Speed and Micropolitics: Bodies, Minds, and Perceptions in an Accelerating World

This book provides a theoretical framework for understanding the micropolitics of speed; a rich, nuanced, and embodied account of life in an accelerating world. What does it feel like to live in an era of profound social acceleration? What kinds of affects, perceptions, and identities does an accelerating world produce? The answers to these questions mean more than simply understanding the psychology of speed; they also mean understanding issues in contemporary politics as diverse as xenophobia and anti-immigration policies, patterns of transnational identification and solidarity, social isolation and alienation, and the ability of new media to coordinate social movements.

While drawing extensively on the work of contemporary theorists, Simon Glezos recognizes that social acceleration is not a purely recent phenomenon. He therefore turns to thinkers such as Nietzsche, Spinoza, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty, to ask how they sought to understand, and respond to, the rapid changes and unsettling temporalities of their eras, and how their insights can be applied to our own.

Advancing theoretical understanding and offering a useful way to analytically conceptualize the nature of time, Speed and Micropolitics will be of interest to students and scholars studying affect theory, theories of the body, new materialism, phenomenology, as well as the history of political thought.

Simon Glezos is an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Victoria, in Victoria, BC, Canada. He has a Ph.D. in political theory and international relations from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA. He is the author of The Politics of Speed: Capitalism, the State, and War in an Accelerating World, also from Routledge press, and has published articles in CTheory, Contemporary Political Theory, The Journal of International Political Theory, International Politics, Postmodern Culture, The European Journal of Political Theory, and Philosophy in Review.