Homogenous, Empty Time – Zeynep Biyikli
Homogenous, empty time is a term coined by Walter Benjamin in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” This term refers to the conception of time as continuous and uniform, stretching linearly. It is homogenous in that we imagine every piece of time has the same weight, same value, and same potential. It is empty in that there is a lack of meaningful content or significance for each moment. Time passes, and people fill it with contingent content, so time is a container without an inherent meaning. Benjamin argues that this is our dominant way of conceptualizing time, and we have been indoctrinated into existing in this structure. According to Benjamin, this concept of time serves the interests of oppressive power structures, as it blurs ruptures in history. It is a product of a capitalist imaginary that benefits from controlling the narrative of history. Benjamin’s alternative to this way of thinking is in “messianic time,” which conceptualizes time as nonlinear and marked by “ruptures,” or revolutionary moments. This is also in conversation with Joe Zadeh’s idea of clock time, something we have created and it is frequently altered and adjusted to fit social and political purposes. In “The Tyranny Of Time,” Zadeh states the division of time into identical units, not only established a valuable infrastructure for capitalism but also interconnected time with money, enabling the commodification, compression, and global imposition of economic practices on the conversion of bodies, labor, and goods into value. In line with EP Thompson’s idea of time discipline, as time became a commodity under capitalism, time must be used productively, by creating commodities. All days stretch in the past and future, equally fillable with our labor for the production of commodities, empty and homogenous.
Bibliography
Benjamin, W. (n.d.). On the Concept of History.
Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Past & Present, 38(38), 56-97. https://doi.org/10.1093/past/38.1.56
Zadeh, J. (2021, June 3). The Tyranny Of Time. https://www.noemamag.com/the-tyranny-of-time
