Álvaro García Linera
Apr, 2024
Álvaro García Linera is a Bolivian politician and intellectual, Vice President of Bolivia during the tenure of Evo Morales. A Marxist theorist, prolific essayist and columnist, he was a member of the Ayllus Rojos guerrilla and the Tupak Katari Guerrilla Army during the 1990s. He was incarcerated for five years as a political prisoner, and since his release he has been a member of the MAS-IPSP, serving in the popular government that transformed Bolivia. Liminal time signifies an abrupt disruption in the continuity of social experience, leaving societies without a conceivable alternative or any plausible foresight. (…) It marks the end of one era and the onset of another, not through a gradual shift or a gentle, “amphibious” blend but as a profound emptiness. A liminal event represents both a subjective and collective experience of social time during the transitional phases of accumulation-domination cycles. It marks the end of one era and the onset of another, not through a gradual shift or a gentle, “amphibious” blend but as a profound emptiness—a desperate, intimate absence. Liminal time signifies an abrupt disruption in the continuity of social experience, leaving societies without a conceivable alternative or any plausible foresight for several years, perhaps even decades. It is during such times, amid social upheavals, that a new historical epoch gradually begins to emerge, offering a renewed sense of hope to communities. However, until this new dawn materialises, the liminal epoch exists as a profound interim—a void filled with anguish, a palpable emptiness, a suspension of time itself. The Paralysis of the Predictive Horizon. Societies traditionally orient their notion of the future—whether real or imagined—around a predictive horizon. As the neoliberal predictive horizon dissipates, the concept of a future itself vanishes; there is no destination to anchor mobilising hopes sustainably. Emerging expectations, if not globally consolidated, prove ephemeral, quickly foundering back into uncertainty and disaffection.With no envisioned tomorrow that improves upon the present, there also ceases to be a path—whether straight, winding, fragmented or uninterrupted—by which to navigate the present dilemmas about imagined well-being. Social time evaporates. It is inherently a flow—turbulent and discontinuous but aimed towards a horizon, a goal, a destination. Faced with a future rendered empty, society finds itself mired in the tangible experience of a suspended historical time, devoid of progression towards any ends, adrift in a meaningless present extended to infinity, as if time itself had lost its way … The suspension of time does not eliminate the experience of “lack of time,” which is characteristic of modernity and involves not having enough physical time to fulfil routines, duties and daily inertial commitments. Frozen time pertains to the envisioned progression of collective history; it is the time measured in relation to a desired future, and now, that time is interrupted. This situation is distinct from the religious concept of “end times”, which, despite being catastrophic, represents a defined destiny. … With the future extinguished and the present unhinged, the very trajectory of social life seems to have been derailed. … According to thinkers like Hartmut Rosa [33] or Mark Fisher [34], the acceleration of events is no longer an actual acceleration of time, as the arrow of historical time has gone astray. Events accumulate without a metric to “measure” them, with nothing to compare them against. They occur without a hopeful future, merely as avalanches of events with no societal direction or destination. Physical time is compressed within a whirlwind of events and demands, yet historical time remains stagnant, lacking a horizon to provide it with vitality and movement. Ultimately, the existence and recognition of historical time are both symptomatic and indicative of the major political hegemonies and their declines.We are not merely confronting a fragmented and discontinuous time, as Byung-Chul Han suggests. [35] Since its emergence 40 years ago, the structure of neoliberal time has been characterised by both atomisation and acceleration. This condition is mirrored in the new labour environment, which has fragmented workplaces into myriad small, outsourced factories. Similarly, the life trajectories of wage earners have become fragmented, with individuals submerged in perpetual labour nomadism. … However, over these four decades, this fragmented experience of social elements unfolded within an imagined historical trajectory, centred around the gratification of individual effort, the global market, competitiveness and economic accumulation. Despite the chaos and discontinuity in personal events, there was a shared belief in a satisfying destination—an epochal certainty that provided a sense of purpose and coherence, helping to piece together the polychrome fragments of life. However, today, that sense of destination, which once gave meaning to life’s trajectories, has vanished. Immediately republished, on account of international urgency on macroeconomic management, in connection with this week’s commentary on both economy and philosophy of science (including the maths and ‘thematics’ of quantum physics, how its popularised terminology has skewed debate on Time discussed usefully and evocatively here at this moment of global polycrisis by Alvaro Garcia Linera), and in my view the gravely misdirected enthusiasm for the quantum computing proposition on my @X account, from Chartbook with enormous thanks to @Adam_Tooze John 17/5/2024 |
Billionaire-🙈🙊🙉🐒s with Olivettis 