Time-to-Come / À-venir (Nancy)

Nancy's name for the temporal mode of the time-to-come, distinct from future-as-calculable-projection. From *Fragile Skin* I §1: "The to-come (to write it in this way) . . . would be the pre-sence of the present, that which does not yet take place and which consequently is not (except in our expectations, our fears, our calculations). It therefore does not come out of the possible — but not the impossible either: it is not." The to-come is unforeseen, incalculable, but as certain as the coming of time; "the time will come because time comes, because it comes — even if it all comes to nothing" (Overture §1). The chapter title "A Time to Come without Past or Future" condenses the operative figure.

The à-venir inherits from Derrida (Spectres of Marx, Politics of Friendship, Of Grammatology) but is given a specifically Nancean late-political-philosophical inflection: not a Messianic to-come (Derrida's reading of justice), not an existential Zukunft (Heideggerian future), but the coming-time-toward-which-we-are — the time as singular-plural sending without programmed destination.

What the Concept Does

The à-venir performs four argumentative tasks:

  1. Distinguishes future from to-come (I §1): the future is "a present represented as certain or possible" — what calculation, programming, and projection produce; "all of this belongs to the domain of logics of investment and usage whose aim is an interminable renewal of a power." The to-come is what cannot be projected: "the to-come, on the other hand, would be the pre-sence of the present, that which does not yet take place."

  2. Refuses Heideggerian "other beginning" (Overture §3): "Let's not tell ourselves the story of an 'other beginning' in the manner of Heidegger. Because the beginning already belongs to the ontological logic of the starting point, of the principle — and thus of the end." The to-come is not the inaugural-but-still-foundational Anfang; it is the coming-without-origin-and-without-end.

  3. Names the accident as coming-into-presence (V §3): "The accident is the incalculable . . . it is far rather a coming into presence. It is the more or less surprising, emerging, or oncoming arrival, welcome or unwelcome, of that which in no way answers to the precision of the instant, but to the approximately [l'à peu près] of the approach." The accident is temporally the to-come; it is what Universal Time Coordinated cannot register.

  4. Diagnoses the Western temporal disease: the West is structured by "the privilege of the recent, the new, the unprecedented" — a fertile, well-oriented, productive time, "a time whose past prepares and nourishes the future" (V §3 raw 743). This temporal-economic structure (growth-as-production) has exhausted itself; the to-come is what remains when the growth-time has collapsed.

Key Points

  • The Overture formula (raw 110–130): "Prophecy: the time will come. This is not a prediction, since the time will come regardless . . . The interpreter of the outside." The to-come is not predicted (calculative) but prophesied (figural-attentive); it is "the word of an other, the word from the elsewhere that we cannot disregard without renouncing our humanity."

  • "Time to come without past or future" (I, chapter title): the to-come does not recover a past (mourning of history) and does not project a future (calculable projection); it is "the approach and the coming about of an unknown, from whose emergence neither the past nor the future can save us" (I §1 raw 221).

  • Distinction from eternity, immortality, presentism (V §2–§3): three nearby concepts that are not the to-come:

    • Eternity (Rimbaud's "regained eternity"): outside-of-time; the to-come is in time.
    • Immortality (transhumanist longevity): unlimited-future; the to-come is not longer-future.
    • Presentism: focus on the present alone; the to-come includes the present-as-coming-into-presence but refuses the present's closure.

  • The Derridean lineage (V §3 raw 838, 858, 866): Nancy aligns with Derridean différance: "differance does not mean always putting things off until later, but on the contrary that it is now, every time, that the present, by taking place, differs from itself and defers itself. A present does not take place by immobilizing itself: it takes place by presenting itself, and this is how it makes sense."

  • The "forecast tends no longer to happen" thesis (V §6 raw 906): "The surest indication of a stifling of this vibration [of the to-come] is given by the forecast: what can be forecasted tends no longer to happen. Since we are able to forecast the exhaustion of non-renewable energy, this exhaustion is complete. It is no longer to come. Our present is encumbered by futures that will not come about, like those of species that are doomed to extinction. What is to come is the question of how we will seize the event and be seized by it — other than as an accident that has already been forecasted and even foreshadowed." The diagnosis of modern climate-anxiety: the catastrophe has already happened (predicted, foreshadowed); the to-come is not the catastrophe but our seizing of the event.

  • The maintenant etymology (IV §1 raw 717): the French maintenant ("now") derives from tenue en mains (holding-in-hands). The present is "a holding of something in one's hands, only for the time it takes to grasp it and to put it into play" — not appropriation, but tenancy (lieutenance) and spasm (maintenance et spasme). The present trembles, contracts, becomes agitated, gives a start.

  • Season as kairic time (V §4–§6): the season is the qualitative-aspectual form of the to-come. Tempus in Latin already had both aevum (duration) and season (favorable-moment) senses; French le temps qu'il fait (weather) preserves this. The haiku kigo (season-words) and Clarice Lispector's cow-rhythm (raw 909–913) are the figural-anchors.

What It Rejects

  • The future as calculable projection ("the future is a present represented as certain or possible", I §1).
  • Presentism (I §1, IV §1): the vacuity-of-present and the closure-of-elsewhere.
  • Eternity (Rimbaud's "regained"; Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis): outside-of-time formulations.
  • Immortality (transhumanism, life-extension): unlimited-future formulations.
  • Carpe diem / "stop, you're so beautiful" (Faust) (IV §4): the freezing of the present.
  • The forecasted future (V §6): once forecasted, the event ceases to be a coming-event.
  • Heideggerian Zukunft / Anfang (Overture §3): the to-come is not the inaugural other-beginning; it is the coming-without-origin.
  • Revolutionary apocalypse / chiliasm: the salutation is not a salvation.

Stakes

  • For temporal-philosophical thinking: the to-come is the late-Nancean name for what Heidegger circles in Zukunft / Ankunft, what Derrida names à-venir (justice, democracy-to-come), what Levinas names the future of the Other. Nancy keeps the temporal-substantive register (the to-come is temporal, not transcendental).
  • For Anthropocene ethics: the forecast-stifling thesis (V §6) reframes climate-anxiety. The catastrophe is not what we must prevent (we cannot — it has already been forecasted-and-foreshadowed); the to-come is how we will seize the event. This redirects ethics from prevention to attentiveness.
  • For aesthetics: the season / haiku / kigo axis (V §4) is the figural form of the to-come; non-Western temporal modes (Bashō, Bailly's Persian zamân) are not alternatives to Western time but figural-resources for thinking the to-come.
  • For political philosophy: the to-come refuses both reform (calculable improvement of the future) and revolution (apocalyptic break). The closing-image of VIII ("hold firm to the shore, shape gaze and hearing to the night") is the political-form-of-the-to-come.
  • Confidence: high. The à-venir / time-to-come is the dominant temporal-figure of the book, attested across Overture, I, IV, V, VIII.

Problem-Space

The concept addresses how to name the future after the collapse of progress-time without restoring either eternity or apocalypse. The same problem-space is approached in:

  • Heidegger 1927, Sein und Zeit — Zukunft as ekstasis; the coming-toward-itself of Dasein.
  • Heidegger 1962, Zeit und Sein — Reichen of time; vierdimensionale Zeit.
  • Derrida, Spectres of Marx, Politics of Friendship — à-venir as quasi-Messianic structure of justice/democracy/friendship.
  • Levinas — future of the Other; non-anticipatable as ethical event.
  • Bloch, Hope — Noch-Nicht (not-yet); the to-come as concrete-utopian.
  • Walter Benjamin, Theses on Philosophy of History — Jetztzeit; the to-come as messianic-now.
  • Nancy 2020 — the à-venir as late-period name; the temporal-substantive register; the forecast-stifling diagnosis.

Connections

  • foundational for fragile-skin-of-the-world — the world's fragility is coming-into-presence; the salutation is the ethical form of the to-come.
  • foundational for vanishing-ontology — the il y a is being-as-sending; the to-come is the temporal mode of being-as-sending.
  • requires allonomy — the to-come is allonomic time (time not from the self, time coming-toward).
  • aligns with Derridean différance — explicit alignment at V §3 raw 866. Différance is the quasi-temporal operator; à-venir is the temporal-substantive figure.
  • contrasts with Heideggerian Anfang / "other beginning" — refused at Overture §3.
  • contrasts with Heideggerian *es gibt Zeit* — Nancy's to-come is coming-without-giver; Heidegger's Es gibt Zeit preserves the Geber-structure.
  • includes the kairic / seasonal register (Bashō kigo, Lispector cow-rhythm) — qualitative-aspectual time against UTC chronology.
  • implicit in the accident as coming-into-presence — see V §3 on accident-as-temporal-figure.
  • opens onto the salutation silent-key — greeting-as-acknowledging the coming.

Open Questions

  • What distinguishes Nancy's à-venir from Derrida's? Both write the hyphenated à-venir; both refuse calculable-future. Nancy's version may be more temporally substantive (the to-come as coming-into-presence) where Derrida's is more quasi-transcendental (the structural deferral). The wiki should track this distinction but the precise philological work is open.
  • Can the forecast-stifling thesis (V §6) survive scrutiny? The thesis is empirically striking but conceptually slippery: it suggests that predicted events de facto fail to happen. A stronger reading: forecasted events lose the kairic dimension even when they occur. A weaker reading: Nancy is making a figural-rhetorical claim about how attention shifts when the future has been calculated.
  • Is the season-as-kairos extension to ecological time (deep ecology, slow time) supported by the text? Nancy gestures at this via Bashō and Lispector but does not develop it. The figural-resources are clear; the philosophical extension is less so.
  • What is the relation between à-venir and the fragile skin? The to-come is temporal; the fragile skin is spatial-figural. Both name the opening-without-closure that the West is currently losing. Whether they are two sides of the same coin or two different concepts requires more sustained reading.

Sources

  • nancy-2021-fragile-skin-of-the-world — cardinal anchors: Overture §§1–4 (the prophetic-time framing), I §1 (the future / to-come distinction, raw 195–215), I §6 (the Marx "spirit of a world without spirit" and the salutation), IV §1 (the maintenant etymology), V §3 (the alignment with différance), V §6 (the forecast-stifling thesis and the cow-rhythm closing).