Variations on Time: Reading Paolo Virno Reading Ernst Bloch

Abstract: This essay discusses the concept of nonchronological time through the philosophies of Paolo Virno and Ernst Bloch, mostly focusing on Virno’s Déjà vu and the End of History , originally published as Il Ricordo del Presente in 1999. In this work, Virno formulates the thesis that capitalism is the first social form that historicizes the metahistorical and nonchronological invariant that defines human life. An important element in Virno’s argument is what he presents as a more radical reinterpretation of Ernst Bloch’s idea of the “contemporaneity of the non-contemporary.” Virno translates Bloch’s notion of  ungleichzeitigkeit  as coexistence of potentiality and act, or labor-power and commodity. In many respects, Bloch and Virno could be aligned as thinkers of a nonchronological time of possibility in the tradition of historical materialism. However, Virno’s engagement with Bloch seems to be missing central aspects of Bloch’s original formula. Unlike Virno, Bloch’s philosophy does not limit the nonchronological to temporal anteriority or heterogeneity; on the contrary, Bloch’s theory of time uncovers the nonlinear dialectical contradictions between unfinished pasts and open-ended futures.