The ‘coming world’: messianic time and anarchist life

James Martel

Chapter 13 in Research Handbook on Critical Theory, 2026, pp 140-150 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, I look at three thinkers and writers—Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and Octavia Butler—to examine the ways that messianic time operates in an anarchist context. Whereas messianic time is normally thought of as superseding human time and coming in some different and divinely inflected future, I argue here that for these thinkers and writers, it is ordinary time that we must redeem. Insofar as we are trained to look for higher and better forms of truth at the expense of our own ordinary life, Kafka, Benjamin, and Butler all present us with a way to use that expectation to actually resituate ourselves in our own time and space. This is messianic and redemptive but ultimately, as I will argue further, the messianic itself becomes superfluous, secondary to the human self-emancipation that precedes it (and draws it in).

Keywords: Franz Kafka; Walter Benjamin; Octavia Butler; Messianism; Time; Anarchism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781800373754
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