No-Strings-Attached Time: Temporal Multiplicity and Stability of Urban Commune

Abstract

The article presents an ethnographic study of the commune Dom (Home), one of about a dozen currently existing communes (“homes”) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, based on cohabitation and management of common household by people who are not related to each other, in large apartments (once communal apartments or dormitories). The residents of the Dom postulate that they have no grounds on which they could unite, but at the same time, it is one of the most stable and long-lasting communal communities in the city. It is this paradox that is considered in the text.
In search of sources of stability at the Dom, I use the lens of the anthropology of time and analyze the temporal multiplicity that has developed within the commune. I consider conflicts between groups of commune members operating within different temporalities: the conflict around the projected future of the community, in which supporters of the Dom as a project were displaced by defenders of the idea of the commune without a clearly formulated idea of its goals and future, as well as the conflict between groups preferring different versions of the daily cycle connecting the home and work spheres.
Following Olga Brednikova’s conceptualization, among communal temporalities I single out the continuous temporariness—a temporality involving the rejection of a certain future and past in favor of the present, within which all realities are temporary. Continuous temporariness forms the basis of the special stability of the Dom and characterizes not life of individual subjects, but the organization of the community. Its inhabitants do not just act in it, but purposefully reproduce it. This allows them to avoid rigid rules and hierarchies and, thanks to this, to maintain stability with internal diversity of temporalities and life priorities.

Article in Russian