DEAD TIME: A LOOK AT THE VALUE OF TIME AS A BARTERING CURRENCY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Abstract

Abstract: This article analyses the concept of ‘dead time’ as a political and existential category in contemporary society. Drawing on the chapter ‘Zona de Espera’ by Paulo Arantes, it investigates how time, transformed into a scarce resource and a currency of power, structures new forms of domination and inequality, particularly amongst the working classes. The study considers the control of time, in the form of waiting and social immobilisation, as a biopolitical and symbolic device of punishment. Through a critical and hermeneutic reading, bringing together Arantes, Foucault and Flusser, the relationship between biopower, presentism and the idolatry of the image is discussed. It is concluded that dead time reveals not only the suspension of experience, but also the negation of the existence of the contemporary subject, trapped between technological acceleration and social paralysis.