Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. A historian who takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the 'time of the now' which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Pimlico, 1999) p. 255

A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop. For this notion defines the present in which he himself is writing history. Historicism gives the 'eternal' image of the past; historical materialism supplies a unique experience with the past. The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called 'Once upon a time' in historicism's bordello. He remains in control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Pimlico, 1999) p. 254

The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time. A critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any criticism of the concept of progress itself.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Pimlico, 1999) p. 252

The Western experience of time is split between eternity and continuous linear time . The dividing point through which the two relate is the instant as a discrete, elusive point. Against this conception, which dooms any attempt to master time, there must be opposed one whereby the true site of pleasure, as man's primary dimension, is neither precise, continuous time nor eternity, but history. Contrary to what Hegel stated, is is only as the source and site of happiness that history can have a meaning for man. For history is not, as the dominant ideology would have it, man's servitude to continuous linear time, but man's liberation from it. [...] Just as the full, discontinuous, finite and complete time of pleasure must be set against the empty, continuous and infinite time of vulgar historicism, so the chronological time of pseudo-history must be opposed by the cairological time of authentic history.

True historical materialism does not pursue an empty mirage of continuous progress along infinte linear time, but is ready at any moment to stop time, because it holds the memory that man's original home is pleasure. It is this time which is experienced in authentic revolutions, which [...] have always been lived as a halting of time and an interruption of chronology. But a revolution from which there springs not a new chronology, but a qualitative alteration of time would have the weightiest consequence and would alone be immune to absorption into the reflux of restoration.

Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History (Verso, 2007) pp. 114-115

Only process as a whole has meaning, never the precise fleeting now; but since this process is really no more than a simple succesion of now in terms of before and after, and the history of salvation has meanwhile become pure chronology, a semblance of meaning can be saved only by introducing the idea – albeit one lacking any rational foundation – of a continuous, infinite progress.

Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History (Verso, 2007) p. 106

But the two times, past and future, how can they be, since the past is no more and the future is not yet? On the other hand, if the present were always present and never flowed away into the past, it would not be time at all, but eternity. But if the present is only time, because it flows away into the past, how can we say that it is? For it is, only because it will cease to be.

St. Augustine, quoted in Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History (Verso, 2007) p. 104

We're seeing the crisis of inner nature, the prospect of complete dehumanization, linking up with the crisis of outer nature, which is obviously ecological catastrophe.

John Zerzan, Running On Emptiness (Feral House, 2002) p. 47

The powerlessness of technology remains hidden by people's powerlessness to escape it. Without calling the whole idea of development into question, it seems well-nigh impossible to escape from the totalitarianism of technology.

Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World (Polity Press, 1996) p. 79