Jason del Gandio – The coming-temporality: A time for revolution

This essay outlines a mode of temporality that establishes conditions for the possibility of political revolution. Jason del Gandio takes his initial cue from Giorgio Agamben’s book, The Coming Community.

In that work Agamben explores a political mode of existence that (a) claims no fixed or fixable identity, (b) proposes no fixed political agenda or ideology, (c) self-organizes according to its impulse toward ever-increasing “democratic” relations and, as such, (d) excludes the very possibility of State governance, thus (e) positing the possibility of political revolution. Agamben’s theory, while keen in many ways, never investigates the temporality of this coming community. I address that concern here by exploring some interrelated questions. For instance, at what time does this community arrive or come to fruition? Also, what is the temporal structure of this community? That is, how does time function as an experiential-political structure within this mode of existence? And last, how might the temporality of this community either advance or impede the possibility of revolution? This essay answers these questions not by expounding upon Agamben’s own thinking, but rather, by beginning where Agamben leaves off: with a theory of “the coming-temporality” explicated through the concepts of non-arrival, hyper-adaptability, spatiality, disruption, and revolution.

1. Non-arrival and hyper-adaptability

We must first understand that the coming community is non-teleological; it does not desire, does not exist according to, and is not driven by the accomplishment of some end arrival point. There is no final destination of or completion to the coming community. Rather than arriving, the coming community only hints at its existence; it perpetually points toward without ever capturing its arrival. The coming community’s non-arrival is not a result of some inability to be realized—as if it’s good in theory but unachievable in practice. That’s not it at all. Instead, the coming community exists according to a different temporal structure—a structure of non-arrival: it never arrives. The coming community’s non-arrival is due to its perpetual and excessive adaptation; that is, it adapts not only to its surrounding situation, but also to its own adaptability, constituting a pure process of continual change and infinite variation. Such a process inherently excludes a time of capture, a final call, a fixed identity, or set political agenda. The coming community thus exists without “a final time of arrival”—i.e., it exists according to a time of non-arrival.

2. Temporality and spatiality

The coming community’s time of non-arrival must also involve an aspect of spatiality. This is because non-arrival is inherently related to hyper-adaptability, and hyper-adaptability must involve more than time—it must also involve the very space of adaptability. Adaptability cannot occur outside of, before, or after, but rather only within space. This temporal-spatial matrix results from the relationship between non-arrival and hyper-adaptability—we cannot have one without the other. For instance, the coming community’s acute adaptation is simultaneously non-arrival; to continuously adapt and vary is to never arrive. Hyper-adaptability and non-arrival are thus part and parcel of each other and co-constitute a time of and space for “the coming community.”

3. Disruption of time

The non-arrival and hyper-adaptability of the coming-temporality can be further characterized by disruption. This disruption occurs at three levels: (1) the disruption of linear and decentered notions of time, (2) the disruption of the temporal-based process of reification, and (3) the disruption of State governance.

First, the coming-temporality disrupts our two common understandings of time: the coming-temporality is not a linear unfolding and accumulation of personal and communal experience, and it is not a decentered series of ever-differentiating and eclipsing (non)representations that shift us from a previous time into a present time. Instead, the coming-temporality is characterized by a suspension from both linear and decentered time. For example, the coming temporality’s non-arrival is disconnected from any true temporal past or true temporal future; and its hyper-adaptability exists as a perpetual now-ness in relationship to a perpetual here-ness, with both the nowness and hereness forever changing. This “limbo-temporality” radically disrupts our common understanding and experience of time.

Second, the coming-temporality disrupts the temporal-based process of reification. Reification occurs over time: I experience something now; that experience is then abstracted from the immediate context; that abstraction is then essentialized and naturalized; and over time we come to “worship” that abstraction as if it really were essential, natural, and absolutely needed. The coming-temporality breaks the bonds of this process: it is not possible to reify something that never arrives and perpetually adapts.

And third, the coming-temporality disrupts the time of State governance. The coming-temporality’s non-arrival and hyper-adaptability resists all capture, representation, and reification. Such a mode of time not only complicates, but inherently excludes the possibility of State-governed structures. State governance is founded upon the reification of biopolitical hierarchies—i.e., the State controls and oversees the hierarchical power relationships among people living within specific social boundaries. Such management of relations is partially constituted through temporal reification: a power differential occurs now and is then re-instituted in succession. The possibility of State governance collapses without that temporal reification. The coming-temporality is removed from the temporal reification of State control. This helps constitute the coming community as non-governable.

4. Conclusion: A time for revolution

The coming-temporality posits a time of and for revolution. At one level, this coming-temporality counters the time of State governance—a type of political contradistinction ripe for conflict. But at a deeper level, the coming-temporality is simply non-governable. If this is true, then the coming-temporality accurately depicts the revolutionary nature of Giorgio Agamben’s coming community. But more questions arise: How do we actually embody non-arrival and hyper-adaptability? How do we shift from State time to coming-time? How do we consciously remove ourselves from State-temporality? This essay has neither the time nor space to address such questions. Suffice it to say that such issues must involve a revolutionary methodology outlining not only the theoretical but also the strategical contours of and for the coming-temporality.

Further links

The ripe fruit of redemption (review)

Bush’s S20 and the Re-routing of American Order

Special issue: recent articles, time/governance
Tags: agamben, jason delgandio, non-linearity