By Alexander Perepechko
Published on February 17, 2012
Historical time is a local phenomenon. Since the density and frequency of events in different locations varies, we perceive time in different places as flowing at different speeds. When we move from one country to the next, we adjust to the local “movement of time” (Lightman, 1994).
When twenty years ago I found myself an asylee in Seattle, Washington, I thought “This is my terminus.” The American “modern” project and linearity of time were everywhere. The golden age of production was still present. The social factory was open to change and innovation. Progress and speed were among the major features of life, and nonstop work did not prevent Americans from smiling. Regardless, old immigrants tirelessly talked about the “cold monster of the state” and strongly advised educated newcomers like me to leave America for Canada. They even quoted Dostoevsky (1994), who had portrayed the exploitation of educated immigrants from Eastern Europe in unskilled jobs in 19th century America. It was strange to hear these warnings. For someone who just left behind the dissolved Evil Empire – the Soviet Union – the American Leviathan had a smiling face.
In America of the late 1990s-early 2000s, time passed but little happened. If we view time as a passage of events, then time passed hardly at all during this period. If you will, the texture of time became sticky. The country became stuck in a moment of history. The disintegration of the USSR and collapse of Soviet communism engendered incoherent anticipations of the final victory of liberal democracy. Fukuyama (1999) defined these hopes of American leftists (in fact, post-modernists) as the end of history. Post-modernists first targeted university campuses and imposed on curriculums such topics as trans-humanism, post-human living being, gender studies, etc. These discussions were a prologue to a post-modern global humanity, with development stopped, nation-states abolished, and a new world disorder. In this fixed future world, where a human being to begin with is perceived as a feature with attributes, many newcomers in America have lost freedom and opportunities.
After September 11th of 2001 time in America has changed again. While post-modernists have turned their anthropological revolution toward the enterprises of emptying major secular systems of meaning (de-ideologization) and of liquidating existing and simulating new human values, neo-conservatives have made an effort to fill this void in modernity with a religious renaissance (Huntington 1996). Both post-modernists and neo-conservatives are, however, united in exporting American democracy to the rest of the world by force, to dismantle nation-states and form a multi-level “democratic feudality”. Thus, time in America has become a circle, bending back on itself. The reversibility of time in the cycle signifies a systemic failure (Lotringer, 2009): a bifurcation into post-modernist and neo-conservative illusions makes America’s modern project empty. To protect this de-stabilized system from immigrants and fanatics, this country has started building protective walls. Americans stopped smiling.
Fukuyama, F. (1999) The End of History. Available at http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm.
Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash o Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: A Touchstone Book.
Lightman, A. (1994) Einstein’s Dreams. New York: Warner Books.
Lotringer, S. (2009) Intelligence Agency. Interview. Frieze Magazine. Issue 125, September. Available at http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/intelligence_agency/.
Mechty i griozy [Dream and fantasies]. In F. M. Dostoevsky (1994). Sobranie sochinenii v 15ti tomakh [Vols. 1-15]. St. Petersburg: Nauka. Vol. 12: 107-113.