Resentment and Time: Clashing temporalities in citizens' relation to politics

Drawing on the affective turn in social sciences and increasing scholarly attention for political temporalities, our chapter investigates the entanglement between feelings of injustice, resentment and time in citizens’ discourses on politics. Our research is based on a qualitative analysis of focus groups with activists (in the Yellow Vests and Youth for Climate movement) and with individuals interviewed during the Covid-19 pandemic (employees of the cultural sector and students). Our findings highlight different temporal facets of citizens’ resentment and situate their discontent as the result of clashing temporalities: between the temporalities of capitalism and human societies, and between different temporalities that structure politics within the boundaries of representative democracy. Our chapter sheds light on the relevance of adopting an affective-temporal lens to understand citizens’ resentment within the broader context of the crisis of representative democracy.