Time and Global Capitalism

This article cross-relates four epistemes of time (epochality, time reckoning, temporality, and coevalness) with four materializations of time (hegemony, conflict, crisis, and rupture). Understanding the terms within this framework allows us to depict global capitalism as epochally distinctive, riven by time conflicts, prone to recurring financial crises, and vulnerable to collective opposition. Time conflicts materialize across the areas of financialization and capital realization, worker exploitation and transnational supply chains, and the political economies of national and transnational state governance. Initially, these critical insights about the historicity and instability of global capitalism were obscured by the perpetual now-ness of corporate brand culture, 24/7 global television, and digital communication networks. Worldwide structural exclusions of the poor and their experiences of time were also obscured, a process the article defines as a “denial of coevalness.” With the 2008 financial crisis, the time conflicts of financialized capitalism became obviously unmanageable. National and transnational attempts to resolve the crisis simply reproduced the time conflicts of financialization. And structural exclusions of the global poor were further entrenched. However, these developments triggered a confluence of occupation movements, riots, protests, strike activity, and anti-austerity activism, raising the prospect of a sustained collective challenge to global capitalism.