Vostal - 2013 - Thematizing Speed Between Critical Theory and Cultural Analysis

European Journal of Social Theory
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Thematizing speed: Between critical theory and cultural analysis

Filip Vostal
European Journal of Social Theory 2014 17: 95 originally published online 22 October
2013
DOI: 10.1177/1368431013505014
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European Journal of Social Theory

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and cultural analysis
Filip Vostal
University of Bristol, UK
Abstract
This article makes the case that speed has become significant, indeed central, as a social
scientific category and focus of attention today. In particular, it engages with two con-
temporary theoretical currents that conceptualize the causes, consequences and man-
ifestations of social speed as a fundamental feature of modernity. One key contribution is
Hartmut Rosa’s interpretation of ‘social acceleration’, which is offered by him as part of a
reinvigorated version of Critical Theory. Another is John Tomlinson’s (complementary
but different) orientation, focusing on variant cultural settings and implications of speed.
By juxtaposing and assessing these two thematizations of speed/acceleration, with other
recent treatments brought in at various points, the article underlines the need to clarify
and debate these modal notions as a distinctive issue for social analysis. In addition,
I bring out more explicitly the ambiguous nature of speed as a descriptive and normative
concern. In this respect, while there can be no denying its negative-oppressive force –
both structurally and experientially – it is also necessary to attend to the more
positive-enabling aspects of ‘fast’ subjectivity.
Keywords
Critical Theory, cultural analysis, modernity, social acceleration, speed
The issue of social speed is a familiar one for canonical social theorists. However, as
Tomlinson (2007a: 5–7) notes, in the classical sociological accounts of Marx, Weber
and Simmel, it comes across as a more or less random subsidiary to other debates. Late
modernity theorists and globalization analysts treat speed similarly to their classical
Corresponding author:
Filip Vostal, SPAIS, University of Bristol, 11 Priory Road, Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK.
Email: Filip.Vostal@bristol.ac.uk
96 European Journal of Social Theory 17(1)
predecessors: it is an adjunct to other important reflections on information technolo-

gies, connectivity, mobilities and the transformation of time and space. It remains
taken-for-granted in Bauman’s (2000: 9, 14, 73, 120) metaphorical reflections on
‘liquid modernity’; Castells’ (2010) notion of ‘timeless time’ takes the speed of sys-
tems and ‘global flows’ as an implied context without too much explication. However,
Castells (2010: 6, 32, 41) also explores a tendency for ‘planetary action in real-time’
which speaks directly to the speeding-up of action across many social arenas. Urry’s
thesis of ‘global complexity’ builds on the premise that in late modernity ‘people,
machines, images, information, power, money, ideas and dangers are all . . . travelling
at bewildering speed in unexpected directions’ (2003: 2, also 60, 85, 103, 113). There
are also important references to speed and acceleration in the work of Nowotny (1994:
10–12, 26, 84, 150) and above all Adam’s (1995: 23, 45, 51, 100–2, 112–14) pivotal
contribution to the sociology of time.
Popular science literature is a rich and detailed resource in diagnosing speed as a self-
standing phenomenon. Even though it treats the issue often descriptively and non-
analytically, it has often served as a valuable backdrop to more sociologically developed
accounts and arguments. Not only has it animated further the substantial analyses the
present article discusses, it has also significantly helped to establish a discourse of speed
and the value-base that is commonly attached to it. This kind of literature comprises a
genre that expresses negative, if not catastrophic, features of our epoch in which ‘just
about everything is accelerating’ (Gleick, 1999); where anxiety-ridden restlessness is the
defining experience accompanying the ‘cult of speed’ (Honoré, 2004); which, in turn,
results in the frustrations and stressfulness of having ‘no time’ (Menzies, 2005). One
of the problems with this genre is that it covers far too many dimensions of social life
far too quickly, skimming over complex societal terrains ranging from technology, the
transformation of work, consumption, celebrity cultures, the Internet, mass media and
many more. Ironically, popular science writings can be seen as symptomatic of speed
– they are hasty, without dwelling on explanation and detailed analysis. However, on the
other hand, these attributes are not primarily expected from this genre of speed(y) liter-
ature; the authors often make rather valuable and provocative observations.
Only recently have some social theorists started to develop systematic theories and
analyses that address speed as a self-standing social phenomenon. Two types of treat-
ment stand out in this field: Hartmut Rosa’s critical theory of acceleration and John Tom-
linson’s investigation of modern cultures of speed. Exploring these two major
contributions, this article proceeds as follows. First, it argues that Rosa’s theory of social
acceleration and his re-energized version of Critical Theory can be considered a climax
of the discursive tendency, which generally sets out to develop a social criticism of
speed. I survey several important contributions on speed to illustrate this trend and sub-
sequently extensively discuss Rosa’s propositions. This type of understanding, however,
neglects gains, conveniences and opportunities integral to the modern historical record
of speed, and more generally, falls short in recognizing its ambiguous nature. Second,
in order to get a perspective on speed as a multilateral and ambivalent social phenom-
enon, the cultural analysis of speed developed by John Tomlinson is considered. Overall,
the aim of the article is to expose two important contemporary authors who robustly
thematize speed as an important social scientific problem.
Vostal 97
Critique of the ever-faster lifeworld

There are several seminal book-length accounts (Agger, 1989, 2004; Hassan, 2003,
2009, 2012) that develop a critique of speed. This body of literature distils, and in a sense
systematizes, speed as a modern and above all capitalist imperative with a plethora of
negative consequences for the environment, health, self-determination, individual auton-
omy, democracy, intellectual pursuits and social reproduction. This line of argumenta-
tion develops sustained criticism that is usually built on a combination of distinctive
statements organized around a claim that the speed of life under (late/global) capitalist
modernity and the time-pressures it generates accounts for an unprecedented moment in
history due to its negative, regressive and inhuman effects. Essentially, the authors fol-
low here the Frankfurt School tradition by identifying speed as the central feature in the
capitalist production process, which obstructs ‘mechanisms of reaching understanding’
and thereby ‘colonizes the lifeworld’ and by highlighting the capitalist reification of time
as the pivotal cause behind ‘the eclipse of reason’.
Agger’s ‘fast capitalism’ thesis purports that capitalism ‘is compressed as the pace of
everyday life quickens in order to meet certain economic imperatives and to achieve
social control; idle hands are the devil’s workshop’ (2004: 4). Agger assesses the impact
of ever-accelerating capitalism on book writing and reading, on work, family, childhood,
and the body. Hassan’s concepts – the ‘Chronoscopic Society’ and ‘Empires of Speed’ –
develop a rich tapestry of claims maintaining that the ‘networked informational ecology’
with its digitally compressed and accelerated time dramatically affects the individual,
culture and society. Similarly as Agger, Hassan begins one of his treatments by saying:
‘we have never experienced such a world were ‘‘rapidity’’ - speed - is at the very core of
our collective and individual experience (Hassan 2009: 7-8, emphases original). Both
authors conclude with several recommendations that promote a slowing down as a nec-
essary precondition for social betterment. Agger states:
[C]apitalism has quickened since WWII, especially with the advent of the Internet. People
work harder and more, their private space has been eroded; kids are doing adult-like amounts
of homework and activities; people eat badly, on the run, and then embark on crash diets and
exercise programs. The world is ever-present and omnipresent, saturating us with stimuli, dis-
courses, directives. It is difficult to gain distance from the everyday in order to appraise it. Our
very identities as stable selves are at risk. We need to slow it all down (2004: 131).
One of the problems with those otherwise illuminating and important analyses is
that they dwell on a deterministic logic saying that ICTs, globalization, capitalism
or neoliberalism, or a combination of thereof, are the hegemonic forces that satisfac-
torily explain and explicate causes of acceleration. The effects and social impact of
ICT-driven acceleration are considerable and unprecedented, according to these
authors: an environmental catastrophe is looming; identities are fragmented; adapta-
tion is impossible; democracy must be re-temporalized; a cult of speed has taken over;
our thinking is ‘abbreviated’; we all live in a profound ‘age of distraction’. In these
analyses, individuals are portrayed as mere subjects to fast temporality, subsumed to
acceleration imperatives of the ‘neoliberalization-globalization nexus’ and ‘logics of
computing’. The question of agency and the ways in which individuals craft and nego-
tiate their subjective time rules and resources remains unexamined (on a similar point
and on the problem of temporal determinism and agency see the seminal work of Flah-
erty, 2011, chapters 1 and 8). Not to mention the distinct possibility that there are indi-
viduals who might embrace the liberating powers of speed-loaded experience and
dynamism beyond the strict logic of capitalism and the reification of time. Speed in
modernity denotes not only conquering time – complying with the regime of clock-
time, meeting deadlines, going faster – but also sensual experiences often associated
with the movement that enables traversing space more quickly (Duffy, 2009: 18, see
also Rosa, 2010b). This inherently modernist feature also holds in a figurative sense:
individuals may potentially embrace nimble decision-making and energetic conduct
while pursing their aspirations and projects.
Agger and Hassan ground their arguments about time and speed in the logic and mode
of capitalist production and in particular in the role of time in the labour process. They
surely have a fundamental point here: capitalism and reified labour processes are central
explanatory devices for understanding acceleration (see also Glezos, 2012; Jessop, 2012;
Marx, 1973; Neary and Rikowski, 2002; Postone, 1993). Yet, at the same time, although
capitalism and modernity are inseparable, they are not simply reducible to one another
(see Wagner, 1994, 2012). Albeit very nuanced, it is a significant distinction that allows
us to conceive speed as an ambiguous cultural and experiential modality that is an atten-
dant – arguably the major – yet not an essentialist aspect of capitalism. As some authors
note, the speed dynamic has also been associated with important historical ruptures
and revolutions (Koselleck, 2004; Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009; Wolin, 2005), the logic
of war (Glezos, 2012) and the emergence of the modern state system, interstate com-
petition, large-scale bureaucracy/administration and formal law (Scheuerman, 2003).
A number of subsequent questions arise from this subtle differentiation: are these devel-
opments even (geographically, sectorally)? Are different people differently positioned in
society affected equally? Why is it that non-capitalist regimes of the twentieth century
were also committed to acceleration (in production, for progress)?1 Is the social experi-
ence of speed qualitatively and quantitatively new? Why is it that there is very little
reference to speed as an energizing, or at least ambivalent, experience? Is speed only
a predicament squarely interpellating individuals? We can start to develop answers to
these questions by discussing the work of Hartmut Rosa. While associating speed with
capitalist modernity and in many ways continuing the reflections developed by Agger
in his classical account of fast capitalism (1989), Rosa nevertheless moves beyond the
positions positing the force of capitalism as the sole resource explicating the ramifica-
tions of the changing rates of social speed.
Hartmut Rosa: acceleration and modernity2

The starting point of Rosa’s analysis is this: ‘the history of modernity seems to be
characterized by a wide-ranging speed-up of all kinds of technological, economic, social,
and cultural processes and by a picking up of the general pace of life’ (Rosa, 2003: 3).
Highlighting various forms and features of acceleration, their causes, connections and
mutual dependencies, Rosa prompts us to understand acceleration and its consequential
Vostal 99
contradictions (i.e. deceleration) not only as aspects of modernity, but as its defining fea-
tures. Moreover, acceleration and its ‘discontents’ run through other characteristics of
the modern era: differentiation (structural transformation), rationalization (cultural trans-
formation), individualization (transformation of the modern subject) and domestication
(transformation of nature).
Making use of the corpus of work attributed to the classical sociologists, Rosa elabo-
rates on the contradictory dynamics of these core modern aspects. Pointing to: (1) Dur-
kheim, who explained how differentiation leads to disintegration and fragmentation
(anomie); (2) Weber, who explored how the rationalization of bureaucratic and institu-
tional processes ends up in the emergence of an undesired and unintended ‘iron-cage’;
(3) Simmel, who noticed that increasing individualization results in the emergence of
mass culture; and (4) Marx, who alerted us to how the domestication and domination
of nature may lead to an unexpected backlash of the environment, Rosa highlights the
temporal texture of modernity (Rosa, 2003: 4–5). However, he does not simply add
acceleration and temporality to other features of modernity in a complementary fashion;
rather, he states that it helps to structure the contradictory dynamics of these distinct
modernization processes (Rosa, 2009: 108–9). The unitary logic of acceleration is intri-
cately connected to all four modernization processes: ‘Individualization can be a cause
as well as an effect of acceleration, since individuals are more mobile and adaptive to
change and faster in making decisions than collectives.’ Rosa continues: ‘Similarly, one
of the main reasons for, as well as consequences of, organizational differentiation is
the speeding up of systemic processes, and the same holds true for rationalization as
the improvement of means–ends relationships and domestication as an improvement
of instrumental control’ (2009: 110–11). Quantitative change in the realm of speed
amounts to a tacit yet far-reaching qualitative social revolution. However, let’s ‘slow
down’ now and elucidate on how Rosa arrived at this strong claim.
Spheres of acceleration
Before Rosa proceeds with constructing his conceptual apparatus, he asks this question:
what is it that is actually accelerating in modern society (2010a: 14)? This seemingly
ordinary question is of great importance, as the answer determines any subsequent ana-
lytical framework. He straightforwardly refuses the assertions of some commentators,
who claim that ‘everything’ nowadays is accelerating, or that time itself is accelerating:
‘an hour is an hour and a day is a day – regardless of whether or not we have the impres-
sion it passed by quickly’, he writes (pp. 14–15). He also poses questions such as: is
acceleration a singular process, or should we think about a multitude of unrelated
phenomena that unevenly accelerate? And, are we dealing with isolated accidents or
systematic patterns of acceleration (p. 15)? Rosa develops answers to these questions
by emphasizing that there are many social phenomena and processes that do evidently
accelerate. He proposes three analytically distinct yet mutually dependent categories
or spheres for an understanding of acceleration: (1) technological acceleration; (2) accel-
eration of social change; and (3) acceleration of the pace of life, each propelled by a dis-
tinct ‘motor’.
Technological acceleration appears to be both an obvious and an easily measurable

form of acceleration. Drawing on Virilio’s remark that, historically, technological accel-
eration proceeds from the revolution in transport to that of transmission of information
and finally to the ‘transplantation revolution’ that opens up new possibilities and threats
in biotechnology (Rosa, 2009: 82), technological acceleration can be defined as ‘the
intentional speeding-up of goal-directed processes of transport, communication, and pro-
duction’ (Rosa, 2010a: 16). Importantly, technological acceleration also includes new
accelerative forms of organization and administration. The speeding-up of processes
of transport, communication and economic production, organization and administration
is proved empirically. Conceiving modernity diachronically Rosa notes that ‘the speed
of communication is said to have increased by 107, the speed of personal transport by
102, and the speed of data processing by 106 (Geißler, cited in Rosa, 2003: 6).
Similar to Agger and Hassan, Rosa says that these processes are driven, above all, by
‘the economic logic of capitalism’ (2005: 448). The capitalist economy impels techno-
logical acceleration in several ways. First, labour time is the crucial factor of production
and ‘saving time is equivalent to making (relative) profit’ (p. 449). Therefore the better
the production technology (including purpose-trained and efficient man-power) that a
producer (capitalist) uses, the more time s/he saves. Second, a capitalist who first intro-
duces a novel product or technology has a temporal advantage/lead over his/her compet-
itors. This in turn brings to the leading producer extra profits before the competitors
catch up. Third, ‘the accelerated reproduction of invested capital is crucial with respect
to what Marx called the ‘‘moral consumption’’ of technology and to the credit system. As
a consequence, the circle of production, distribution and consumption constantly accel-
erates’ (p. 449). In short, the whole of capitalism depends upon the accelerating circula-
tion of goods and capital (see also Glezos, 2012: 85–9).
Acceleration of social change is not so much concerned with technological advance-
ments but rather with processes of social change that are intimately related to technolo-
gical change, and that ‘rendered social constellations and structures as well as patterns of
actions and orientation unstable and ephemeral’ (Rosa, 2010a: 17). Modernity, Rosa
maintains, has changed the rates of change itself; as a matter of fact modernity’s crucial
trait is the ever-increasing pace of social change. The main motor Rosa identifies here is
that of functional differentiation. Drawing on Luhmann’s theory of temporalization,
Rosa notes:
In a society . . . structured along the lines of functional ‘‘systems’’, like politics, science, art,
the economy, law, etc., complexity increases immensely. As a result, the future opens up to
almost unlimited contingency, and society experiences time in the form of perpetual change
and acceleration (2003: 14).
The problem here is identifying the relevant indicators and constituents of social change
(cf. Sztompka, 1994). Rosa, taking the initiative, attempts to develop a supportive argu-
mentative infrastructure by identifying empirical and philosophical evidence. First, by
demonstrating an ever-increasing rate of change in family and occupational systems (pro-
ductive and reproductive domains of any society), and, second, by employing Lübbe’s
notion of ‘the contraction of the present’ (Lübbe, 2009: 159ff), Rosa notes that ‘the past
Vostal 101
is defined as that which no longer holds/is no longer valid while the future denotes that
which does not yet hold/is not yet valid. The present then is the time-span for which the
horizons of experience and expectations coincide’ (2010a: 18). Rosa claims that only
within this present time-span of ‘islands’ of relative stability can we reflect on past experi-
ences and orient our action with regard to the future. On these islands there is ‘some cer-
tainty of orientation, evaluation, and expectation’ (p. 18). The acceleration thus manifests
itself through the contraction of the present moment and ‘is defined by an increase in the
decay-rates of the reliability of experiences and expectations’ (p. 18).
Kavanagh et al., however, marshal a range of empirical evidence that exhibits a
counter-tendency to the one that Rosa identifies here; namely a relative stasis of modern
capitalist societies: ‘We live, undoubtedly, in an age of increasing acceleration but, para-
doxically . . . this acceleration is itself an occlusion of the lack of substantive movement
in the organization of our world’ (2007: 97). They look closely at statistical evidence
(mostly from the US) capturing variables such as the annual change in population, the
prevalence of notable mass diseases, the death rate and life expectancy, the annual sui-
cide rate and maintain that, from a very particular perspective, we can say that the social
dynamics of change is in itself a rather stable modern feature. Deploying this evidence,
their main conclusion is that ‘the change that we are experiencing is, relatively speaking,
no more – and on balance less – than that experienced by those who lived during the mid-
nineteenth to mid-twentieth century’ (Kavanagh et al., 2007: 101). The acceleration of
change is mere hyperbole, and the impression that we are moving faster and faster evac-
uates ‘our cultural politics of need, desire, and instruments for substantive change’
(Kavanagh et al., 2007: 117). In fact, Rosa makes a similar point when he says that
behind the hyper-dynamic surface of late modern societies there might lie solid forms
of inertia and freeze (Rosa, 2010a: 73).
Acceleration of the pace of life in general is the third pillar of Rosa’s analysis, and in
some ways the most symptomatic and endemic, indicating a spectacular ‘time-starved’
lifeworld in modern industrial societies. This western experience appears uncanny, given
the promises invested in technologization, industrialization and digitalization of diverse
socio-economic processes and instances. It is striking that while modernity promised that
by increasing the number of episodes of action or experience per unit of time we could do
more things in less time (p. 21), virtually all the available evidence exploring the speed
of life suggests the exact opposite. Rosa notes that in secular modernity the quest for the
‘good life’ is closely related to acceleration: ‘whether or not people still hold religious
beliefs, their aspirations, desires and yearnings generally are directed towards the offers,
options and riches of this world’ (p. 29). To live a good life therefore means to live a life
that is ‘rich in experience and developed capacities’ (p. 29). Moreover, a good or fulfilled
life appears to be measured by the sum, breadth and depth of these experiences and capa-
cities; hence ‘if we live ‘‘twice as fast’’, if we take only half the time to realize an action,
goal, or experience, we can double ‘‘the sum’’ of experience, and hence ‘‘of life’’, within
our lifetime’ (p. 30). Secularization, broadly speaking, is therefore the motor here.
This category is based on the premise that individuals and organizations are running
out of time and that they have to accelerate the speed of life in order to keep up with the
‘crowding of events’. These subjective experiences of time, however, never left a mod-
ern individual (Kern, 2004; Vieira, 2011). Rosa elaborates further in a polemical tone:
[I]t seems that the speed of life, defined as the number of an individual’s episodes of action
and/or experience per unit of time (e.g. per day, year of life), has increased continuously
over the centuries. This speed-up is effected via the acceleration of actions themselves,
as exemplified by fast-food or speed-dating, via the eradication of breaks or waiting periods,
and via multi-tasking (2005: 448).
Indeed, there is evidence that people do feel under heavy time pressure and do com-
plain about a lack of time (see e.g. Robinson and Godbey, 1997) and Rosa points out that
these moods seem to be increasing in recent decades. He notes an interesting paradox
that comprises the ‘acceleration-cycle’ connecting all three spheres into a self-
propelling system: though technological acceleration can be defined as the social answer
to the time scarcity, as a force that potentially frees up disposable time, the very opposite
is the case. Even though, when taken individually, technical inventions do potentially
craft disposable time, they also result in the dynamization of social practices, communi-
cation modalities and corresponding forms of life. Subsequently, ‘[P]eople feel pressed
to keep up with the speed of change [resulting from technological change] they experi-
ence in their social and technological world in order to avoid the loss of potentially valu-
able options and connections’ (Rosa, 2010a: 32). This, in turn, leads to the need for
acceleration in individual lives and generates time-pressures, which call for new time-
saving technological solutions.
Critical theory of acceleration

Rosa’s ambitious project culminates in his attempt to lay the foundations for a critical
theory of acceleration. It is based both on his theoretical apparatus and on the assumption
that acceleration is exceeding temporal patterns on the entire modern social fabric:
‘[S]ocial acceleration is the core-process of modernization, and therefore, a critique of
modern society is well advised to take it as its starting point’ (2010a: 67). In comparison
to Agger, also building on the Frankfurt School tradition, Rosa attempts not only to rein-
terpret modernity as a process of social acceleration, but also to re-invent a new Critical
Theory through foregrounding time and speed as its prime objects of analysis. Against
this background, Rosa introduces a threefold categorization to identify the variants of
this critique: functionalist, normative and ethical.
The first critical angle points to how diverse forms of acceleration end up in tensions
and frictions on the borderline between differently paced (fast or slow) institutions,
processes, systems, practices and constituencies: ‘Whenever two processes interlock,
i.e., whenever they are synchronized, the speeding up of one of them puts the other
under time-pressure – unless it speeds up too, it is perceived as an annoying break
or hindrance’ (Rosa, 2010a: 69). This becomes sociologically significant once we
move to more specific societal levels. Temporal incompatibility and tensions (i.e. dif-
ferent degrees of accelerations) between differently paced systems (Luhmann) and
fields (Bourdieu) are, Rosa says, particularly problematic once couched as a binary
conflict between the temporality of (techno/financial) capitalism and the temporal pre-
requisites of democracy, namely the time-demanding processes of opinion formation,
deliberation, negotiation and decision-making (see also Hope, 2009, 2011; Jessop,
Vostal 103
2012; Laux, 2011). Rosa’s main claim is that ‘today, [democratic] politics is no longer
perceived to be the pace-maker of social change and evolution’ (Rosa, 2010a: 72). The
ramifications of this temporal tension are under increasing scrutiny by some influential
contemporary US political theorists (Connolly, 2002; Glezos, 2012; McIvor, 2011;
Scheuerman, 2004; Wolin, 2005).
The second angle aims to revisit the normative critique of ideology. Drawing on
Marx, Rosa identifies the ways in which the reproductive set of beliefs and ways of rea-
soning sustain and – simultaneously – disguise the crude logic of the capitalist mode of
production. On the one hand, modern capitalist societies are characterized by temporally
binding modalities such as coordination, interdependency, regulation, calculation and
synchronization between and among their different sub-systems, segments and institu-
tions. On the other hand,
From the perspective of the modern liberal ideology as well as from individuals’ self-
perception, there virtually appear to be no binding social, religious or cultural norms; there
is an enormous plurality of conceptions of the good life and a most far-reaching freedom of
choice among myriads of options in all spheres of life (Rosa, 2010a: 74-5).
This liberal ideology of freedom conceals an excessive catalogue of social and eco-
nomic expectations, demands and pressures of a temporal nature that stabilize and pro-
mote the mode of the capitalist production that the majority of individuals can barely
control and influence.
Substantiating this point, Rosa notes that the copious rhetoric of ‘must’ mushrooming
in western societies carries with it a strong temporal imperative. It is a natural conse-
quence of a ‘competitively driven acceleration-game that keeps us in a relentless
hamster-wheel which speeds-up incessantly’ (p. 75). The need for coordination, calcula-
tion and synchronization is sustained by the implementation of pressing yet largely invi-
sible temporal norms – the strict rule of schedules, deadlines, the power of short notice,
the immediate logic of instant gratification and the omnipresent fetish with urgency and
emergency. Moreover, these ‘hidden social norms of temporality’ (p. 77) have the over-
whelming effect of producing subjects of guilt – despite being socially constructed, they
come in an ethical guise, as undisputable facts that are ‘out there’ (p. 77). The hidden
temporal norms substantially impact on our will-formation and action; they are inescap-
able, meaning that all individuals are subjected to them; their spread is not limited to one
or the other area of social life but to social life in its entirety; it is hard, almost impos-
sible, to resist them without facing (severe) consequences.
The third position highlights two variants of the ethical critique. Following Habermas,
Arnason and C. Taylor, modernity is conceived as a ‘political project’ in Rosa’s re-
interpretation. At the centre of this project lies the possibility of autonomy and self-
determination. An individual and collective autonomy rests on the capacity to ‘define the
goals, values, paradigms and practices of a good life as much as possible independently
from external pressures and limitations’ (p. 80). This type of politically promoted eman-
cipation is integral and in a sense a dialectical component of a modernization process. It
only makes sense once ‘the world moved beyond a supposed ontologically fixed social
order in which social classes and estates (the political and religious authorities) are
defined once and for all and simply reproduced from one generation to the next’ (p. 79).
Self-determination/autonomy becomes plausible and relevant only when it is positioned
vis-à-vis the competitive social acceleration that defines modernity: ‘The project of
modernity [i.e. the political project of autonomy] gains its plausibility and attractiveness
with the rise of society’s ‘‘kinetic energy’’, so to speak, with the advent of an accelerated
social change’ (p. 79). The continuous process of acceleration-cum-modernization has
historically been accompanied, if not sustained by, the promise, or perhaps, the possibil-
ity of self-determination, emancipation and autonomy. Interestingly, Rosa notes that
‘acceleration and competition . . . could be understood as means towards the end of
self-determination’ (p. 80, emphasis added; see also Rosa, 2010b). In early modernity,
social acceleration was intrinsically connected to the liberating modernist promise of
autonomy – the possibility of ‘accelerating’ could liberate individuals and collectives
from pre-modern bonds and pressures. We will return to this point later. However, in the
same breath, Rosa adds that the ‘conditions of possibility’ for self-determination are no
longer credible in a society where acceleration logics have turned against the promise of
modernity. Why?
Acceleration, according to Rosa, no longer ‘secures the resources for the pursual of
individual dreams, goals and life-plans, and for a political shaping of society according
to ideas of justice, progress, sustainability, etc.; rather, it is the other way round: individ-
ual dreams, goals, desires and life-plans are utilized to feed the acceleration-machine’
(2010a: 81). It has become crucial to lead and shape individual lives by ‘staying in the
race’ to keep up competitiveness. Nearly all registers of our lives are determined by com-
petitive logics, including those of family, life-partner, hobbies and health. Autonomy, in
terms of holding personal aspirations and convictions, has become ‘anachronistic’ and
turned into an endless striving to stay in the rat-race: ‘[C]reativity, subjectivity and pas-
sion no longer serve the end of autonomy in the old ‘‘modern’’ sense, but are now utilized
to improve our competitiveness’ (p. 81). The logics of acceleration and competition
mobilize immense social and individual capacities and energies – yet, at the same time,
they ‘suck up every bit of it’ (p. 82). Not only has acceleration become imperative, it has
lost, due to its ‘marriage’ with the hegemonic logic of competitiveness, a modern prom-
ise of autonomy. To further illustrate this claim, Rosa proposes that the condition of
‘acceleration totality’ necessarily leads to the state of alienation I will now look at.
Another component of the ethical critique thus aims to develop a critical phenomen-
ology of acceleration. Adding a temporal perspective to Marx’s concept of alienation,
Rosa develops an argument maintaining that social acceleration ‘is about to pass certain
thresholds beyond which human beings necessarily become alienated not just from their
actions, the objects they work and live with nature, the social world and their self, but
also from time and space themselves’ (p. 83). The self–world relationship and our spatial
‘localization’ are disrupted due to the annihilation of time by space. Time–space com-
pression and the widening gap between social and physical proximity mean a loss of inti-
macy and acquaintance. Social acceleration enables greater (and faster) mobility and
disengagement from spatial determination; however, it simultaneously furthers aliena-
tion from our immediate material, geographical and physical surroundings. The speed
of exchange rates alters our relationship to ‘things’ – both those we produce and those
we consume. Rosa says that the longer one possesses an object, the more likely it is that
Vostal 105
it will become appropriated, individualized and internalized. Thus, it is ‘constitutive of

our identity’, part of lived experience. In an acceleration society, according to Rosa,
things are no longer repaired but disposed of. While production might be speeded up,
it is not that easy with maintenance and service (pp. 84–7).
At the same time, as commodities (especially electronics) grow increasingly compli-
cated, we lose the ability to look after them ourselves. Due to the fast exchange, the dis-
tance between objects and the self grows. Ever smarter and faster gadgets divest many
people of cultural and practical knowledge and what we are seeing is the ‘incessant deva-
luation of experience through innovation’ (p. 87). Relatedly, a modern individual sub-
jected to forces of social acceleration is alienated from his/her actions too. First, the
abundance of tasks, decisions and actions accomplished via various sorts of technologies
means that we hardly ever have time to really be informed about the procedures that
enable them. Second, since Rosa defines alienation as a feeling of ‘not really wanting
what you do’ (even though it stems from ‘free’ decision and will), many distractive activ-
ities associated with a technologically-savvy and connected workplace, for instance, pre-
vent us from ‘doing what we really want to do’ (pp. 89–91). We buy things that we do not
need, and due to imperatives of speed, cannot even digest and become familiar with.
These ‘false needs’ sustaining modern capitalism actually prevent us from developing
and ‘leading a good, autonomous life’; in Marx’s words, they forestall ‘actualization’
and ‘self-activity’ (p. 92). In a socially accelerated world the inner experience of time
and duration are transformed too. We are unable to ‘appropriate time’. We engage,
according to Rosa, in short-term activities and experiences that are rigorously isolated
from each other. Drawing on Benjamin, Rosa says that ‘episodes of experience’ are
replacing ‘experiences which leave a mark, which connect to, or are relevant for, our
identity and history; experiences which touch or change who we are’ (Rosa, 2010a:
94–5). All this leads to a severe forms of self-alienation where acceleration ends up in
disintegration and erosion of commitment:
We fail to integrate our episodes of action and experience (and the commodities we acquire)
to the whole of life, and consequently, we are increasingly detached, or disengaged, from
the times and spaces of our life, from our actions and experiences, and from the things
we live and work with (p. 96).
This is all happening due to the mega-force of social acceleration and ‘the late-
modern dictates of speed’ (p. 99).
Rosa’s revamped Critical Theory is complemented by a number of disclaimers.
First, it goes beyond essentialist disputes about human nature/essence because ‘what
we are alienated from through the dictates of speed . . . is not our unchangeable or una-
lienable inner being, but our capacity for the appropriation of the world’ (p. 98). Sec-
ond, a critique of ‘temporally caused alienation’ does not advance an ideal of
subjectivity that would be free from any tensions, conflicts and divisions: ‘[A]ny
attempt for a political and cultural elimination of alienation leads to totalitarian forms
of philosophy, culture and politics, and to authoritarian forms of personality’ (p. 99).
However, speed imperatives – particularly competition and deadlines, according
to Rosa – justify the grounds for a reinvigorated concept of alienation, which
subsequently yields to new forms of social criticism. These imperatives result in beha-
vioural patterns and lived experiences, which are not determined by one or another set
of desires and values, but remain profoundly alien to subjects. At the same time, in con-
trast to other early modern or pre-modern socio-cultural regimes (such as the period of
early modernity or even the reign of the Catholic Church), the late modern context does
not provide for or allow ideas or institutions of potential ‘reconciliation’ – all unac-
complished expectations and ‘sins’ fall back directly to the individual: ‘[I]t is exclu-
sively our own fault if we are unhappy or fail to stay in the race’ (p. 99). All things
considered, critique of acceleration – and its alienating ramifications – ‘is the most pro-
mising candidate for the possible futures of Critical Theory’ (p. 99).
Limits of social acceleration

For Rosa, acceleration is not simply a discursive construction but an over-determined
social phenomenon with political and ethical implications. However, he builds on and
extends the ascendant discursive trajectory characteristic of independent commentaries
and critical literature. In his attempt to develop a critical theory of acceleration, he out-
lines a promising re-energized version of the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of late
modern/capitalist temporality. This grounding, however, precludes him from seeing
acceleration as anything other than a pathology and symptom of capitalist modernity.
Despite the originality and rigour of the concept of social acceleration, which is in many
respects ground-breaking, there are problematic aspects. Rosa and Scheuerman (2009)
rightly claim that we have to understand acceleration in its unevenness, saying that not
all social processes, populations, territories, segments and spheres are affected equally;
in fact, some of them may not be affected at all. However, elsewhere Rosa seems to sug-
gest the square presence of acceleration in modern societies when he talks about ‘accel-
eration as a new form of totalitarianism’ (2010a: 61–3). This contradiction conveys the
main merit as well as the main problem of his account. On the one hand, acceleration is
not levelled nor a constant social occurrence; on the other, following the discursive ten-
dency established by popular science writings and other critical literature, and following
the intellectual commitments of the Frankfurt School, Rosa argues for acceleration as an
inescapable, unavoidable and omnipresent condition negatively affecting almost all
spheres and layers of society, including our collective and personal realities and capaci-
ties. Building on this premise, Rosa’s critical theory of acceleration, albeit minimally,
loses its forcibility and potential in the light of unchecked dilemmas – similar to the crit-
ics of speed, the issue of individual perception, processing and negotiation of accelera-
tion remains unexplored and somewhat neglected. In other words, Rosa couches
acceleration as new form of social domination – an evil force – associated with the
dynamics of late modernity. This tendency is apparent in the way in which he treats
deceleration. Slowdown in Rosa’s conception always succumbs to acceleration
dynamics: it can be explained as a consequence of speed-up, a functional necessity of
speed-up or a reactionary drive against it (2010a: 33–41). Even acceleration’s antipode
is thus a fully subordinate offshoot of it.
Another problematic aspect of Rosa’s account is that he somewhat does not distin-
guish between corporeal and intended experience of speed and the oppressive need for
Vostal 107
speed associated with time-pressure; something Tomlinson calls, ‘sedentary speed’

(2007a: 3; see also Hassan, 2003: 2). The former is connected with physiognomic prop-
erties of speed experience, including thrill and excitement (Balint, 1959; Duffy, 2009;
Wollen, 2002). In terms of the latter, it is a type of speed experience typically associated
with the rat-race metaphor that appears to define the late modern experience – especially
when it is further tied to the transformation of the workplace and/or to increasing
embeddedness of communication technologies, such as smartphones (see Agger,
2011), in our daily lives. Although sedentary speed does not principally exclude the cor-
poreal dimension, it has more to do with the very embodied experience and a specific
contemporaneous mood or presentist mindset dramatically apparent with time-famine,
hurry sickness and even related time-management/counselling industries. In other words,
we can experience sedentary speed ‘without even stirring from our office desk’ (Tom-
linson, 2007a: 3) yet the conveniences and opportunities resulting from conscious and
carefully calculated speeding-up, either in a spatial or figurative sense, are rendered as
relics of an early-modern mindset.
Rosa has certainly developed a benchmark study that accounts for one of the most
systematic attempts to bring the analysis of speed and acceleration into debates within
critical social theory. Arguably, however, when acceleration is couched as an irreducibly
negative object of analysis, a degree of causality and essentialism potentially oversha-
dows the question of agency as well as speed’s complicated historical and cultural
dimensions – including positive appreciations (see Kern, 2004: 109ff). As Wagner
(1994: xii, 8) notes, the history of modernity is characterized by the double nature of lib-
erty and discipline. This ambiguity arguably holds also for the social experience of speed
as modernity’s particular manifestation. John Tomlinson’s account that I will now turn to
can be considered not only as a useful corrective of some problematic features of the crit-
ical social theory of speed, but also as an account that pays specific attention to the ambi-
guity and ambivalence of speed in modernity.
John Tomlinson: cultural modalities of speed

John Tomlinson’s perspective on speed is different. It largely draws on his penetrat-
ing cultural-anthropological analyses of globalization (1991, 1999, 2007b) in which
he pays particular attention to the cultural texture of late modern societal transfor-
mation. In contrast to the ‘cultural studies’ and ‘cultural turn’ that are at the kernel
of contemporary preoccupations with the cultural dimension in social theory – this
tectonic movement in human and social sciences includes recent and current engage-
ments with the questions of representation, identity, subjectivity, ‘post’ discourses,
sexuality, diversity and the various politics attached to it (Tomlinson, 2012: 183);
and the challenges they pose to social scientific disciplines and their constituents
and parameters (see McLennan, 2006) – Tomlinson’s aim is to advance ‘an analy-
tical grip’ that would help us to grasp the shifting cultural contexts and entangle-
ments of capitalist modernity. In his book The Culture of Speed: The Coming of
Immediacy, he develops such a grip.
Focusing on the transformations of the cultural significance of speed, Tomlinson elo-
quently captures speed as a distinctively modern and western phenomenon. In contrast to
Rosa, Tomlinson’s approach considers cultural contradictions of speed in the record of

modernity that are thoroughly documented through an anthropological and phenomeno-
logical analysis and by deploying a range of historical evidence. He proceeds by expos-
ing three modern cultural narratives of speed, distinguishing between ‘machine speed’,
‘unruly speed’ and ‘the condition of immediacy’. He provides a discursive and historical
trajectory of speed and its functions, ideological underpinnings and cultural implications.
In Tomlinson’s conception, social change associated with shifting speeds is not suscep-
tible to strict historical periodization and the three categories amount for distinctive
socio-cultural narratives and associated shifts in the qualitative social experience of
speed (cf. Berman, 1982).
‘Apollonian’, or rational-progressive speed

The first narrative and experience he elaborates on is machine speed. In contrast to
Rosa’s technological acceleration, Tomlinson’s conception is tightly linked to the
rational-progressive climate of industrialization and the ways in which speed was looked
upon in early modern era:
[S]peed is made to appear against the background of the most dominant institutionalized
understanding of the meaning of modernity: as the conquest of nature by mechanism, the
unproblematized belief in open-ended progress, the unstoppable advance and spread of the
capitalist market economy and the fundamental shift in culture from an agrarian-rural to an
industrial-urban context of experience (Tomlinson, 2007a: 9).
Machine speed is a disciplining and rational regulation of social processes and prog-
ress; it is directly related to the capacities of the machines, which have become emblems
of modernity (the train, the telegraph, the technologies related to industrial production).
In this narrative, velocity is perceived as a modern cultural value resulting from the ideo-
logical commitment of reason, progress and order: ‘This sort of speed is the energetic
dutiful offspring of a good marriage between liberal capitalism and progressive engi-
neering’ (p. 39).
Yet machine speed is much more than the simple application of machine technologies
to socio-economic practices and processes, and even more so, the overall attitude under-
pinning this application – for instance, in the realm of capitalist production. Echoing
Simmel’s social phenomenology of the modern city, Tomlinson says:
[S]peed is no less than the experience interface between the human lifeworld governed by
the biological constitution and temporal frame of our existence, and the complex, ungo-
vernable dynamics of the modern institutions into which we are inserted and which sweep
us along even as we struggle to construct and enact our life projects (p. 39).
One of the cardinal contributions here is that machine speed has considerably shaped
the cultural meaning of speed that, moreover, continues to have an enduring influence on
understanding speed as a prime marker of social and indeed economic progress.
Vostal 109
‘Dionysian’, or thrilling-risky speed

Whereas machine speed is interwoven with rational processes of control, planning, coor-
dination, order, management, planning and so on, the second analytical category that
Tomlinson develops, unruly ‘Dionysian’ speed, escapes discipline and regulation yet,
at the same time, is a sensual celebration of machine speed. It is associated both with
excitement and thrills as well as with ‘risks, dangers and implicit violence and the – quin-
tessentially modern – sensual-aesthetic experiences and pleasures it can afford’ (Tomlin-
son, 2007a: 9). Here speed is unruly in both orientation and expression. The coming of
unruly speed is emblematically identified with the controversial Futurist movement,
especially with the writings of Marinetti. However, in Tomlinson’s careful analysis of
the prophetic and the observational features in Marinetti about the modern experience
of speed, we learn that Marinetti was, despite his Fascist leanings, an incredibly attentive
commentator on the psychic aspects of speed and its consequences for human self-
understanding (pp. 8, 33, 45). Here Tomlinson tries to tackle the important question:
‘[W]hy [do] modern people find machine speed pleasurable in itself, not simply as a
means to an end[?]’ (p. 47).
Tomlinson develops several original answers to this question by covering significant
aspects of the culture of speed: the psychological, physiognomic, and sensual in terms of
the human–machine relationship; the ergonomic and aesthetic pleasure of speed that
encompass the merger of the ‘system of pleasure with system of necessity’ (p. 52). Under
this condition speed-heroism where ‘pleasure-seeking and being careless of conventional
law and morality . . . [and] . . . being intent on packing into life as much experience as
possible’ (p. 53) becomes transgressive (the ethic of ‘live fast, die young’ strongly
resembles, and is nearly identical with Rosa’s conception of the ‘secular motor’ of accel-
eration). Another affinitive connection Tomlinson discusses is that of war, speed and
violence. Here, drawing on the Futurists again and especially on Virilio, he points out
the relationship between some of the cultural values associated with machine speed and
warfare: ‘The deployment of fast machines is obviously rational in so far as they enable
the rapid, efficient and cost-effective prosecution of war’ (p. 57). So, on the one hand,
there is a notion of transgression and liberation associated with the comforts, energies
and pleasures of speed. On the other, there is a dark connection with the modern tech-
nological development of weaponry and war tactics and their deployment.
The state of immediacy

Essentially, in the two categories described above Tomlinson sees speed as an offspring
of the modern era: first, as a rational-progressive promise, then as a sensual-aesthetic
thrill and risk. However, for him, none of these contradictory tendencies became a pro-
minent cultural condition. Although they overlap, an emergent ‘condition of immediacy’
– which is a new augmentation in the historical trajectory of speed – is not smoothly con-
tinuous with discourses of regulated and unruly speed. Immediacy changes ‘the cultural
terms of speed’s impact, undermining some earlier presumptions and installing new
commonplace realities’ (Tomlinson, 2007a: 10). Historically, new cultures of speed can-
not be disentangled from the ubiquity of the ‘telemediation of everyday experience’
enabled by ICTs and the commodification of culture. Tomlinson notes that the contem-
porary embeddedness of ‘teletechnologies’ and ‘telepresence’ – working neatly in the
service of the changing patterns of late capitalism – conditions the ‘(apparent) closure
of the gap between people that has been the historical telos of communication’ (p.
120). More specifically the process of telemediatization, which is defined as a ‘specific
phenomenological mode’ (2007b: 156), includes emailing, typing, scrolling, internet
surfing, Google-based research, watching television, texting, photo sharing, web-based
social networking, tweeting, online shopping, downloading, and so on (Gandelsonas,
2008: 14). The increasing integration of this ‘telecommunication infrastructure’ into our
lifeworld is unquestionable. Routine and taken-for-granted telemediatized practices
account for a shift in ‘wider cultural sensibilities evident in developed, global-modern
societies’ (Tomlinson, 2007b: 157).
However, Tomlinson is not simply revisiting yet another, more ‘cultured’, version of
Rosa’s technological acceleration; his aim is to highlight the relationship between the
telecommunication infrastructure and wider shifts of cultural sensibilities:
the increasing tacit assumption – structured into both the work process and wider social
etiquette – that we have a social obligation both to be skilled users of technology and,
more importantly, to be almost constantly available to and for communication – that it is
a mark of neglect, of irresponsibility, to be off-line, off-message, incommunicado (2007b:
158, emphasis original).
For Tomlinson, immediacy is intimately linked with a shift in late capitalism’s con-
sumer demand. Contemporary capitalist culture promotes a speed of appropriation,
instead of cumulative appropriation amassing possessions, and a speed injunction, which
urges ‘closing the temporal gap’ between material desire and its fulfilment. This new
condition is substantially reconfiguring the modern culture and social ecology we live
in: [I]t ‘grows out of the general acceleration of practices, processes and the expe-
rience associated with institutional and technological bases of modernity’ (Tomlinson,
2007a: 10).
The main strengths of Tomlinson’s study are that, in comparison to critics of speed, he
envisages cultural dangers and attractions connected with speed. The cultural assump-
tions and expectations resulting from the ubiquity of fast telemedia elicit new moral and
existential dilemmas. They ‘have capacity to form trust relations and senses of moral
obligations beyond the confines of physical locale’ (2007b: 158) because for many peo-
ple mediated experiences of intimacy with distant others (via Skype-like applications,
for instance) have become commonplace mode of communication. Moreover, despite
offering ‘prompts, cues and incitements’, the state of immediacy ‘needs to be disturbed
because it provides no existential resources with which to respond to the contingency of
modern existence and to meet the surprise that await us’ (2007a: 158). It is difficult to
deny, however, that – notwithstanding reservations and criticism of the accelerating pace
of life – individuals willingly and deliberately opt for the modern attractions of speed,
often embodied in technological artefacts and their communication modalities. Indeed,
though any cultural experience needs to be understood within the broader confines of the
relationship between fast-pace technologies and capitalist reproduction (see Foster and
Vostal 111
McChesney, 2011), the fact that attractions and the usefulness of fast, real-time commu-
nication remain significant, largely omitted modality and social practice, bears an impor-
tant explanatory purchase for understanding contemporary cultures of speed.
Conclusion
Tomlinson posits speed as a significant and inherently ambiguous cultural and experien-
tial feature of modernity. Rosa’s brilliant account, complementing the dominant canon of
speed-criticism, mostly that of Agger and Hassan, advances that acceleration – the
change in the rate of speed – and its multiple negative implications and consequences
are defining features of modernity. Despite the rigour of Rosa’s revamped version of
Critical Theory, it overlooks, somewhat understandably, however, the ways in which
individuals process and handle acceleration and the reasons why they often opt for speed.
Critical social theory, and in particular the Frankfurt School tradition, do plausibly iden-
tify speed as an inhuman structural feature of capitalist modernity. Yet, as Wagner notes,
critics of the capitalist modernity often tend to emphasize shortcomings and condemn the
loss of moral orientations that accompany modernization (1994: xii). This one-sidedness
and explanatory/analytical framing, nevertheless, seem to ignore the subtle difference
between the potentially congenial, corporeal experience of speed associated with phys-
ical movement and the potentially oppressive, sedentary experience of speed that relates
to involuntary time-pressure. This is not to promote some sort of awestruck celebration
or apology of speed, nor to deny the intimate relationship between capitalism and accel-
eration. Rather it is to highlight potential limits of Rosa’s and other critical accounts.
Although, the two explanatory and interpretative modalities – a critical theory of accel-
eration and a cultural analysis of speed – are probably epistemologically incommensur-
able, taken together, they point out that socio-cultural motors, speed effects and
experiences are deeply ambivalent and heterogeneous. On the one hand, normatively dri-
ven critical social theory hardly accommodates the positive connotations of speed iden-
tified by Tomlinson; on the other, cultural analyses of speed do not yield much scope for
normative critical evaluations of structurally inscribed speed-pathologies and does not
account for possible forms of speed-domination. Yet, in order to understand, and perhaps
empirically investigate, contemporary and acute speed modalities with potentially far-
reaching social and cultural consequences such as high-frequency trading and rapid pro-
totyping (3D printing), social researchers might benefit from both Rosa’s and Tomlin-
son’s accounts of speed. Of course we can interpret these new developments and
associated experiences as yet another wave of technological acceleration that - if expe-
rienced other than predicaments and pathologies - are reducible to false consciousness.
But, this angle will not help us to understand the the social complexities and origins of
these sociologically relevant problems. Synthesizing Rosa and Tomlinson would poten-
tially assist in illuminating and mapping implications and causalities as well as ways of
reasoning and tensions underpinning the modern will-to-accelerate.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and Gregor McLennan for
his comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Notes
1. Lenin’s New Economic Policy was famously inspired by F.W. Taylor’s propositions targeted at
the speeding-up of production (Gramsci, 1971); Soviet economies in Stalinist and post-Stalinist
eras were heavily driven by a commitment to a continuous increase of productivity and effi-
ciency (personified in the notorious ‘Hero of Socialist Labour’, Stakhanov, the superproductive
figure of the ‘udarnik’ [strike labourer] and the ideology to-be-surmounted ‘five-year plans’).
Not to mention the Soviet economies’ commitment to the idea of progress and to ‘over-com-
peting’ the ‘imperialist’ capitalist economies by implementing presumably faster production
and agrarian technologies (see also Tomlinson, 2007a: 9).
2. Parts of this section draw on my earlier discussion of Rosa’s work (Vostal and Robertson, 2012:
146-8).
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Author biography
Filip Vostal received his PhD from the University of Bristol in March 2013. His thesis, entitled
‘Accelerating academia: temporal tensions and speed in the contemporary university’, examined
structural, discursive and experiential manifestations and consequences of speed as they relate to
the changing institutional life of the British university.

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European Journal of Social Theory

Thematizing speed: Between critical theory and cultural analysis

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predecessors: it is an adjunct to other important reflections on information technolo-

Critique of the ever-faster lifeworld

Hartmut Rosa: acceleration and modernity2

Technological acceleration appears to be both an obvious and an easily measurable

Critical theory of acceleration

it will become appropriated, individualized and internalized. Thus, it is ‘constitutive of

Limits of social acceleration

speed associated with time-pressure; something Tomlinson calls, ‘sedentary speed’

John Tomlinson: cultural modalities of speed

Rosa, Tomlinson’s approach considers cultural contradictions of speed in the record of

‘Apollonian’, or rational-progressive speed

‘Dionysian’, or thrilling-risky speed

The state of immediacy

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