THE RECOLONIZATION OF TIME: TIME-SPACE COMPRESSION, SOCIAL ACCELERATION, AND THE PERFORMANCE SOCIETY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22128818Keywords:
Keywords: Late Capitalism, Culture of Speed, Layered Time Model, Self Exploitation, Social Acceleration.Abstract
Abstract
The contemporary digital era and late-capitalist accumulation regimes construct a new temporal reality that radically colonizes the institutional rhythms of social life, spatial boundaries, and the ground of individual existence along the axis of a culture of speed. This transformation necessitates a re-evaluation of traditional concepts of time, labor, and alienation from a layered perspective. This study aims to examine the structural and psychological destruction caused by the commodification of time in the era of neoliberal rationality and digitalization, and to discuss the exploitation practices of the late-capitalist time regime within the human life-world in a multidimensional sociological context. Instead of collecting empirical field data, the study was conducted within the framework of critical sociology literature through a conceptual and intertextual analysis method based on David Harvey’s time space compression, Hartmut Rosa’s social acceleration theory, Jonathan Crary’s 24 7 market order conceptualization, and Byung-Chul Han’s burnout society analysis. The study concludes that macro level flexible economic imperatives generate a meso level institutional acceleration pressure, and this pressure is infiltrated into the individual’s own psychological apparatus at the micro level via cyber spatial networks and algorithmic time mechanisms. Furthermore, it is argued that external institutional controls and the internalized performance imperative merge to produce a paradoxical ground of subjectivity based on self exploitation, leading to chronic temporal scarcity, loss of resonance, and deep spiritual exhaustion. Consequently, the study demonstrates the necessity of recognizing the right to disconnect as a legal norm, substituting qualitative depth for quantitative speed in institutional structures, and developing a collective self defense consciousness against this hegemonic temporal domination.
Keywords: Late Capitalism, Culture of Speed, Layered Time Model, Self Exploitation, Social Acceleration.
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