Nietzschean time

In the Nietzschean world two concepts of time exist. The Chronos with which we are most familiar runs, so to speak, like clockwork. It is time captured, precisely engineered, sequenced and serving to record a teleology. The Aion, on the other hand, is that which works for all time. Moving to a different rhythm it is time unprogrammed into an inevitable sequence. It forces a rupture in the predictability of our present anticipations. Denying the time to come its comfort and security it poses a direct challenge to a future that has always already been preconceived. It is the Untimely. What necessarily follows is that those who operate along untimely lines do not come into focus through assimilation, conformity or proven fitness to any normalised calibration. On the contrary, their image is given an alternative light since they are the farthest away from any given point of equilibrium. In these terms the untimely do not only trouble the working order of things, but force an entirely new direction. When the aion is seen through the prism of the chronos it appears as rupture, as a break with established patterns and the future those patterns implied. It is as though the untimely carries its own timeline, its own worlds, we might even say that the emergence of the untimely is a worlding.


This Nietzschean concept of time has been given renewed force through the writings of Gilles Deleuze. Following Nietzsche, Deleuze suggests ‘we discover, as more profound than time and eternity, the untimely: philosophy is neither a philosophy of history, nor a philosophy of the eternal, but untimely, always and only untimely – that is to say, “acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come”’. Indeed not only does Deleuze revive the un-timeliness of Nietzsche but re-arms his future-becoming with a new revolutionary potential. The untimely for Deleuze, is that which is resistive and at the same moment truly creative: ‘In every modernity and every novelty, you find conformity and creativity; an insipid conformity, but also ‘a little new music’; something in conformity with the time, but also something untimely – separating the one from the other is the task of those who know how to love, the real destroyers and creators of our day’. Hence for Deleuze, since the real creators always appear like an unexpected bolt of light they are not part of history. Alternatively, we can see that they are both a-historical and trans-historical. Their revolutionary potential is open to all time.

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Creativity is produced through intensive differences, such as differences in speed. A body can be pulled out of its habitual patterns by an increase in speed but this can also be caused by an uncharacteristic decrease in speed. In many ways it isn’t the quickness of the Zapatistas that has disrupted habitual patterns of the Mexican body-politic but their slowness. They work to an entirely different beat and an altogether longer rhythm. Their slogan ‘Hurry up and Wait’ marks a refusal of the speed of the Mexican state. Their bursts of decisive action come only after painstaking consultation with the whole Zapatista communities. It’s the speed of traditional Mayan decision-making but a method that the power-over cannot understand.


Power-over can only exist by frantically working to block any line of flight – all possibility that it cannot anticipate. Power-from-below, on the other hand, has time on its side. It can watch in amusement as the Leviathan ceaselessly attempts to limit the present, knowing full well, that such boundaries can never stop the creative energy that is always living in another dimension. It may try to appropriate it but the revolutionary potential has already moved on. It has already become an ‘Other’ and will continue to do so…


Further links


Zapatistas web


Zapatistas: Comisión Intergaláctica