[1] by Fernando Esposito, Tobias Becker

CONCEPTUALIZING CHRONOPOLITICS

Indeed, the term “chronopolitics” might well be an indicator that we are in the midst of one of those temporal “gaps” (as François Hartog calls them, with reference to Hannah Arendt) in which “shifting landmarks throw us off balance, and the articulations of past, present, and future come undone.”

Temporal Gaps

- maybe there were some kind of narrative of time, where you could predict the future based on how the past went. but when this temporal "gaps" opens up, that linear flow of time gets cut off.

- now the future is uncertain, present is isolated, and the past becomes unreliable.

↳ 역사 해석 다툼 등, 과거를 어떻게 기억하느냐가 싸움거리가 되고, 기후위기나 경제위기, 전쟁으로 현재는 혼란스럽다, 게다가 미래는 더더욱 상상하기 어렵다 예전처럼 미래가 현재보다 더 나을 것이라는 예측을 할 수 없는 상황.

- therefore the need of this relatively new terminology is a sign that we are experiencing more uncertain relationship with time.

how power operates through control over time

who gets to organize the past
who defines the present
who predicts the future

regression & apocalyptic thinking?

Terminology

크로노폴리틱스는 처음에는 전쟁과 대치 상황(특히 핵위기)과 직접 연결되었고, 이후에는 사회 전체의 시간-권력 구조를 설명하는 개념으로 확장됨.

Alan Geyer, The Christian Scholar, 1964
the term Chronopolitics first came up in the context of nuclear war threats (Cuban missile crisis).

Catapolitics : the explosion of the dimension of history
Chronopolitics : continuation of history and civilization → 위기상황에서의 시간인식

in Geyer's context, the term was introduced as a counterpoint to the idea of Catapolitics.

George W. Wallis, "time-perspectives, time of transition", 1970

Wallis employed “the term chronopolitics . . . to emphasize the relationship between the political behavior of individuals and groups and their time-perspectives” and to explore politics’ dependency on underlying understandings of change and social development.

Whether the latter are grasped “as inevitable and as part of the natural order” or “as primarily a creation of the human will” has far-reaching consequences: if “the principles of the ‘proper’ society have been established” and if the “broad outline” of the future is already decided, politics will “shift to matters of maintenance and repair,” stressing “the technicalities of adjustment.” If, on the other hand, the present is seen as “a period of crucial decisions” on “which paths to take,” the result will be a “politics of crisis.”

↳ 사회가 스스로를 "유지/보수" 국면으로 보느냐 아니면 "결정적 위기"로 보느냐에 따라 정치적 형태가 달라짐

Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics, 1977

Inspired by Sun Tzu, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and the Blitzkrieg, Virilio emphasized the close nexus of power and speed and attempted to shift the focus of the analysis of contemporary societies from the Industrial Revolution to the “dromocratic revolution,” from democracy to “dromocracy,” from geopolitics to chronopolitics.
For Virilio, chronopolitics was “Apolitics” and thus less an active shaping of the present by political institutions than a condition of (post)modernity: “Today,” Virilio stated in 1983, “we’re in chronopolitics.”

- speed becomes power, politics becomes ineffective

↳ itt's not political institutions but speed itself that govern society

→ 땅이나 돈이 권력의 핵심이었으나 지금은 정보의 속도를 지배하는 것이 권력의 핵심으로 변함

→ 국가, 정부, 정당등의 정치, 입법기관이 너무 빨리 변하는 현실을 못따라잡는 현상 --정치 제도가 이 속도를 못따라옴

→ 정보흐름, 교통속도, 금융거래속도 같은 '속도 그 자체'가 사회의 질서를 결정한다

Peter Osborne, "Politics of Time"
Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other, 1983

Osborne defined the politics of time as “a politics which takes the temporal structures of social practices as the specific objects of its transformative (or preservative) intent.”

"Temporal structures of social practices"

no more than 8 hours a day of work
concept of weekend
18 months of mandatory military service (SK)
maternal leave
retirement age
election cycle

etc etc

Historical Time

↳ the idea that the history is not just the listed events that happened, we are interpreting and connecting those event within a particular structure of time. and of course that structure is never neutral, it always shaped by specific political perspective/agenda and ideologies.

also look for:
* Counter Clockwise: Unmapping Black Temporalities from Greenwich Mean Timelines *

● Progress narrative

- the invention of linear time

↳ foundational belief of western modernity, the temporal logic that legitimates colonialism, capitalism, and tecjno-centrism.

↳ the idea of linear time--flowing from past-present-future, is a historical invention. emerged from 18th century European enlightenment and 19th century evolutionary historical veiw.

- "the present is better than the past, and the future will be even better, thanks to science, reason and progress."

↳ before that, time was seen as cyclical, like the rhythm of the natural world.
with the belief that human life moved in repeating cycles like the changing of seasons, the moon and etc.

- how does it justify colonialism?

↳ with this concept of linear time, western power put themselves at the front line of the history, while making other cultures as people who hasn't yet arrived--those who stuck in the past, waiting to catch up.

↳ the classic repertory of "we will civilize you", "one day you can be like us"

↳ which really makes it the most powerful narrative structures also a way of thinking that weaponizes time.

- capitalism and techno-centrism

↳ also rely on the linear time--progress narrative. with the value systme prioritizing the faster, newer and more efficient. what is old is seen obsolete, anything slower than now means falling behind.

↳ this turns non-western temporalities or alternative rhythms of time as things that are regressing or irrelevant.

- 시간이 일직선으로 간다는 믿음이, 누가 앞에 있고 누가 뒤에 있는지를 결정하고, 그것이 곧 지배/피지배, 문명/미개, 선진/후진 같은 수직구조로 이어지는 것.

- the concept of linear time, inevitably tied to the ideology of progress, does not only measuring change but it also orders people and societies within time. it tells us who is "advnaced" and who is "behind". the time becomes the mecahinsm of hierarchy.

also look for:
* Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, Reinhart Koselleck, 1979 *

* Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2000 *

* Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, Johannes Fabian, 1983 *

* culture of time and space, 1880-1918, Stephen Kern, 1983 *

* The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Michel Foucault, 1966 *

● Excluding unsynchronized times

● Imposing temporal benchmarks