The Promise: Islamic Micro-finance and the Synthesis of Time

Retsikas, Kostas

Abstract

The article explores a particular mode of time synthesis as carried out in the field of Islamic micro-finance in Indonesia. It approaches this financial experiment through Deleuze’s tripartite division of time and the concept of promise advanced here. I argue that the analytical promise the concept of promise holds is partly related to its ability to circumscribe a field of practice that is at once theological and economic and partly to its privileging of the time of the future. What the study of Islamic micro-finance offers to studies of Deleuze is a timely reminder that this explicit privileging is not adequate in and of itself for ‘relativizing’ the effects of habit and memory on time, thought and politics. This is primarily because promising has a dual, ‘schizoid’ and distressed constitution: it is motivated as much by the affirmative ‘will to power’ as by the negative ‘will to improve’.

Citation

Retsikas, K. (2015). The Promise: Islamic Micro-finance and the Synthesis of Time. Deleuze studies, 9(4), 475-502. https://doi.org/10.3366/dls.2015.0201

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Jul 27, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 12, 2025
• Journal: Deleuze Studies
• Print ISSN: 1750-2241
• Electronic ISSN: 1755-1684
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 475-502
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/dls.2015.0201
• Keywords: Deleuze, time, promise, micro-finance, Islam, Indonesia