Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia

This book investigates the role of the digital in reinforcing neo-liberal temporalities, examining the emerging initiatives of slowing down in the digital age. It shows that both speed-up and slow down imperatives function as a form of biopolitical social control necessary to contemporary global capitalism, leading to problematic paradoxes where a successful slow down and digital detox requires the individual to return to the world as a more productive, laboring neoliberal subject.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 218 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2022
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

It is widely believed that the ontology of data resists slowness, and the digital revolution was heralded as a means to level the playing field. Both of these theories are explored in this timely collection of chapters, which examines the role of time in the digital world. In the modern neoliberal world, where data has assumed an unprecedented importance, contemporary concepts of time have undergone a radical transformation. By critically examining the emerging initiatives of slowing down in the digital age, this book investigates the role of the digital in ultimately reinforcing neo-liberal temporalities. It demonstrates that both the imperative of speed-up and the imperative of slow down often serve as a form of biopolitical social control necessary for contemporary global capitalism. However, problematic paradoxes arise when a successful slow down and digital detox are achieved only if the individual re-enters the world as a more productive and laborious neoliberal subject.

The chapters in this collection, divided into three parts, raise the question: Is there another way?

Weight: 327g
Dimension: 219 x 153 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538149850