Chronopolitics (Tales about Time IV)

"The main presupposition [...] is that modernities can be grasped – amongst other possibilities – as 'tales about time'. In accordance with Zygmunt Bauman's concept of modernity as a prevailing consciousness of order as a task, it can be assumed that – besides society – time itself was one of the main objects of the modern ordering conciousness. Thus we aim to examine the modern mindset as zeitgeist, i.e. as a preoccupation with time that seemed out of joint, and to look more closely at the link between the specific modern temporal experience and the quest to order time. Amongst other things, we hope to question the hegemonic status of the narrative of progress. From the Enlightenment onward till the challenge of the modernization theory and the postmodernist, postcolonial, poststructuralist, postmarxist, post-everything of and attempt to 'rewrite' modernity the narrative of progress was the only 'tale about time' deemed worthy of being modern. Other marginal temporal narratives that were also constructed in compliance with the underlying necessity to order time were either excluded as reactionary and pre-modern or not even considered." 

Siehe: 'Tales about time'. Temporality, modernity and the order of time, London 29.11.-30.11.2012

"[Die] Beschleunigungsthese erkennt nicht das eigentliche Problem, dass dem Leben heute die Möglichkeit abhanden gekommen ist, sich sinnvoll abzuschliessen. Gerade darauf gehen Hektik und Nervosität zurück, die das Leben heute kennzeichnen. Man fängt ständig neu an, man zappt sich durch 'Lebensmöglichkeiten', gerade weil man nicht mehr vermag, die eine Möglichkeit abzuschliessen. Keine Geschichte, keine sinngebende Ganzheit erfüllt das Leben."

Byung-Chul Han, Duft der Zeit