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Time and governance – part II

    • Time has been for too long a relatively “hidden” concept in mainstream discussions about politics, more often presupposed rather than clearly articulated. With the advent of globalization studies, time has emerged as a central focal point of contemporary social and political transformations. “Time and governance” explores the multiple intersections between time and politics in the attempt to rethink democratic theory and practice.

    Bruno Latour – We are all reactionaries today

    An interview with the vanguard contemporary thinker, Bruno Latour, on the end of progressivism, the limits of representation, the irrelevance of parliaments, the politics of things…

    Richard Dawkins – About time

    Time is pretty mysterious stuff – almost as elusive and hard to pin down as conscious awareness itself. It seems to flow – like an ever-rolling stream – but what is it that does the flowing? We have the feeling that the present is the only instant of time that actually exists. The past is a shadowy memory. The future a vague uncertainty. Physicists don’t see it like that. The present has no privileged status in their equations. Some modern physicists have gone so far as to describe the present as an illusion, a product of the observer’s mind…

    Jason del Gandio – The coming-temporality: A time for revolution

    This essay outlines a mode of temporality that establishes conditions for the possibility of political revolution. Jason del Gandio takes his initial cue from Giorgio Agamben’s book, The Coming Community.

    Gaynor Macdonald – Temporalising the Indigenous other: The politics of tradition in nation-building

    Indigenous rights were once denied because Indigenous peoples were not considered modern: now they are denied if they are. Native title requires them to be ‘traditional’, argues Gaynor Macdonald, and to call someone ‘traditional’ is to imply they do not share ‘our’ time.

    Mark Wagstaff – Historical invention and political purpose

    History-writing is this conditional perception, yoked to political purpose, whose shifts and contradictions will shoot us on the one day, and pardon us the next, says Mark Wagstaff.

    Brad Evans and Keir Milburn – The untimely event

    Brad Evans and Keir Milburn write on the revolutionary rupture that the “untimely event” carries. Nowhere is this revolutionary potential of the untimely more apparent than with the Zapatista rebels in Mexico…

    Alex Aylett – Situated chronologies: Time, nature, and the city

    Recognizing the limits of mechanical time would be one step towards reinventing our relationship to nature and finding a new place for ourselves within it. It would also help us to create political and economic systems that achieve a better balance between short term gains and long-term costs, argues Alex Aylett.

    Eleni Sideri – Past strategies and present exigencies: Time and social networks in modern Tbilisi

    The paternal/provider role of the Soviet State is being gradually replaced in the case of Georgia by a more individualistic and money orientated society. Time is not only money, says Eleni Sideri, it also flows and this fluidity offers new opportunities, contradictory experiences, and also disappointments to social agents.