global fashion. From temporal logics affected by technics, or historical
acceleration processes crossed by socio-historical conditions (capitalism, mod-
ernism, rationalisation), until Christian aspects inherited by current notions
of time in Western societies, all those efforts for grasping temporal modalities
are meaningful but insufficiently interconnected until now. How are technics
and rationalisation related to acceleration? Does a Christian notion of time
support or deny critical ideas about modernity? Should scholarship consider
the temporal regimes as a pivotal point for any socio-historical knowledge?4
What might social theory gain from a temporal regimes’ perspective?
A starting point for answering these questions is to provide a minimal con-
cept tying all the phenomena in which temporal dynamics might be involved.
This concept is founded in a contra-intuitive notion of materiality of time.
As I will show (Chapters 1 and 2), temporal regimes are incorporated (and,
indeed, ‘embodied’) in social practices to such extent that they serve to
settle almost every aspect of the individual and collective lifespan, i.e., via
institutions that take care of individuals during their lifetime by age (nursery,
kindergarten, schooling, workplace, senior-home). A material time regards
with the path of living. The distribution of life itself can then be described as
a political matter and as a field of struggles consequently. A few examples can
illustrate this point.
Without being exhaustive here (more details are presented in Chapter 2),
various studies pinpoint the gender gap in time distribution. The time experi-
ence by women and men is significantly different, particularly regarding the
orientation of their ‘own’ time. As several influential works have demonstrated
(Davies 1990; Leccardi and Rampazi 1993; Massey 1994), women perceive
their time as a time-for-others, regarding carefulness and donation (even sacri-
fice) to relatives, partners, friends; while men usually relate their time to public
spheres, goals, achievements, social life and (formal) employment. Both have
also specificities by social class, age and educational levels, demonstrating
that their ‘own-time’ is the result of their social positions and cultural (mis)
recognition. Hence, time is socially distributed and cannot be separated from
an intersectional analysis. Time is not alien to a material social assignation
and reproduction of privileges, disadvantages, distinctions and status.
Along with criticising the ‘white-men’ temporality, Doreen Massey (1994)
was one of the scholars who questioned the time–space compression thesis
(Warf 2008) as a universal, ‘white’ ‘upper-middle class’ phenomenon. She
was in tune with the ‘spatial turn’ (Soja 1989) that claimed for a more pol-
itical engaged theoretical primacy of the local, territorial and embodied
within social and cultural studies. By emphasising geographical distributions,
they claim a new status for the spatial. During the 1970s and 1980s, a group
of influential texts on the rescuing the role of the space in social and cul-
tural studies composed what was called the ‘spatial studies’ (Lefebvre 1991;
Appadurai 1996). In this first ‘spatial turn’, there was a critic on the ontological
 Introduction 7

primacy of abstract non-material Western notions such as time in the Western

humanities and social sciences (Lyman and Marvin 1967; Jakle 1971), espe-
cially through the influence of philosophers like Henri Bergson (2013 [1889]),
Edmund Husserl (1928) and Martin Heidegger (2006 [1927]). They were
claiming basically for another kind of cultural studies with a more material
and embodied fashion that may contribute to politicise the social-dominant
analysis on time. They founded their criticism within an invigorated status of
space instead of time. However, during the early 1990s and 2000s there was a
revival for studies focused upon time thanks to Conceptual History, especially
within the work of Reinhart Koselleck (2004) on the temporal constitution
of Modernity, its socio-political role (Blumenberg 1983; Osborne 1995) as
well as the circulation and mobility speed (Castells 1996; Bauman 2000; Urry
2000) and the idea of geographies of temporality (May and Thrift 2001).
Contesting this impulse, another space studies revival emerged within the
works on sociology of space (Löw 2016). Nowadays, though, we are facing
a renewed temporal studies fascination nurtured by the increasing interest
on acceleration (Glezos 2012; 2020; Rosa 2013b; Vostal 2016), time and
technology (Wajcman 2015), especially on the temporal outcomes fostered
by digitalisation and automation (Benanav 2020). This revival may have its
raison d’être in the fact that time envelops almost every life aspect: from indi-
vidual (ageing, scheduling, programming life) to collective milieus. Faraway
of being abstract, time is an everyday, embodied life sphere. Probably Borges
was right when he stated that

we die and we are born every day. We are continually being born and
dying. That is why the problem of time touches us more than any other
metaphysic problem. Because the others are abstract. Time is our problem.
(1998: 138)

Furthermore, another related aspect of dealing with time in different

practical phenomena is apparent. Today, there are several fields linking
politics to ‘life’ in general, involving its production and reproduction. This
concept is currently understood as biopolitics (Foucault 2004; Rose 2006).
Biopolitics envelops diverse spheres of life, including the time setting. It is
not the case that time is something external that affects natural, societal and
singular phenomena, but rather time ‘in itself’ is the matter by which they are
conceived: ranging from calculating the time for production and reproduction
of life – both natural and artificial resources wired (in a timber plantation, for
instance) – until the partitioning of life stages (where each age or lifetime is
associated with education systems, pension, unemployment, security), time
works as material dimension of the governing over life. Temporal regimes
reject an abstract principle by which it is conceived merely as a ‘form of intu-
ition’ or as an objective and transcendental horizon. Instead, as I will develop
in more detail in Chapter 2, all socio-historical processes involved stand
8 Introduction

out their temporal material condition. Therefore, a new perspective on tem-

poral regimes emerges as a consistent research programme deserving further
investigation.

Regimes meaning
As previously mentioned, temporal regimes are not considered a mere
abstract and non-spatialised or non-embodied reality but as a dimension that
could be perceived in several material phenomena. The regime notion plays a
major role in social studies. The utility of the term regime resides in two main
conditions: firstly, regime grasps particular repetitive and stable conditions
that constitute a unity. This unity triggers a homogeneity where temporal
regular patterns take place. For instance, regularities as linear conceptions of
time, with evolutionary perspectives and secularised conceptions in history,
create conditions for a temporal regime in terms of progress. Perspectives
about possible futures and human incidence on the fate of history com-
pose a utopian temporal regime, and both of them furnish the socio-political
underpinnings for temporal regimes of acceleration. Secondly, the concept of
regime has the potential to consider more than one regular pattern. It enables
one to think simultaneously of various regimes as homogeneities interacting
with each other.
In an influential work published in 2003 titled Régimes d’historicité,5 the
French historian François Hartog developed a theory of history in which
the regimes concept is located in a crucial place. In the preface of the book,
the author states the reasons that support his use of the term ‘regimes’ along
‘historicity’. Related to ‘regimes’, Hartog’s definition follows the Greek con-
ception of the term linked to a regulation oriented to a dietary pattern.
A regime creates particular habits or structures in life in order to get a specific
result. In this sense, Hartog’s use of the term regime is closer to the meaning
of discipline. Hartog’s notion of regime provides a useful tool for comprehend
historical graduated, mixed and composed stabilisations. Not just in terms
of order but in the sense of how to organise historical schemes in several
layers. However, more precisely, these layers are tied to temporal assumptions
in structural terms. This turns necessary to deal with a temporal dimension
not as an object by itself, but rather to what extent sociocultural conditions,
conceptions, practises and epistemologies were established and successfully
interconnected, developing identifiable temporal structures, dispositions and
dominant frames of understanding. I have called these multiplicity temporal
regimes in order to specify those conditions that shape the current historical
temporal fashion.
Beyond Hartog, I use the notion of regime in a broader sense and in a
slightly different way. The concept of regimes has the potential of compos-
ition, but at the same time is something else. Following Hartog, a regime
stabilises analytically what is diverse but, in parallel, sets up different layers of
 Introduction 9

time according to one scheme that tends to forget the complexity inside every
regime. In this sense, the diversity of temporal structures has to be considered
as a pivotal point of its own constitution, which is precisely what is missed by
Hartog’s regimes. The mixture to which it is alluded, it is focused mostly on
the three traditional categories of time (past, present, future) which are neces-
sary but insufficient. The concept needs a further step in order to encom-
pass phenomena that are configured in a strong manner by in-between times,
even when they are composed by the traditional categories of time. To some
extent, regimes of historicity drifted by Hartog are more related to temporal
regimes than history in itself. However, this temporal dimension is not suffi-
cient if it is considered just in terms of past, present and future. More pre-
cisely, it is necessary to understand how different temporal regimes overlap
between each other but also inside of them. This different approach provides
an improved manner for dealing with unities of regimes and their multi-
plicity. This is because a temporal regime is a nucleus of unity constituted
by homogeneous tendencies (or tendencies for homogenisation) that creates
stable conditions for mixtures among past, present and future, also providing
conditions for one dominance in terms of linearity or circularity, presentism
or futurism, accelerations or decelerations. In addition, diverse regimes are
present simultaneously.6 This means that every material aspect of regimes can
be described by several patterns simultaneously since not just one single tem-
poral regime is involved. Either way, the need for research work is fully justi-
fied in order to identify what regimes are dominant and how they articulate
with others. In Chapter 1, I deal in more detail with both concepts in Hartog’s
approach on regimes of historicity from an interpretative and critical fashion
in order to clarify what is useful from them as well as what are the differences
with a theory of temporal regimes.
In this context, the following work relates at least three relevant aspects
of the temporal sphere: (1) to conceptualise temporal regimes exploring
their historical conformation (Chapter 1), keeping in mind their rele-
vance and consequences in two main fields: on the one hand, (2) the pol-
itical underpinnings of temporal categories (Chapter 2) and, on the other
hand, (3) technological and scientific contemporary impact on temporal
characteristics (Chapter 3). Then (4) I will provide some examples on how
a temporal regime is constituted by concepts regarding temporal, but also
political notions of progress, utopia and acceleration, a regime is constituted
towards the future (Chapter 4). This will be an example about how a tem-
poral regime does not have just political implications but also a whole sway
in shaping history. At the end, (5) I summarise the general outcomes of the
present study addressing its main contributions as well as questions about the
current situation of temporal homogenisation on par with heterogeneous tem-
poral manifestations (Conclusions).
For several reasons, I decide to explore the political and technological
spheres in this work as a matter of temporal regimes interest. In the first place,
10 Introduction

the political dimension is particularly relevant since other different aspects

of social life are incorporated in it. This is the case when we have to refer
to economical, aesthetical or religious dimensions: all of them have political
stances, or they develop different aspects of the social life that are discussed
in political terms. In other words, the political dimension is transversal to
every potential social dimension. This omnipresence of the political, some-
times explicit, other times less visible, makes politics an unavoidable sphere
for current analysis in reference to temporal studies. In addition, even though
one could think that the political has never gone (Schedler 1997; Carswell
2012), it is also true that there is a new impulse for politics in the public
sphere (Mouffe 2005; Marchart 2007). Since the socio-historical process
and its further developments evolve from the political, this sort of revival
is also a matter that deserves advanced investigation. It is in this sense that
the political renderings of temporal norms hold a central stance for this pro-
ject. Having as a starting point that every crucial concept is also a political
one, temporal regimes must involve a political aspect as well. The temporal
patterns are not neutral and they shape the historical course in several ways.7
Other dimensions of social life as economics can be integrated into the pol-
itical analysis, since every economical decision is also a political one. In any
case, the work of time in economics has already been thoroughly discussed
in a variety of academic publications highlighting the fact that the temporal
use of economics is also a political decision more than an apparent technical
aspect (Garrison 2001; Tellmann 2017; Adkins 2018). In a nutshell,

[f]rom the development of chronometric instruments and the conscious-

ness of time -as from that of money and other instruments of social
integration- it is possible to read off with considerable accuracy how the
division of functions, and with it the self-control imposed on individuals,
advances.
(Elias 2000: 380)

Thus, the introduction of techniques on regulating time also has

consequences in the way that individuals organise their collective and
personal lives. In this regard, time measures provoke temporal norms over
social coordination sparking consequently dispositions to the self-control on
the individual level. The relevance for temporal regimes studies is another way
to shed light on the life forms government (Jaeggi 2018), their distribution
and articulation.
Actually, even more generally, every rendering upon our times, the
course of history or the orientation of the future is also a political project.
I develop the temporalisation of history as politisation of temporal regimes in
Chapter 2. There, I expose the implications of an historical consciousness for
the onset and fate of current history. Since waves of secularisation introduced
lay renderings of history, the discussion about the course of the world was
 Introduction 11

opened up to almost every possibility, expelling the pleadings about the des-
tiny of time from merely religious and lineage circles. From then on, every
stance on the way in which history should go could be considered a political
one. One of the strongest mottos for a politicisation of every potential his-
torical project is the modern idea that the world is not fulfilled and, more
importantly, that its destiny is not defined. The latter is connected with the
next field of study.
The other aspect that was selected is technology because its high level of
development influences temporal regimes decisively. This should be briefly
introduced. Technics employ is not a novelty as such: its merely use does
not constitute any change with respect to previous epochs. Then, it is not
the increased presence of technics/technologies what is unique, but the way
in which it is used nowadays and its consequent influence over temporal
experiences. Neither technology nor politics constitute a temporal regime as
such (or not more than the body, memory, aesthetics, religion and so on), but
they organise processes which shape time heavily in several ways. When an
extended lifespan value envelops the possibility to stretch out the lifetime, it
sparks one specific temporal regime regarding technology. In this sense, tech-
nology fosters a temporal regime that unleashes possibilities for an extended
lifespan. This is the case when a lifetime extension is at the core of the bio-
medical experiments or health research. The use of technology modifies the
expectations on the lifespan because it presents the opportunity for something
desirable: an extended life. In this regard, arguable theoretical approaches
can be pointed out. The current version of transhumanism, which is self-
conceived as “… a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation
and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its current human
form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by
life-promoting principles and values” (Moore 2009; my italics). Within this
statement becomes clear that the technology use is a matter of life promo-
tion, although the definition of ‘life’ or the life that ‘deserves to be lived’ is still
unclear. For this transhumanist movement, one thing is taken for granted,
what is the unquestioned attempt to prolong the onset of ageing. According
to their manifesto, they perceive themselves as

[t]he intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and
desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through
applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available
technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual,
physical, and psychological capacities.
(Moore 2009; my italics.)

Consequently, the use of technology is not just a way for making life easier
and better but also a manner to lengthen it. Here, technology shall not be
understood in a narrow sense. There is one technology aspect regarding the
12 Introduction

design and use of machines, such as physical devices. This is one relevant
aspect of their use. However, there is another virtual dimension linked to
social technologies such as bureaucracies, measurements and automation.
They deal with the accountability of populations and with the administration
process in a rational way. They also contribute to the governmentality and the
contemporary societies frame.
Even when it is not possible to say that these two approaches to politics and
technology sell out the explanations about current historical context, they
definitely stress some of the most avant-garde areas in which time deserves to
be analysed nowadays. On the one hand, what have been called ‘politics of
time’ (Osborne 1995; Davis 2008; Hutchings 2008) considering the impact in
social life conditions of temporal notions (acceleration, presentism, utopia,
dystopia); and, on the other hand, the time technologies lying at the very tem-
poral process basis such as the aforementioned automation, digitalisation and
the ‘time-space compression’.

The temporal regimes approach

From this point onwards, temporal regimes may appear as a quasi-
independent dimension through which almost every sociocultural aspect
might be explained. A reply on this is that temporal regimes are certainly not
the definitive character that explains the entire social order, but rather an out-
come of the sociocultural configuration that shed light on some undeveloped
temporal thematisation. Temporal regimes are a micro–macro dimension that
may catch every social level, but first as consequence and then triggering other
outcomes as ‘causes’ (Chapter 4). If everything depends on temporal regimes,
there is a reductionism with no room either for politics or capitalism. In a
different way, I understand a temporal research as a frame. Politics, as well as
capitalist, religious or scientific stances, suppose temporal logics that tend to
organise social life in forms that excluding others.
I decided to avoid the term ‘modern’ for the classification of temporal
regimes since ‘modernity’ restricts its scope to other historical contexts. In
a way, modernity can be considered as a temporal regime by itself, but not
every temporal regime is modern. This means that modernity is an histor-
ical moment where progress plays a major role, but I cannot say that a tem-
poral regime such as progress is applicable just to modernity. In other words,
current socio-political ideas on progress emerge in modernity, but their use
can be applied as an historical category to potentially any process framed as
an ‘improvement’ in social conditions, regardless whether it takes place within
modernity or not. Thus, even when progress has a historical modern develop-
ment as concept, it can be used as methodological term (even anachronistic),
without neglecting its current modern background.
Furthermore, modernity is a sociological concept involving characteristics
such as rationalisation, secularisation (Weber), functional differentiation
 Introduction 13

(Durkheim), individualisation (Simmel), instrumentalisation (Marx) and

industrialisation (Giddens), all of them triggering a temporal acceleration
(Rosa). Then, modernity is a concept that makes the temporal regimes speci-
ficity difficult to grasp. To put it differently, to say that they are ‘modern’ does
not explain their particular character. The preference to name them just as
temporal regimes seeks to avoid a restrictive use to one specific period allowing
its utility to other historical epochs. Notwithstanding, the present work focuses
in contemporary historical times by reasons of extension. And time.
At the beginning of his book Liquid Modernity (2000), Zygmunt Bauman
stated,

[w]hile solids have clear spatial dimensions but neutralise the impact,
and thus downgrade the significance, of time (effectively resist its flow
or render it irrelevant), fluids do not keep to any shape for long and are
constantly ready (and prone) to change it; and so for them it is the flow of
time that counts, more than the space they happen to occupy.
(2000: 2–3)

The last quotation sparks the primacy of time for an analysis of the con-
temporary epoch. Due to the impossibility of maintaining the ‘sameness’ in
frenetic current times, the space is not the most relevant aspect for a socio-
logical study: it becomes necessary to adapt the analytical categories in
order to grasp the changing reality. If this quote is valid and current times
are characterised by increasing modifications, then time becomes an espe-
cially relevant aspect of the current historical process. Temporal patterns are
not acquiring relevance by themselves, but rather in tune with the contem-
porary phenomena of ‘cutting the chains’ that tie social processes to specific
spaces and territories in favour of despatialising and deterritorialising social
dimensions. I develop these ideas in more detail in Chapter 3. For now, and
echoing Rosa’s words on the studies of the temporal patterns of society, it
deserved to be mentioned that,

the cogency of the fundamental reflections underlying this work [Social

Acceleration] cannot be tested by means of a unified, closed method-
ology, because there is no method of empirical social research that can
simultaneously grasp the interrelated theoretical observations concerning
structures, actions, and subjects as well as the complexity of the differ-
ently scaled temporal structures and perspectives.
(2013b: 24–25)

Towards temporal regimes

As shown above, many scholars in social sciences and humanities have
conceived time as a crucial concept in contemporary societies. It is well known
14 Introduction

that philosophy often thematises it, but history and social sciences are increas-
ingly interested in considering such diverse socio-historical aspects that tem-
poral categories contain on several levels. The list is as long as it is diverse.
The structure of time at work and how it determines the distribution of living
time with relatives or friends can be related to different backgrounds defined
by gender, social class and age. The material aspect of time can be grasped
when the subjects realise that “[f]or life, time is a medium that makes itself
felt as reality to the extent of its withdrawal or scarcity under the pressure and
tension of the world’s supply” (Blumenberg 1986: 240).8
In another vein the environmental impact of economy and pollution in
several areas creates conditions for a new age that some people have called
Anthropocene and its consequences for global warming have emphasised the
discussion about the future(s). Human beings and their capitalist mode of
production have changed geological process turning the Anthropocene as an
example of the historical times consequences in nature and environmental
spheres. In Chapter 2, I will develop further the historical times idea in more
detail. Through it, history is tied to the internal movements of human action
and nothing ‘external’ such as a final telos or goddess will. In this sense, the
society production is a re-signified human condition, becoming fundamental
to the mastery of nature and society itself. The geological stage today is a
direct outcome of this claim to agency over the fate of history.9 As a result of
conceiving the world as shaped by human history, the historical conscience
develops technological, economic and political discourses spawning an impact
without precedents in the global sphere, particularly in the world time.10
Last but not least, it is important to point out that this is not a work on the
experience of time, neither an attempt to inquire a sort of list of temporal pos-
sible experiences. For the first case, exhaustive fieldwork study must be neces-
sary and for which there is already milestone samples in various fields (gender,
economics, social classes). Such fieldwork requires huge financial support that
is not easy to reach in a doctoral stage (when I wrote this monograph). It
is therefore beyond the scope of this present work. In the second case, this
book would not truly take care of the commonalities that temporal regimes
suppose. In a nutshell, this research seeks to conceptualise temporal structures
that shape political and cultural current processes. To develop a study on
temporal regimes within society is to provide a clue for such aspects that are
interlinked through temporalities and thus to supply a basis for understanding
their coordination as synchronies, durations and ruptures or, conversely, what
makes hard to mix them up when they are not directly imbricated.

Notes
1 For a criticism on Harvey’s argument, see Postone, Moishe. “Theorizing the
Contemporary World: Robert Brenner, Giovanni Arrighi, David Harvey” in Rob
Albritton et al. (2007: 7–24).
 Introduction 15

2 This is the well-known description of Ernst Bloch’s idea of the Gleichzeitigkeit

des Ungleichzeitigen that is used afterwards by Reinhart Koselleck to describe the
history of the Modern History as a whole. For a brief overview on the concept,
see Mauro Basaure (2018) https://krisis.eu/non-simultanity-of-the-simultaneous/.
Accessed August 12, 2019.
3 It results interesting that this could be an antecedent of the well-known descrip-
tion of Pierre Bourdieu according to which habitus and campus are understood as
structures, structuring and structured. Bourdieu investigates time and practice in a
systematic manner at least in Pascalian Meditations, particularly in “Social Being,
Time and the Sense of Existence” (2000); in The Logic of Practice (1990), specif-
ically, Part 6 “The Work of Time”; and in “The Attitude of the Algerian Peasant
Towards Time” (1963).
4 This is the case of Barbara Adam in Time and Social Theory (1990). She conceives
time as a crucial aspect for social theorists and what they usually avoid. Even
though this is a very reasonable sentence, it is still possible to ask if this downfall
is reducible to just social theory or, in a wider sense, to any branch of knowledge.
5 Considering its relevance to the field, the English version was published with some
delay just in 2015. Translated by Saskia Brown Regimes of Historicity (2015). For
functional reasons, I am alternatively working with both the French and English
versions of the book.
6 In two influential papers, one appeared as introduction to the special issue on
Multiple Temporalities published by History and Theory in 2014 titled “Introduction.
Multiple Times and the Work of Synchronization” and another called “Against
Periodization: Koselleck’s Theory of Multiple Temporalities” History and Theory
51 (2012) Helge Jordheim argues that necessary new approaches to social sciences
and humanities can provide proper concepts for time analyses, particularly related
to multiplicity of temporalities and synchronies.
7 It is always possible to say the reverse: temporal patterns are constantly influenced
by historical conditions. But such a discussion does not deny the temporal factor.
Far from reducing the relevance of temporal structures, it emphasises its presence
and influence. And this is the very purpose of the present book.
8 “Für das Leben ist die Zeit ein Medium, das sich als Realität bemerkbar macht
im Maße seines Entzuges oder seiner Verknappung unter Druck und Zug des
Weltangebots” (Blumenberg 1986: 240).
9 Along with this, it must be mentioned that such a perspective, as Actor–Network–
Theory (ANT) in which Bruno Latour and Michael Callon are two of the most
relevant exponents, brings some useful analytical tools in order to conceive a
symmetric point of view between human production and nature. Considering the
results of the impact, both environmental and societal, this approach does not
seem to be wrong.
10 Even though there are affordable questions about the notion of ‘Anthropocene’
especially with its indication to the Anthropos (Who are the Anthropos?
Humankind? Does the entire humanity have the same relevance? Is it possible to
say that there is just an Anthropos or, more precisely, a global economic system
beyond?), it seems unquestionable that current human societies received strong
influence on environment and nature, and that this contributes to a new perspec-
tive on time and history particular to what to expect or what is to come (as well as
what kind of futures are possible and how the past can be re-interpreted).
16 Introduction

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