Abstract

‘Going nowhere fast’ is the paradox that seems to arise from our temporal trajectories in late modernity, according to some theories of social acceleration and specially the analysis of Hartmut Rosa. This thesis confront us with a dual diagnosis of modernity, showing two-faced Janus: on the one hand, the acceleration of time seems a historical constant since the mid eighteenth century, while on the other, this same increase speed has led to a kind of ‘immobility’ in which we find ourselves caught between urgency and lack of horizons of our present, detached from both the authority of the past (pre-modern) and confidence in the future (of the first modernity). Are we seeing the two faces of the same phenomenon? Could the uncontrolled acceleration drive us to a loss of hierarchy which prevents the emancipatory project of modernity?