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Copyright

Louise Knops, Heidi Mercenier, and Eline Severs

Published On

2024-09-06

Page Range

pp. 189–216

Language

  • English

Print Length

28 pages

8. Resentment and Time

clashing temporalities in citizens' relation to politics

Chapter of: Bitter-Sweet Democracy?: Analyzing citizens' resentment towards politics in Belgium(pp. 189–216)
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.

Contributors

Louise Knops

(author)
Assistant Professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2495-7993

Louise Knops is assistant professor in environmental humanities at the Université libre de Bruxelles. During the writing and editing of this book, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests range from affect and emotions, to political theory, social movements studies and environmental politics.

Heidi Mercenier

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7219-4527

Heidi Mercenier was a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Université Catholique de Louvain. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Université Saint-Louis–Bruxelles. Heidi Mercenier’s main research interest lies in citizens’ relationships with politics, especially the EU, as well as how current digitalisation processes affect such relationships. She has published in leading political science journals such as the Journal of European Public Policy and Politique européenne, and she has co-edited two collective volumes. She completed her PhD at the Université Saint-Louis–Bruxelles, worked as a lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and served as a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies (ARENA) of the University of Oslo.

Eline Severs

(author)
Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5681-5343

Eline Severs is associate professor at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her research interests fall within the field of democratic theory. Her expertise lies in democratic representation, the relationships between civil society and democratic governance, citizens’ conceptions of democracy, democratic norms, and the inclusion of historically disadvantaged groups. She is the chair of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on Political Representation and the VUB lead in the REDIRECT (Horizon Europe funded) project, which identifies strategies for rectifying the representative disconnect.