103 In her book Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time, Kathleen Davis writes of the temporal regulation that divides “a religious Middle Ages and a secular modernity.” 1 Davis contests simple caricatures of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and asks “why, in the face of all challenges to teleological and stage-oriented histories, do the monoliths medieval/ religious/feudal and modern/secular/capitalist (or ‘developed’) survive, and what purposes do they serve?” 2 Calling into question the Christian teleological concept of time (among others), Davis complicates the act of periodization itself by insisting on its political nature. She states that “[b]y periodization I mean not simply the drawing of an arbitrary line through time, but a complex process of conceptualizing categories, which are posited as homogeneous and retroactively validated by the designation of a period divide.” 3 In order to explore how time and its periodization underpin political order, Davis conceives of periodization as a particu- lar exercise of sovereign power. This kind of temporalizing power is exercised in Christian supersessionism, the relegating gesture of calling something premodern, and the historical caesura of the anno domini, to name just a few examples. 4 In the context of her critique of the politics of * I am grateful to Dr. P. Travis Kroeker for his generous and critical assistance in the development of this article. 1. Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Sec- ularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 2. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 3. Ibid., p. 3. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Maxwell Kennel Periodization and Providence: Time and Eternity between Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Augustine’s Confessions Telos 188 (Fall 2019): 103–26 doi:10.3817/0919188103 www.telospress.com