Thinking the present
Thinking the present
This chapter offers a critical comparison of the different accounts of political time. It argues that all of them rest on assumptions about the time of world politics being constructed through the interplay of two distinct temporal orders, in which chronotic time is controlled and managed through the other-worldly power of kairos. And that, however different these accounts may be, firstly they all render world politics a unitary object for analysis and judgement by privileging a eurocentric interpretation of the western trajectory of world-political time. Secondly, all of these accounts require that politics be understood as a heroic project, in which political actors tap into extra-chronotic powers in order to control and shape the future. The chapter argues that postcolonial and feminist theories have provided good reasons to doubt both the unitary nature of world-political time and the degree to which the time of world politics can be controlled.
Keywords: political time, chronotic time, kairos, world politics, feminist theories
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