Introduction: Timely Matters

In this introduction to our edited volume, we discuss the theoretical forebears that inform our guiding concept of “material temporalities” with an eye to the collections impact on contemporary debates in anthropology and beyond. To begin, we situate “material temporalities” in relation to the temporal and material turns that have reoriented anthropology in recent years. In particular, we emphasize the dual property of material temporalities in offering affordances to and constituting forms of recalcitrance for human actors. Following this, we discuss the two orders of time, human and non-human, that intersect in the assemblages of material temporalities, as well as a number of key inspirations for our theorization of material temporalities—Walter Benjamin’s notion of messianic time and Michel Foucault’s concept of heterochrony, specifically. This discussion of human and nonhuman times supports our critique of “clock time” and its errant aspiration to an objective material basis for temporality. Following this, we offer an overview of both recent and longstanding anthropological engagements with temporality and historicity, as well as a summary of recent media studies perspectives on time and materiality, which mount a more radical intervention and critique than most anthropological arguments. We then review anthropological debates over affect and materiality in order to argue for the centrality of temporality and historicity to affective matters. Finally, we summarize the three volume’s major thematic clusters—virtuality and latency; material extensions of phenomenological time; and, material futures—with reference to the specific contributions.