Can the Marxist tradition still provide new resources for thinking the specificity of historical time? This volume proposes to transform our understanding of Marxism by reconnecting with the ‘subterranean currents’ of plural temporalities that have traversed its development. From Rousseau and Sieyès to Marx, from Bloch to Althusser, from Gramsci to Pasolini and Postcolonialism, the chapters in this volume seek both to valorise neglected resources from Marxism’s contradictory history, and also to read against the grain its orthodox and heterodox currents. Privileging not the single time of historical development, but the plural temporalities that intertwine in and constitute any given historical conjuncture, and arguing against merely subjectivist theories of temporal multiplicity, this volume studies the articulation of the real, plural temporalities of mass political action. Comprehending their dynamics is a necessary precondition for a renewed politics of emancipation.
Contributors include: Luca Basso, Stefano Bracaletti, Mauro Farnesi Camellone, Fabio Frosini, Augusto Illuminati, Nicola Marcucci, Vittorio Morfino, Luca Pinzolo, Peter D. Thomas and Massimiliano Tomba.
Vittorio Morfino, Ph.D. (1998), University of Paris VIII Saint Denis, is a Senior Researcher in the History of Philosophy at the Università di Milano-Bicocca. He is the author of
Plural temporality: Transindividuality and the aleatory between Spinoza and Althusser (Brill, 2014) and
Genealogia di un pregiudizio: L’immagine di Spinoza in Germania da Leibniz a Marx (Georg Olms Verlag, 2016) among other titles. He is an editor of
Quaderni materialisti and of
Décalages.
Peter D. Thomas, Ph.D (2008), University of Amsterdam, is Senior Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at Brunel University London. He is the author of
The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Brill, 2009) and co-editor of
Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (Bloomsbury, 2012) and
In Marx’s Laboratory: Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse (Brill, 2013).
Introduction: Tempora multa Vittorio Morfino and Peter D. Thomas
1
The Temporality of the General Will Augusto Illuminati
2
The French Revolution and the Temporality of the Collective Subject between Sieyès and Marx Luca Basso
3
Layers of Time in Marx: From the Grundrisse to Capital to the Russian Commune Massimiliano Tomba
4
Temporality in Capital Stefano Bracaletti
5
On Non-Contemporaneity: Marx, Bloch, Althusser Vittorio Morfino
6
Fraternitas militans. Time and Politics in Ernst Bloch Mauro Farnesi Camellone
7
Gramsci’s Plural Temporalities Peter D. Thomas
8
‘Space-Time’ and Power in the Light of the Theory of Hegemony Fabio Frosini
9
The Seeds of Ancient History: The Polemical Anachronism of Pier Paolo Pasolini Luca Pinzolo
10
Modern Times: Sociological Temporality between Multiple Modernities and Postcolonial Critique Nicola Marcucci
References Index
All interested in theories of historical time, the history of the Marxism, modern political thought and contemporary social and political theory and philosophy.