With universal literacy, time can take on the character of an enclosed or pictorial space that can be divided and subdivided. It can be filled in. “My schedule is filled up.” It can be kept free: “I have a free week next month.” And as Sebastian de Grazia has shown in Of Time, Work and Leisure, all the free time in the world is not leisure, because leisure accepts neither the division of labor that constitutes “work,” nor the divisions of time that create “full time” and “free time.” Leisure excludes time as a container. Once time is mechanically or visually enclosed, divided, and filled, it
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