‘Homogeneous empty time’ replaced mediaeval simultaneity as the modern mode of apprehension

Evidence

Our own conception of simultaneity has been a long time in the making, and its emergence is certainly connected, in ways that have yet to be well studied, with the development of the secular sciences. But it is a conception of such fundamental importance that, without taking it fully into account, we will find it difficult to probe the obscure genesis of nationalism. What has come to take the place of the mediaeval conception of simultaneity-along-time is, to borrow again from Benjamin, an idea of ‘homogeneous, empty time,’ in which simultaneity is, as it were, transverse, cross-time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfilment, but by temporal coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 86

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the chapter’s central concept and a cornerstone term of the entire critical-theory vocabulary: homogeneous empty time, defined in contrast to Messianic time and tied to clock/calendar.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the Islamophobia readings on how populations as ‘Others’ are imagined within homogeneous empty time — the time-frame in which exclusion, counting, and management become thinkable. — connects to: Changing apprehensions of time in nationalism require the coordinate of changing apprehensions of space — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 23; The novel is a device for presenting simultaneity in homogeneous empty time — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 88; The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 82 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The conceptual shift from vertical providence-anchored time to horizontal temporal coincidence is a genuinely paradigm-shifting definition — the entire scaffolding of imagined communities rests on it.

Related

• Changing apprehensions of time in nationalism require the coordinate of changing apprehensions of space (similarity 0.82)
• The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect (similarity 0.82)
• The novel is a device for presenting simultaneity in homogeneous empty time (similarity 0.81)
• The newspaper’s dated format imagines the world as moving through homogeneous empty time. (similarity 0.79)
• Secular homogeneous time is a precondition for modern democratic legitimacy. (similarity 0.78)
• Modernization transforms concepts of time wherever it spreads (similarity 0.78)
• The nation is imagined as a sociological organism moving through homogeneous, empty time. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The novel is a device for presenting simultaneity in homogeneous empty time #expands (0.95) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 88
• The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect #corroborates (0.85) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 82
• Three mechanisms drive modernity’s dynamism and process of time-space distanciation #responds-to (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 131