Alessio Porrino

This article explores the Foucauldian analysis of the linkage between temporality and politics, addressing mainly two loci of Foucault’s production: the assessment of the post-WWII ordoliberal experience in The Birth of Biopoliticsand the Iran reportage for “Corriere Della Sera”. The article emphasizes the relevance of Foucault’s assessment of ordoliberal Germany for contemporary studies on neoliberalism and inscribes Foucault in a wider tradition of thought on the relevance of history and temporality for the comprehension of political dynamics. In TBoB, Foucault offered a prescient analysis of neoliberal temporality and its de-politicizing effects. In his view, ordoliberal theorists and politicians sought to ground political legitimacy in the economy itself, giving birth to a political-economic “double circuit” which did away with history and made political consensus “permanent” and automatic. The connection between neoliberalism, the re-structuring of state sovereignty, and temporality will be highlighted. Furthermore, by analyzingthe almost-coeval Iranian reportages and the eulogy for Clavel, the article further investigates Fou-cault’s reflection on the link between temporality, politics,and subjectivation processes. If the anal-ysis of ordoliberal temporality in TBoB describes a linkage between de-temporalization and de-politicization, the reportages will be highlighted as a possible “pars construens” –as a way to reinstate the possibility of political action through the appeal to different ways to experience tem-porality. The article concludes that Foucault’s sparse comments on temporality can be read as an attempt, albeit not fully developed, not only to envision the de-politicizing effects of marketization but also to envisage new, re-politicizing modes of experiencing temporality and history

This article aims at reflecting on the political significance of distinct conceptions of temporality and their symbolic representation in the work of Walter Benjamin. In particular, the “clock” and the “calendar” will be addressed as symbols of, respectively, a linear and homogeneous conception of time and of a cyclical, uneven – and potentially revolutionary – temporality. The conception of time symbolized by clocks is criticized by Benjamin as a bourgeois understanding of progress, which inhibits revolutionary tensions in society by shifting the political focus on future, on the inevitability of progress and growth; on the other hand, calendars’ and ancient cyclical festivals’ temporality constantly looks at the past, celebrating and re-actualizing the memory of previous revolutionary attempts. In the last section, the article will consider the role of symbols and allegories in Benjamin’s philosophical writing, casting new light on the previous discussion.