The Plural Temporalities of Hegemony

Abstract

Louis Althusser’s critique of Gramsci’s “absolute historicism” involved the elaboration of a distinctive notion of plural historical temporalities or times. This argues, first, that Althusser’s theory of plural historical temporalities should be understood as integrally linked to his critique both of structuralism and of theories of the subject. Second, the essay argues that, Althusser’s early criticisms notwithstanding, Gramsci can be understood to have elaborated a consistently nonformalist notion of constitutive temporal plurality, particularly with his notion of “prevision” as a method of political work. Rather than culminating in a figure of temporal synchronization, hegemonic politics should instead be thought as a mode of intervention that valorizes rather than negates the “non-presence of the present,” or constitutive noncontemporaneity, as the fundamental condition of revolutionary politics.