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Major fields:
Democratic Theory, Democracy, Political Temporality, Critical Theory
Dissertation title:
Democracy and Time. Chronopower, Democracy and the Politics of Time
Dissertation abstract:
The study places time and temporality at the center of democracy as a theory and praxis of political autonomy as the exercise of popular power by collective decision-making. Based on sociological accounts of time and the phenomenon of power, I argue that time and power are closely intertwined. Power is implicated in socially formulated and institutionalized forms of time, while simultaneously, these forms shape temporal parameters of power across political and social domains. As such, the time-power relationship, or chronopower, is the subject of the politics of time as a domain of the contestation and struggles by various political, social, and economic entities over the control of time. Treating chronopower as the concept that informs the relationship between time and political power, I put forward the notion of the political time of democracy as the temporal articulation, formulation, and institutionalization of the political practice of self-rule of the demos. I situate it alongside selected readings from the canon of political theory and contemporary authors that contain critiques of democracy as the theory and practice of popular political participation and decision-making corresponding to the periods of antiquity, early and late modernity, and the contemporary, neoliberal stage. I analyze these critiques while also discussing and interpreting the temporal dimension of historical political practices of democracy. The findings of this study show how time and temporality and their particular articulations by various actors shape and inform the perception and normative value of democracy.
Email: gudem487@newschool.edu