Book Review: The Time Regulation Institute

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute is a novel about a (fictional) Institute founded to synchronize every clock in Istanbul, and then in all of Turkey. The book is generally read as a satirical allegory of modernization in Turkey. The Institute is bureaucracy par excellence with its preference for the appearance of work over the work itself and its founder’s motto that “The Institute as a modern organization is going to create its own work instead of working on something concrete.” Reading The Institute reminded me of a blog post about Ludwig Klages and Nick Land. The author was talking about Klages’ definition of Geist as the adversary of soul (Seele). According to Klages, Geist seeks to capture Seele by counting, measuring, digitizing life. Time is at the core of this dichotomy. Klages distinguishes two types of time: Rhythm and Takt. Rhythm is the time form of living experience; it’s regular as in breathing. Ezan, the call to prayer in Islam, is rhythmic. It occurs…