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Ulfried Reichardt
***
***
24Koselleck,Vergangene Zukunft60.
25Koselleck,
Vergangene Zukunft61.
zoKudolt Wendorit
correctly pointsout thatthe idea of a linearmovementof timealready
evolvedin earlyJudaism, and is,of course,linkedto the inventionof monotheism: "Now every
historicalsituationwas focusedon the one God, therewas no moreanonymity, no evasionand
no ... uncertaintyanymore.This fixationon the one instancebeyondall timesgiveseverysitu-
ation a religiousstatusand bringseverything intoone line,one axis of time"(Wendorff 26-29;
mytranslation). The hope fora future(of salvationor the returnof theMessiah) renderslinear
timea basicconceptionof existence.Eschatologicalthinking in Christianity
also presupposeslin-
ear time.Nevertheless, sucha lineartimewas notopen to humanaction.The futureand history
werenotyetconceivedof as something to be "made."
27Qtd. in
Adjaye,"Timein Africaand Its Diaspora" 5.
***
35AlaminMazrui and
Lupenga Mphande,"Time and Labor in Colonial Africa:The Case of
Kenyaand Malawi/Timein theBlack Experience, ed. Adyaje97-119;98.
36Mazruiand
Mphande,"Timeand Labor in ColonialAfrica"99.
37As JamesSnead
putsit: "In European culture,financialand productioncycleshave largely
supplantedtheconscioussortof naturalreturnin blackculture.The financialyearis theperfect
exampleof thissortof Hegelian subsumptionof developmentwithinstasis Capital hence
will not necessarilycirculatebut mustconsequentlyalso accumulateor diminishdependingon
the state of the firm"("Repetitionas Figureof Black Culture,"Black Literature and Literary
Theory,ed. HenryLouis Gates,Jr.[1984;New York:Routledge,1990] 59-79;66). That modern
societieswouldnotbe able to operatewithoutmoneyand investment in thefuturedoes not im-
ply thatit could not be otherwise;nevertheless,the modernglobalizedmarketis based on the
linkbetweentime,money,and thefuture.
***
43
Englishtranslationquoted in Snead 63. Compare Hegel's description-and dismissal-of
America,whichhe considersas beingoutsideof history as well.The reasonhere,however,is that
America is exclusivelyfocused on the future.Cf. his Vorlesungen ber die Philosophieder
Geschichte.
44FrantzFanon,Black Skin,WhiteMasks: The Experiencesof a Black Man in a WhiteWorld
(1952;New York:GrovePress,1967) 122.
451 have to leave out the
experienceof theAfricandiasporaoutsideof NorthAmerica.
46MichaelHanchard, Politics,and the AfricanDiaspora," Pub-
"Afro-Modernity:Temporality,
lic Culture27 (1999): 245-68;252-53.
47Hanchard256-57.
48UlrichBonnell
Philips,Life and Labor in the Old South (1929; Boston:Little,Brownand
Company,1963) 160.
49Hanchard
quotes a slave ownerin the U.S. South as havingsaid that"I have ever main-
tainedthe doctrinethatmynegroeshave no timewhatever;thattheyare alwaysliable to my
call withoutquestioningfora momentthepropriety of it;and I adhereto thegroundsof expedi-
encyand right"(qtd. in Hanchard255; he quotes MichaelJ.Mullin,Africain America:Slave Ac-
culturation
and Resistancein theAmericanSouthand theBritishCaribbean[Urbana:U of Illi-
noisP,1992]119).
50Hanchard263.
51WilliamFaulkner, Go Down,Moses (1942;New York:Vintage,1990) 344.
52MartinLuther
King,Jr.,WhyWeCan'tWait(New York:Harperand Row,1963).
Now is the timeto make real the promiseof democracy.... Now is the timeto lift
our nationalpolicyfromthe quicksandof racial injusticeto the solid rock of human
dignity."53Accordingly,one of the crucialaims of the Civil RightsMovementwas to
achievean autonomoususe of time,and thus,of the future. Aspirationsmustbe capa-
ble of beingrealized.Therewas to be an end of "imposedtime."54
But ideologicallyprojectedas well as enforcedsocial nonsynchronicity impliesa
basic paradox: every actual contactforcespersons to synchronizetheirindividual
"times,"particularlyin dialogue.As Thomas Luckmannwrites:"In immediateface-
to-facesocial interactionsthe social categoriesof timeprovideexternaltemporalset-
tings.But interactionstill The "location"of the pre-
requiresconstant'tuning-in.'"55
sentis dependenton a speaker's"now."Luckmannspeaks of "socializedintersubjec-
tivetime."56 Thus,temporaldistancingof AfricanAmericanswas alwaysundermined
by the synchronicity of intersubjective exchange.If intimatecontactunder slavery
was acceptable,as slaves were by definition unequal,afteremancipation, face-to-face
simultaneity could only be preventedby the pernicioussystemof segregation.As I
have alreadystated,equalitypresupposescontemporaneity and dialogue ratherthan
the observationof behaviorwhichis thenascribedto a previousand more primitive
time.
***
57Snead 60.
58For an
in-depthanalysisof theformsof timein music,see JonathanD. Kramer,The Timeof
Music: New Meanings,New Temporalities, New ListeningStrategies(New York: Macmillan/
Schirmer Books,1988).
59With Le Sacre du Printemps,whichhe discussesin the contextof the
regardto Stravinsky's
receptionof Africanartforms, Adorno reenforces his ascriptionof nonsynchronicityand of an
earlierstageof development: "The pressureof the reifiedbourgeoiscultureenforcesthe escape
intothe phantasmof nature,whichthenfinallyprovesto be the messengerof absoluteoppres-
sion.The aestheticnervestrembleto regressintothe stoneage" (TheodorW. Adorno,Philoso-
phiederneuenMusik[Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1978]137;hereas in all subsequentquotations
fromthiswork,thetranslation is mine).Repetitionand rhythm are thusseen as primitive,
"natu-
ral"and in contrastto an advancedand,mostimportantly, culture.
self-reflexive
60Snead 73.
61Adorno143.
62He writes:"Thereis not morebut ratherless rhythm thanwhereit is notfetishized,thatis,
onlydeferralsof theeversame and completelystatic. . . wheretheirregularity of thesame sub-
stitutesthenew"(143).
63Adorno himself and thusthe exem-
emphasizesthe relevanceof his critiqueof Stravinsky,
plarityof his thoughtforEuropean philosophicalaestheticswithregardto African-descended
expressiveforms, whenhe writes:"The close relationof thisstage of the ritualistic
in Stravin-
sky'smusicto thejazz whichbecame internationally popularat thistimeis evident.It reaches
and slave,black and whitebecome visible.77I wantto end on thisnote and stressthe
hybridityof theAmericanand,increasingly theEuropean,present.Anybeliefin a ho-
mogeneouslyprogressiveEuro-Americantime would be as reductiveas the belief
thatAfricanAmericanslive in a different, forexample,a cyclicaltime.Rather,what
we have is constantnegotiationas well as exchangebetweendifferent temporalities.
The timeof thepresent,thus,is renderedmultipleand intrinsically
manifold.78
**
77Nevertheless,
as I have arguedelsewhere,Bhabha'sconceptionof thetimelag remainsstatic
and does notcontaina clearlydelineatednotionof thefuture;see my"Hybridity, Time,and Re-
cursivity,"Proceedingsof theSymposium"HybridTexts, Gender,and Ethicsin Literary
Ethnicity,
and VisualWorlds"ed. ThrseSteffen(Tbingen:Stauffenbure, 2000) 13-21.
78Snead thereforecontends:"The outstanding factof late twentieth-century
Europeanculture
is its ongoingreconciliationwithblack culture.The mystery maybe thatit took so longto dis-
cerntheelementsof blackculturealreadytherein latentform,and to realizethattheseparation
betweenthecultureswas perhapsall alongnotone of nature,butone of force"(75).