The Temporality of Political Obligation [Hardcover]

The Temporality of Political Obligation offers a critique and reconceptualization of the ways in which our political obligations  what we owe to political authorities and communities, and the reasons why we ought to obey their rules  have been traditionally conceptualized, justified, and contested.

Drawing from theories of time and temporality, Justin Mueller demonstrates some of the unacknowledged assumptions and theoretical blind spots shared among these ostensibly opposed positions, and the problems and contradictions that this neglect of time poses. Enriching the literature on the philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, Mueller demonstrates how their theoretical frameworks on time can be used to analyze a political problem that is usually confined to the concerns of normative liberal democratic theory. Politically, this book provides readers with the means to better identify and analyze the diverse temporalities they encounter in everyday life, and better understand their experiences of them.

A welcomed and timely read which will be of interest to scholars involved in recent efforts to engage with the social and political dimensions and consequences of time and temporality.

Foreword Michael Weinstein Introduction: Time and Political Obligation  1. Time and Temporality  2. Modernity and Political Obligation  3. Vertical Time-Binding  4. Horizontal Time-Binding  5. Chronarchy and Obligation

'Justin C. Mueller revivifies the discussion of political obligation by drawing on the temporal philosophies of Bergson and Deleuze. He creates novel concepts to show how traditional theories of political obligation seek to bind us to existing forms of social and political order. His aim is not to deny the role that obligations play in our political and everyday ll#®