Abstract
In this essay we return to Walter Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as outlined in his Theses on the Philosophy of History. Messianic time is read with Benjamin’s Sonnette as a “divestment” from historical time. That is, messianic time is a relinquishing of historical time’s formation of identities within late capitalism. Messianism represents that opening which whispers the possibility of bringing asymmetrical accumulation and subjective formation to a standstill. The aim of the essay is thus to push a rereading of Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as subjective divestment from historical time which in turn breaks the uneven distribution of time, accumulation, and the monetary value of market time at work in our current world of global finance.
Highlights
Flashboys, Michael Lewis narrates the complex ways in which our current moment within global finance capitalism in general, and the evolution of high-frequency trading (HFT) in particular, have compounded longstanding inequalities by refashioning both the time-value of money and the monetary value of time [3]
The aim of the essay is to press a rereading of Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as divestment from historical time which in turn breaks the uneven distribution of time, accumulation, and monetary value of market time at work in our current world of global finance in its packaging of forms of life
Revolutionary action is instead the disruption of history’s representation of time as continuum or a chain of events and the enclosing of selves into its actualizing force. Benjamin explicates this attack upon historical time by turning to the French Revolution, which, he states in Thesis §14 of the Begriff, was an idealist revolution in that it blew apart a history which presented itself as a
Summary
Flashboys, Michael Lewis narrates the complex ways in which our current moment within global finance capitalism in general, and the evolution of high-frequency trading (HFT) in particular, have compounded longstanding inequalities by refashioning both the time-value of money and the monetary value of time [3]. The aim of the essay is to press a rereading of Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as divestment from historical time which in turn breaks the uneven distribution of time, accumulation, and monetary value of market time at work in our current world of global finance in its packaging of forms of life. We will return to this below, but here I want to suggest that the opponent is historical time, that empty, homogenous time of capital, and what is at stake is the idea of progress and its production of a vested self —that form-of-life which historical time packages, values, speculates and leverages, and collects on the accrued interest or dumps and moves as loss Leading up to his penning of Über den Begriff der Geschichte in 1940, Benjamin increasingly concerned himself with the dire and inescapable nature of the present political situation in Germany Suicide carries with it the political potential to tear, disrupt, and act outside conscription. The desire to be disburdened and divested from time is the messianic longing of dying to the totalizing force of historical time and its logic of “progress”—of dying to the enclosure’s power of packaging the self
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