World Time as a Global Event

In: Geopolitics, Band 5, Heft 2, S. 94-119

Abstract

(First published in French in Le Temps mondial, 1997, pp 11-52.) World time is a matrix of problems, questions, & new problematizations based on events located in time. World time can be defined as the point when all the geopolitical & cultural consequences of the post-Cold War period link up with the acceleration of the process of economic, social, & cultural globalization. It is therefore neither the post-Cold War period since it is in Europe that its geopolitical consequences are greatest -- nor the period of globalization -- since the process started a very long time ago -- but the linking up of these two major processes. If it is necessary to contextualize globalization, it is even more necessary to temporalize it. Of course, the political, social, & cultural consequences of the market revolution & the liberal turning point are & will in the long term be considerable. But none of them can directly or immediately be interpreted or identified. That is why the acceleration of globalization is separate from world time. This idea of the mutual involvement of events, prior to their linking up, is absolutely essential because it makes it possible to understand conversely why, until then, linking up could not occur despite the existence of many early indications. Analyzing some major events of the 1970s & 1980s shows that the world order has changed (event), the change brought about by these events made it possible to distinguish before from after by giving the change the meaning of a break with no possibility of going back (irreversibility), & if so many events accelerate & multiply, this is not "purely by chance" but in fact because market forces & democratic aspirations inevitably combine (coherence). Yet world time is a matrix, not a system. All attempts at coherence that it may be subjected to bring out "bifurcations" & disjunctions & integrate into different mediations. Adapted from the source document.