Temporal Politics and Banal Culture (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory)

This book addresses the absence of orientations to the future in contemporary social life. In the face of the failings of the modern myth of progress and recognising the dangers of utopianism, it argues, we have entered into a kind of benign dystopia of the continual-present that is resistant to systemic change but is nevertheless animated through cycles of novelty and obsolescence. Exploring a condition in which we are out of ideas and facing a âe~non-futureâe(tm) of blind technical improvement and fear, the author examines the experience of urban landscapes and digital media, shedding light on the nature of non-places and forms of boredom and (in)attention, figures of defiance and conformity. Drawing on contemporary social theory, together with thought in urban geography and media studies, the book applies its theoretical position to a series of case studies in order to advance and refine its conceptual position: emergent sites on the urban landscape; blogging, boredom and the threshold to the future; the fall and rise of the web hosting service GeoCities; the repurposing of urban space in activist culture. As case studies, they present analyses of zones where novelty collapses and where figures of defiance and possibility might emerge, perhaps constituting the possibility of overcoming our current condition. A rigorous theoretical examination of contemporary life and culture, grounded in empirical case studies, Untimely: Novelty, Futurity and Contemporary Life will appeal to scholars of social theory, sociology, cultural geography and social philosophy.

• | Author: Peter Conlin
• | Publisher: Routledge
• | Publication Date: Jan 17, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 108 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 1472474376
• | ISBN-13: 9781472474377