The Plural Temporalities of Hegemony

Abstract

Louis Althusser’s critique of Gramsci’s ‘absolute historicism’ was the occasion for the elaboration of a distinctive notion of plural historical temporalities or times. In this article, I argue, 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, I argue that, Althusser’s early criticisms notwithstanding, Gramsci can be understood to have elaborated a consistently non-formalist 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 synchronisation, hegemonic politics should instead be thought as a mode of intervention that valorises, rather than negates, the ‘non-presence of the present’, or constitutive non-contemporaneity, as the fundamental condition of revolutionary politics.