kimberly Hutchings
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073021
- eISBN:
- 9781781701447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073021.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter takes a closer look at the accounts of political temporality that have surfaced as narratives of repetition, progress and decline. All of them took shape in response to the specific ...
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This chapter takes a closer look at the accounts of political temporality that have surfaced as narratives of repetition, progress and decline. All of them took shape in response to the specific intellectual and political circumstances of late medieval and early modern Europe. Of all of them, this chapter argues, it is the progressive narrative that has had the most significant influence on the development of understandings of world politics since the seventeenth century. This chapter assesses the grounds and implications of progressive accounts of political time in more detail in the philosophies of history of Kant, Hegel and Marx. It also suggests that the kind of historicism that came to dominate the study of world history and politics in the nineteenth century followed from a ‘closed’ reading of the philosophy of history that reflected the influence of Darwin's evolutionary theory.Less
This chapter takes a closer look at the accounts of political temporality that have surfaced as narratives of repetition, progress and decline. All of them took shape in response to the specific intellectual and political circumstances of late medieval and early modern Europe. Of all of them, this chapter argues, it is the progressive narrative that has had the most significant influence on the development of understandings of world politics since the seventeenth century. This chapter assesses the grounds and implications of progressive accounts of political time in more detail in the philosophies of history of Kant, Hegel and Marx. It also suggests that the kind of historicism that came to dominate the study of world history and politics in the nineteenth century followed from a ‘closed’ reading of the philosophy of history that reflected the influence of Darwin's evolutionary theory.
kimberly Hutchings
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073021
- eISBN:
- 9781781701447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073021.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines accounts of political temporality that explicitly take issue with progressive historicism and its claims to knowledge and control of both natural and social worlds. These ...
More
This chapter examines accounts of political temporality that explicitly take issue with progressive historicism and its claims to knowledge and control of both natural and social worlds. These accounts offer an understanding of the intersection of chromos and kairos within political time that challenges the ways in which they are configured in closed systemic readings of Kant, Hegel and Marx. After a brief discussion of Nietzsche's and Bergson's critiques of historicism and linear, scientific time, the chapter examines the arguments of Arendt and Benjamin. Then, it looks at recent anti-historicist accounts of political time of Derrida and Deleuze.Less
This chapter examines accounts of political temporality that explicitly take issue with progressive historicism and its claims to knowledge and control of both natural and social worlds. These accounts offer an understanding of the intersection of chromos and kairos within political time that challenges the ways in which they are configured in closed systemic readings of Kant, Hegel and Marx. After a brief discussion of Nietzsche's and Bergson's critiques of historicism and linear, scientific time, the chapter examines the arguments of Arendt and Benjamin. Then, it looks at recent anti-historicist accounts of political time of Derrida and Deleuze.
Kimberly Hutchings
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073021
- eISBN:
- 9781781701447
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073021.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This book offers the first authoritative guide to assumptions about time in theories of contemporary world politics. It demonstrates how predominant theories of the international or global ‘present’ ...
More
This book offers the first authoritative guide to assumptions about time in theories of contemporary world politics. It demonstrates how predominant theories of the international or global ‘present’ are affected by temporal assumptions, grounded in western political thought, which fundamentally shape what we can and cannot know about world politics today. In so doing, the book puts into question the ways in which social scientists and normative theorists diagnose ‘our’ post-Cold War times. The first part of the book traces the philosophical roots of assumptions about time in contemporary political and international theory. The second part examines contemporary theories of world politics, including liberal and realist International Relations theories and the work of Habermas, Hardt and Negri, Virilio and Agamben. In each case, it is argued, assumptions about political time ensure the identification of the particular temporality of western experience with the political temporality of the world as such and put the theorist in the unsustainable position of holding the key to the direction of world history. In the final chapter, the book draws on postcolonial and feminist thinking, and the philosophical accounts of political time in the work of Derrida and Deleuze, to develop a new ‘untimely’ way of thinking about time in world politics.Less
This book offers the first authoritative guide to assumptions about time in theories of contemporary world politics. It demonstrates how predominant theories of the international or global ‘present’ are affected by temporal assumptions, grounded in western political thought, which fundamentally shape what we can and cannot know about world politics today. In so doing, the book puts into question the ways in which social scientists and normative theorists diagnose ‘our’ post-Cold War times. The first part of the book traces the philosophical roots of assumptions about time in contemporary political and international theory. The second part examines contemporary theories of world politics, including liberal and realist International Relations theories and the work of Habermas, Hardt and Negri, Virilio and Agamben. In each case, it is argued, assumptions about political time ensure the identification of the particular temporality of western experience with the political temporality of the world as such and put the theorist in the unsustainable position of holding the key to the direction of world history. In the final chapter, the book draws on postcolonial and feminist thinking, and the philosophical accounts of political time in the work of Derrida and Deleuze, to develop a new ‘untimely’ way of thinking about time in world politics.
