Democratic politics and care are both shaped by time and encompass multiple temporalities: both require time and unfold within complex human relationships. They also deviate from the maximization of profitability through the capitalist logics of acceleration and compression, something with which both democracy and care are confronted. Just as democratic deliberations require time and resist rigid scheduling, the same is true for caring activities and relationships. Although both domains exhibit pressures toward acceleration (Reference HuwsHuws 2019; Reference McIvorMcIvor 2011), these pressures are constrained when quality is not to be compromised. Whereas political decisions, especially if they are to be made by many people, cannot be rushed without being coercive, the same is true for caring for sick people or teaching children to write.
The accelerant tendencies of post-Fordist capitalism have deeply influenced democratic organizational practices and decision-making. Some scholars even identify a “clash of temporalities” (Reference TombaTomba 2014) in which the capitalist compression or acceleration of time is directly opposed to the slowness of democratic processes (Reference McIvorMcIvor 2011; Reference RosaRosa 2013; Reference ScheuermanScheuerman 2001; Reference VirilioVirilio 2012). Democratic theory thus understands temporality often in terms of velocity (c.f. Barbehön and Gebhardt in the introduction). The capitalist “time squeeze” (Reference HuwsHuws 2019: 123) has similarly been problematized in feminist scholarship to emphasize its impact on feminized caring responsibilities and activities, which need (more) time (Reference TrontoTronto 2013; Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020). Joan Tronto's (2013) concept of “caring democracy” positions democracy and care as foundational to societal organization and argues for increased temporal resources for both.
In this article, I interrogate the linear understanding of democratic temporalities implied in the critiques of velocity and capitalist time squeeze. I argue that democratic temporalities should be re-theorized through engaging with the multiple temporalities of care and caring democracies, and I propose feminist chronopolitics as a framework to do so. Feminist chronopolitics centers multiple temporalities and demands their valuation and recognition, challenging dominant capitalist, patriarchal, and ableist chrononorms.
My theorization of the multiple temporalities of care is based on feminist, queer, and crip temporalities and theories of time, which deviate from the capitalist and patriarchal linear clock-time of the so-called public sphere (Reference FreemanFreeman 2010; Reference KaferKafer 2013; Reference LeccardiLeccardi 1996). A conceptualization of the temporalities of care as polychronic, cyclical, and spiral informs feminist chronopolitics that accommodate the multiple rhythms and times of a caring democracy.
This article advances a more nuanced understanding of democratic temporalities by foregrounding their entanglement with the specific temporalities of care. Building on this theorization, I develop a temporalization of the concept of “caring democracy” and explore its implications for feminist chronopolitics as a political practice. I show that the (dis)connection between care and democracy is rooted in the societal organization of care as predominantly unpaid and feminized labor within nuclear, heteronormative families. This aspect is central to better understanding the androcentric and heteronormative constitution of the public and liberal democratic sphere, which is associated with citizens’ assumed autonomy and carelessness in democratic states and thus excludes the reproductive sphere as private (Reference BrodieBrodie 1997; Reference PatemanPateman 1988b; Reference WittigWittig 1989).
In contrast, the approach of political ethics of care argues for a “caring democracy,” in which care practices are a point of departure for democratic organization and policy-making (Reference TrontoTronto 2013; Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020). Joan Tronto, the most prominent advocate for a caring democracy, argues that “the most important considerations in rethinking society from a caring perspective . . . is creating time and space for care” (Reference TrontoTronto 2013: 166). Julie Anne Reference White, Urban and WardWhite (2020: 163) further explores and conceptualizes “care time” against the acceleration of care and the “time squeeze” for those responsible for caring (Reference HuwsHuws 2019; Reference WajcmanWajcman 2015). Care time is, according to White, an important condition for achieving a “caring democracy” (Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020: 163). Caring democracy is thus theorized primarily in terms of more time for care and decompressing care time against the time squeeze. While I agree that this focus is essential to center care in democratic institutions, processes, and policy-making, I contend that existing theorization has overly emphasized the quantitative aspects of temporality, such as duration and speed. This outlook, I argue, inadvertently reproduces the linear, labor-centric logic of capitalist chronopolitics.
To address this, I draw on feminist, queer, and crip theories of time to theorize the multiple temporalities of care as the basis for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of caring democracy, as well as its implications for reorganizing democratic processes to meet the demands of care. I ask how caring democracy can be temporalized to reflect the multiple temporalities of care and what are the implications for feminist chronopolitics. By theorizing the temporalities of care, I argue for a temporal understanding of (caring) democracy beyond the sheer quantitative dimensions of linear clock-time, inherent in velocity. I propose a conceptualization of feminist chronopolitics capable of informing transformations in democratic institutions, practices, and policies, resisting authoritarian, accelerationist, and masculinist governance models.
To develop this temporal understanding of caring democracy, I first introduce the concept of caring democracy and explore the relationship between care and democracy. Next, I draw on feminist theories of time to theorize the multiple temporalities of care in its polychronic, cyclical and spiral dimensions. These temporalities allow for transforming the quantitative concept of velocity, expressed in speed and duration, which so far have been inscribed in the understanding of temporalities of (caring) democracy. In the third part, I bring these conceptual strands together to examine how (caring) democracy can be reorganized to integrate multiple temporalities of care and to reflect on the implications for feminist chronopolitics in pursuit of a time- and care-centered transformation of democratic politics.
Caring Democracy and Care as a Political Practice
Feminist theories have highlighted the separation between care and democratic theory and practice for decades. One important conceptualization is the division between caring, which is performed in the so-called private sphere,Footnote 1 and politics in the so-called public sphere—a division that is deeply engrained in both liberal and androcentric democracies and democratic theories (Reference GavisonGavison 1992). It is moreover based on the division between the so-called productive and reproductive labor in capitalism and the devaluation of the latter, which materialist feminists have emphasized (e.g., Reference Chodorow and EisensteinChodorow 1979; Reference Dalla Costa, Costa and JamesDalla Costa 1972).
The public-private divide is, for instance, reflected in the concept of citizenship, which is centered around the male and liberal norm of autonomy, which neglects bodily and social caring needs as a central fundament of societies (Reference Pateman and CastlesPateman 1988a: 145). The understanding and constitution of the political itself are thus tacitly based on the reproductive and caring labor of feminized subjects. The feminist slogan “the personal is political” has most prominently problematized this in the 1960s and 70s (Reference NicholsonNicholson 1981). The slogan clarifies the negative consequences of considering sexual relations and sexualized violence in relationships and marriages as “private”. The heteronormative institution of marriageFootnote 2 has secured gendered and sexualized violence in which the state “de jure outlaws sexual violence but de facto permits men to engage in it on a wide scale” (Reference MacKinnonMacKinnon 1989: 245). The division between public and private is thus a liberal and androcentric construction, which feminist scholarship contests (Reference BrodieBrodie 1997).
The conception of political participation and community is based on the rationalities of autonomy,Footnote 3 ability, self-sufficiency, time prosperity, and a history of political thought by white “European men about themselves” (Reference Fries, Mattern, Pongrac, Vogt and WutzkeFries 2019). Feminist scholarship, therefore, suggests centering political thinking and democratic processes on the rationality and ethic of caring (Reference HeldHeld 2006; Reference TrontoTronto 2013).Footnote 4 Such an approach transforms the liberal and androcentric divisions between production and reproduction, as well as public and private. This includes shifting the temporalities of democratic processes. While legislative periods are relatively short, the effects of political decisions are evident in the long term: “decisions made, and policies established, by today's Liberal Democracies extend far beyond the period for which their representative governments are elected” (Reference Adam, Bornemann, Knappe and NanzAdam 2022: 496).
Concepts of “more-than-human care” or eco-feminist perspectives reflect the need to include nature in the conceptualization of caring and taking care (Reference de la Bellacasade la Bellacasa 2017; Reference Gottschlich and BellinaGottschlich and Bellina 2017). They understand care ethics
as a normative guideline that offers opportunities for dealing with numerous socio-ecological crises which are often caused through the rationale of maximizing short-term economic benefits and politically partial interests that have a detrimental impact on the preservation of nature, destroying the livelihoods of populations. (Reference Gottschlich and BellinaGottschlich and Bellina 2017: 949).
This concept of care as a normative guideline reflects the feminist rethinking of Hannah Arendt's “care for the public world,” which aims to “preserve and augment” political freedom and its economic underpinning (Reference MyersMyers 2013; Reference VillaVilla 2008: 352). In this vein, Joan Reference TrontoTronto (2013) introduced the concept of “caring democracy,” in which democratic processes aim to center the responsibilities for care and its relational aspects. Care-ethical politics reorganize political practices in such a way as to enable citizens to engage in caring for themselves and others (idem: 139). More recently, scholars have reconceptualized the project of a caring democracy by suggesting a “radical abolitionist politics of care” that suggests community-based organization of care and mutual aid in contrast to state institutions (Reference Woodly, Brown, Marin, Threadcraft, Harris, Syedullah and TicktinWoodly et al. 2021: 892). A further care-ethical politization of care from a crip perspective, suggests “accessible care” as a more inclusive mode of care (Reference KellyKelly 2013).
The focus on caring relations also implies transforming the ways of knowledge production and validation, centering emotions and empathy instead of or combined with so-called rationality and reason (Reference CollinsCollins 1989: 476; Reference HeldHeld 2006). Therefore, care-ethical thought as a political practice shares similarities to a decolonial critique of binary and positivist thinking in the Eurocentric monopolization of reason (Reference LanderLander 2000; Reference QuijanoQuijano 2000). Decolonial and Black feminist care-ethical approaches emphasize the importance of an ongoing problematization of power relations in the process and the possibility of caring with a view to its racialized character (Reference Woodly, Brown, Marin, Threadcraft, Harris, Syedullah and TicktinWoodly et al. 2021; Reference Yuval-Davis and HarcourtYuval-Davis 2016).Footnote 5 A care-ethical approach, which ruminates on existing colonial, racialized, gendered, and classed power relations is, therefore, able to transform democratic politics toward the fulfillment of caring needs of all. The ethics of care is thus a practice and not only an ethical or theoretical concept (Reference HeldHeld 2006).
To claim intersectional gender equality would mean striving for the political recognition of caring relations and reproductive labor, thereby redefining the contents and processes of (democratic) politics. Careful politics would thus cause a radical change of the political itself. Care as a social and political practice includes aligning politics with the care-ethical values of “attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness” (Reference SevenhuijsenSevenhuijsen 2003: 184). In her formulation of a caring democracy, Jan Tronto reflects on the political practice of care in the dimension of “caring with,” which includes “plurality, communication, trust and respect,” as well as solidarity (2013: 35). These practices and values are deeply embedded in relational caring practices with their distinct temporalities (Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020).
Temporalities of Care
In this section, I draw on feminist, queer, and crip theories of time to theorize the multiple temporalities of care in their polychronic, cyclical, and spiral dimensions based on the distinct temporalities of relationships and bodily needs. My theorization contests and complicates the common conceptualization of temporality in democratic and feminist theory, after which (caring) democracy needs more time and slowness. Such an understanding remains stuck in the framework of clock-time, in which time passes in a linear and monochronic way and simultaneity is neglected. Different theories of time have emphasized how linear clock-time emerged historically and scrutinized the Eurocentric and capitalist rationalities of linear clock-time (Reference BrysonBryson 2007; Reference LefebvreLefebvre 2004; Reference MignoloMignolo 2009; Reference OsborneOsborne 1995; Reference ThompsonThompson 1967). Clock-time is thereby a social construction that is interconnected to global intersectional power relations: “It becomes clear that time has not only something to do with clocks or timing but also with sequential ordering according to priorities, that it relates to irreversible changes, records and identity; to both cyclical, and progressive processes and, last but not least, that it is used and controlled as a resource” (Reference AdamAdam 1989: 468).
Gender is a crucial category in deconstructing hegemonic temporalities, including their connection to power relations. Feminist scholars argue that due to social roles, care responsibilities, or biological features, women experience temporalities differently than men and that those temporal experiences are marginalized and subordinated under a linear, goal-oriented monochronic time conception in a patriarchal capitalist society (Reference AdamAdam 1989; Reference ApterApter 2010; Reference BrysonBryson 2007; Reference DaviesDavies 1994; Reference DoucetDoucet 2023; Reference LeccardiLeccardi 1996). Some scholars fixate on the corporal dimension of different time experiences between women and men and argue that the menstrual cycle, childbirth, or breastfeeding are the significant causes for the different time experiences of women (Reference Fox, Johles Forman and SowtonFox 1989; Reference Kahn, Johles Forman and SowtonKahn 1989; M. Reference O'Brien, Johles Forman and SowtonO'Brien 1989). It is a hot feminist topic whether biological features are determinants in experiencing time differently, or whether the differences can be traced back to care work and the public-private dichotomy (Reference BrysonBryson 2007: 121). I argue from a materialist queer feminist perspective that feminized time experiences are the result of a sexual division of labor between the reproductive and the productive sphere, which subjugates the time to care under a patriarchal and capitalist time regime (Reference BeierBeier 2023; Reference HuwsHuws 2012). A difference in reproductive capacities is thus not congruent with a sex difference, nor with whether and how much someone is engaged in caring activities, although those activities are highly gendered and racialized (Reference BhattacharyaBhattacharya 2017; Reference ColebrookColebrook 2015). A queer theory of time challenges the normativity of heterosexual temporalities engrained in the nuclear family and its reproductive temporality and introduced the concept of “chrononormativity” (Reference FreemanFreeman 2010: 3; Reference HalberstamHalberstam 2005).Footnote 6
Focusing on the temporalities of caring and reproductive labor can evade a dualistic and essentialist understanding of “women's time” by theorizing the act of caring rather than the figure and gender of the caregiver. The theorization of caring temporalities thus provides an opportunity to develop a feminist time theory grounded in gendered and queer temporal experiences. It can draw on approaches that think care beyond its organization in heteronormative nuclear families, for instance in the theorization of queer caring practices and family abolitionist approaches (Reference LewisLewis 2022; M. E. Reference O'BrienO'Brien 2023), while preventing romanticizing care as an emancipatory practice per se (Reference JosephJoseph 2002).
The temporality of care can be conceptualized as inherently different from the efficiency rationalities of the clock-time regime (Reference DoucetDoucet 2023; Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020). It is at the same time necessary for the reproduction of labor power and thus capitalism itself. Unpaid care work is mostly carried out invisibly, unvalued, and hardly recognized, foremost but not exclusively by women (Reference BakkerBakker 2007; Reference Benería and SenBenería and Sen 1981; Reference FedericiFederici 2012). When care services and household chores are commodified and converted into paid jobs, they are transferred to mostly migrant and less privileged women under precarious conditions (Reference Hochschild, Giddens and HuttonHochschild 2000).
While other sectors have achieved significant productivity gains, the care sector is characterized by time constraints (Reference MadörinMadörin 2011). It is, for instance, only to a certain extent feasible to teach children how to brush their teeth faster or to read their bedtime story twice as quickly. This temporal feature of care is also essential to the concept of crip time in which the multiple and at times contradictory temporalities of disability are positioned against the normative temporality of a capitalist heteronormative and able-centered society (Reference KaferKafer 2013). A crip time perspective shifts the focus of care to the receiving end and the temporal (care) needs of disabled people. The cripping of time is furthermore a useful practice to contest the naturalization of “able-bodiedness and able-mindedness” ingrained in the hegemonic temporal regime (Reference McRuerMcRuer 2018: 23). It can thus shape chronopolitics that adhere to different bodily needs.
The temporalities of caring also vary significantly across regions and between the Global South and the Global North. Increasing capitalist accumulation goes hand in hand with an intensification of the sexual division of labor, the workload of caregivers, and time scarcity in general (Reference Antonopoulos and HirwayAntonopoulos and Hirway 2010). Household technology has not substantially reduced the time spent on domestic tasks but rather shifted and transformed the time spent from production to consumption (Reference WajcmanWajcman 2015). In Marxist terms, the “socially necessary reproduction time” is commodified or decommodified according to the respective needs of capitalist accumulation (Reference BeierBeier 2018; Reference PostonePostone 1995). When public services are privatized, feminized caregivers operate as the “shock absorber of economic globalization” (Reference FedericiFederici 2012: 108) who need to compensate for austerity measures by increasing their time for care and household activities. Because social protection systems and public care services are scarce, mainly due to decades of Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s, primarily women spend the majority of their time with informal care services, food processing, and agricultural subsistence production (Reference ElsonElson 1995; Reference RaiRai 2004). These tasks are characterized by cyclical, solar, and recurring temporalities, which are very different from the monochronic clock-time in industrialized and urban areas (Reference Chung, Young and KerrChung et al. 2019). The enforcement of Western linear time has marginalized temporalities in the Global South, such as Kafir time in South Africa (Reference AtkinsAtkins 2009).
The capitalist tendency of acceleration has transformed caring temporalities worldwide and led to a “time squeeze,” which includes the commodification and privatization of care, for instance, in the platform and gig economy (Reference HuwsHuws 2019: 16f). Care services can be ordered, bought, and consumed, sometimes even without personally engaging with the person who is performing the care tasks. The “time squeeze” of care leads to temporal conflicts of caring temporalities “with the accelerationist and futurist tendencies of neoliberal democracies” (Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020: 161). The concept of the velocity of care is, however, inadequate in theorizing the multiple temporalities of care because urgent needs that must be quickly met have been a feature of care even before the neoliberal restructuring of the economy. Although care needs (more) time, in a quantitative sense, it is further characterized by its distinct temporalities that are embedded in relationships. If we understand caring temporalities only in relation to linear clock-time, which are prevalent in the concepts of time constraints or velocity, we marginalize other dimensions of care that are inscribed in its relational dimension.
Drawing on these feminist, crip, and queer theoretical considerations, I am now able to formulate the polychronic, cyclical, and spiral dimensions of the temporalities of care. The temporalities of care are based on relationships and bodily needs, or as Tronto puts it, “[t]ime spent caring is not about mastery and control but about maintenance and nurturance” (Reference Tronto2003: 123). It is not predictable when children or sick people need help with certain tasks or when and for how long attentiveness and emotional support are needed (Reference AltomonteAltomonte 2016). Caring activities are characterized by constant interruptions and doing more than one thing at a time, such as supervising children while cooking. This polychronic dimension of care is one reason why it is systematically undercounted through monochronic and quantitative time use studies (Reference FolbreFolbre 2006). The rationality of quantitative linear clock-time is deeply ingrained in these studies (Reference BrysonBryson 2008; Reference DoucetDoucet 2023).
Another key characteristic of the temporalities of care is their cyclical and spiral character. Caring is highly dependent on body and life cycles, but also other cycles, such as seasons and hours of daylight. Sleeping patterns, food intake, and energy level are just a few of the effects of cyclical time that determine and structure caring relations. Because of these and other variations in the constitution and character of human beings, the amount and exact time for caring is unpredictable and evades the clock-time rationality included in planning processes in wage labor. The mental load of caregivers is another example of the multiplicity of caring temporalities that evade the measurement of the clock. In contrast to the linear and quantitative temporalities of time use measurements, caring is rather cyclical or can be theorized as spiral, when linked with linear or progressive elements of time (Reference InayatullahInayatullah 1993). The spiral dimension reflects, for instance, the growth or the transformation of caring relations. It also concerns relations between different generations and therefore includes wavering and interrelating pasts, presents, and futures (Reference Cook and TrundleCook and Trundle 2020; Reference Whyte, Alber and GeisslerWhyte et al. 2003).
The polychronic, cyclical and spiral temporalities of care demonstrate their divergence from dominant and hegemonic clock-time. The mere subordination of caring temporalities under linear clock-time continues to devalue and marginalize relational aspects. These contradictory or conflicting temporalities create significant social and gendered inequalities in democratic politics. The multiple temporalities of care make it challenging for caregivers, primarily women, to engage in the monochronic temporalities of political participation, leading to the underrepresentation of caregivers in democratic institutions (Reference Cambell and ChildsCambell and Childs 2014). Focusing on the temporalities of care and human relationships in democracy should be one important dimension of a care-centered feminist chronopolitics, which I introduce and reflect upon in the next section.
Temporalizing “Caring Democracy”: Reflections on Feminist Chronopolitics
Theorizing the multiple temporalities of care demonstrates its contradictions to and deviations from clock-time-oriented time regimes. Putting the temporalities of care at the center of democratic politics transforms the epistemological and normative foundations of political theory and practice. A feminist care-centered chronopolitics needs to acknowledge the limits of clock-time-oriented processes, organizations, and policy-making.
I understand chronopolitics as analogous to the “politics of time” as “politics which takes the temporal structures of social practices as the specific objects of its transformative (or preservative) intent” (Reference OsborneOsborne 1995: xii; see also Reference Esposito and BeckerEsposito and Becker 2023). Feminist chronopolitics so far have suggested the reduction of working time to enable more time for care and the possibility for equal participation (Reference Bärnthaler and DenglerBärnthaler and Dengler 2023; Reference Glaeser, Fröhlich, Schütz and WolfGlaeser 2022; Reference VölkleVölkle 2025; Reference WeeksWeeks 2009). Frigga Reference HaugHaug (2009) proposes the Four-in-One Perspective to equally distribute hours between productive work, care, culture and education, and political participation. Such chronopolitics are reproducing a linear and quantitative conception of time and are thus unable to accommodate the multiple temporalities of care.
The premises of feminist chronopolitics that center the temporalities of care should not only include extending the amount of time to care for others or to realize “time autonomy” (Reference FrickFrick 2020) but instead deconstruct the very ideas of clock-time and autonomy altogether. Instead, it is important to conceptualize caring temporalities based on the needs and cycles of diverse humans and even more-than-human worlds (Reference BeierBeier 2025; Reference VölkleVölkle 2025). To enable democratic politics that are based on care, its multiple temporalities, including polychronic, cyclical, and spiral dimensions, need to be reflected and included in democratic processes. As previously elaborated, polychronicity refers to the simultaneity of care processes, cyclicity to its connection to bodily and natural cycles and the spiral dimension to the character of relations that change over time.
Supplementing and building on the previous reflections on caring democracy and overcoming linear conceptions of time in feminist politics, I suggest the concept of feminist chronopolitics, that is based on the multiple temporalities of care for overcoming the temporal regimes of the so-called productive sphere inscribed in clock-time: “‘Caring democracy’ must confront the ways care work requires a different temporal regime, one incompatible with the regimes of productive work” (Reference White, Urban and WardWhite 2020: 162).
A caring democracy is not only a “slow democracy,”Footnote 7 as White puts it. It includes the transformation of time itself and the acknowledgment and centering of multiple crip, queer, feminist, and decolonial temporalities that are currently subordinated under the hegemonic monochronicity. It involves organizing democratic processes and institutions in a way that combines multiple temporalities and harmonizes democratic processes with cyclical and seasonal temporalities to attend to the multiple temporal needs of caring relations.
The temporalities of care can inform plural feminist chronopolitics that aim at making democracy more (time) just and reflective of diverse care needs (Reference Piepzna-SamarasinhaPiepzna-Samarasinha 2018, Reference Piepzna-Samarasinha2022). The implications of the temporalities of care for feminist chronopolitics include the transformation of the accelerationist and clock-oriented time regime. It establishes a transformation toward a truly caring democracy. As Isabel Reference Lorey, Oberprantacher and SiclodiLorey (2016: 160) formulates it for a “presentist democracy,” the aim would be a democracy “in which a ‘good life’ becomes possible for the many.” However, in contrast to Lorey, such a transformation process would not be based on the present moment itself but on the multi-faceted temporalities of care, including the care for future generations.
To achieve such a vision, political processes need to reflect the recurring rhythms of nature and the body to remodel the hegemonic political time regime. The disembodiment of politics must be replaced by attending to bodily caring needs. Feminist body politics is one example of a political form that brings the body back in (Reference GovrinGovrin 2022). They can reframe politics as relational instead of maintaining the liberal and androcentric trope of autonomy and self-sufficiency. To include the needs of bodies and nature also entails a long-term perspective on politics, in which politics not only care for caring relations in the present but also for future generations and their ecological environment (Reference Adam, Bornemann, Knappe and NanzAdam 2022). Climate justice and eco-feminist movements are hence closely linked to the aims of feminist chronopolitics in their care for the future (Reference VölkleVölkle 2025).
To reconceptualize politics and society (including economics) around feminist chronopolitics also means to decommodify time and to claim “[t]ime as lived time, as the substance of the lived experience of durée of Being” (Reference GiddensGiddens 1981: 9). Lived time is evident in caring relations that are oriented to the needs of being. A feminist chronopolitics, therefore, needs to rediscover lived time as a point of orientation for democratic and political practice by putting caring temporalities and needs into the center. The orientation on lived time or care time of all human beings, however, is only possible when the commodification of time, the separation between so-called production and reproduction, is overcome in favor of polychronicity. A feminist chronopolitics is thus an initiative that strives for a socio-economic transformation beyond capitalism and its accompanying temporalities and rationalities that systematically devalue care while maintaining heteronormativity.
The division between reproductive care and productive labor is equally ingrained in feminist theories that consider care or housework as a burden to women's empowerment, as reflected in liberal and some Marxist and materialist feminist approaches (Reference FedericiFederici 2012; Reference FriedanFriedan 1974; Reference KollontaiKollontai 1977). Helpful in deconstructing the Eurocentric, heteronormative, ableist, and productivist bias in feminist thought are decolonial, queer, and crip approaches that challenge the notion of the nuclear family and its sexual division of labor in feminist theory (Reference DrazDraz 2017; Reference LugonesLugones 2007). Decolonial perspectives emphasize the role of care for community building as “the bedrock on which society is built and the way in which we organize our lives” (Reference OyěwùmíOyěwùmí 2016: 220). On this basis, care can be reframed as a practice of solidarity, rather than a “labor of love” (Reference FedericiFederici 2012: 16) or a task that needs to be performed under the rationality of clock-time, ultimately leading to temporal conflicts. However, there is a danger of romanticizing queer or Global South communities and caring relationships that are necessarily entangled in colonial, heteronormative, and capitalist power relations or can be easily appropriated by them (Reference JosephJoseph 2002). It is important to reflect on the dangers of the capitalist enclosure of care and caring temporalities when they are appropriated for commercial uses (Reference Caffentzis and FedericiCaffentzis and Federici 2014). The Black feminist practice of self-care and taking time for oneself can, for instance, easily become a neoliberal instrument to lower the costs of reproduction and healthcare (Reference LordeLorde 1988; Reference MichaeliMichaeli 2017). Care temporalities also resist the common efficiency rationality when they reflect the temporal needs of the caregiving and receiving person. Feminist chronopolitics, therefore, propose a shift toward human relationships and away from quantified outcomes.
The aforementioned subordination of multiple care temporalities under the hegemonic time regime is the main obstacle to feminist chronopolitics. Temporal redistribution measures, therefore, have their limits when they do not address transforming linear clock-time temporalities. The success of such a feminist time Realpolitik is marginal, as engagements by political parties and unions demonstrate (Reference Glaeser, Fröhlich, Schütz and WolfGlaeser 2022). Feminist chronopolitics should rather focus on transformative and utopian ideas of how relationships can and should be shaped in the future if we put caring for, about and with each other at the center of all temporal democratic processes. Reference TrontoTronto (2013: 167) claims that “[r]eorganizing time and thinking about proximity and care might produce new ways of thinking about how best to live.” The valuation and harmonization of multiple temporalities is a long-term endeavor that will both shatter and introduce various temporalities along the way.
Conclusion
In this article, I have demonstrated how theorizing the multiple temporalities of care can enrich the limited temporal understandings of (caring) democracy beyond linearity and velocity. These multiple temporalities have informed the conceptualization of feminist chronopolitics that adhere to polychronic needs of differently aged, gendered, racialized, and dis/abled bodies and can thus enrich democratic participation of differently marginalized people. I have theorized the temporalities of care that deviate from monochronic, linear hegemonic perceptions of time and argued for its importance in a caring democracy. Pasts, presents, and futures are interwoven in the multiple temporalities of care. They are thus not only useful for a theoretical reflection of democratic temporalities, but they can moreover inform feminist strategies and politics in their transformation of the “politics of the now,” which appropriates the future for profits in the present. It requires a rupture with clock-time, which includes the contestation of the linear timeline; “a rupture with the necessity of a linear development from the event of insurgency to institutionalization, from movement to party” (Reference Lorey, Oberprantacher and SiclodiLorey 2016: 160). Such a rupture is, however, not enough because long-term strategies and practices are needed to transform the current temporal order to embrace multiple temporalities.
I suggest feminist chronopolitics as a political strategy and practice that gives room to the cyclical and spiraling dimension of time based on relational care needs, which aims for a better life for all in the present. It therefore exceeds Realpolitik and includes “far more than occasionally changing the clock or a bus schedule or extending opening hours. It affects the coordinates of social coexistence—everyday-life” (Reference MückenbergerMückenberger 2011: 69). Care temporalities are thus an important concept for changing the democratic chronopolitics of the present.
The chronopolitics of the present, however, are characterized by an accelerationist tendency fueled by the “planetary crisis multiplicity” (Reference AlbertAlbert 2022). The planetary and economic polycrisis provides the grounds for right-wing and authoritarian parties and movements that are currently on the rise in Europe and beyond (Reference Wodak, KhosraviNik and MralWodak et al. 2013). Right-wing and authoritarian movements engage temporalities that are oriented toward the preservation of an imaginary past and the impossibility of a future (Reference GriffinGriffin 2016). Further chronopolitical research should especially be concerned with authoritarian chronopolitics and the question of why they are currently so successful.
Another research angle is to examine the chronopolitics of parties, civil society, and unions to and analyze whether and to what extent they recognize the multiple temporalities of care. There are, furthermore—although not framed as feminist—worldwide initiatives that aim at reducing the working time (Reference Larsson, Nässén and LundbergLarsson et al. 2019; Reference LehndorffLehndorff 2013). Their potential to transform hegemonic time regimes remains to be seen and further researched. My research has presented at least some doubts about chronopolitical concepts that are based on linear conceptions of time. By focusing on the multiple temporalities of care, feminist chronopolitics include “genuine care and concern for future presents” (Reference Adam, Bornemann, Knappe and NanzAdam 2022: 505). They take care of the future as a point of departure to transform the present. Feminist chronopolitics in the present have the potential to overcome the clock-oriented, quantitative measurement of duration as a norm, reproduced in various current feminist time policies and concepts that aim for a quantitative redistribution of time. By reflecting on the polychronic, cyclical, and spiral dimensions of time, feminist chronopolitics aims at the “transformations of human relationships, informed by fantasies of futurity and post hoc perceptions of experience” (Reference Cook and TrundleCook and Trundle 2020: 178).
Effective strategies for changing the temporalities of (caring) democracies must be further explored. They need other and multiple spaces, as conceptualized in Foucault's (1984) concept, of “heterotopias” and time beyond the time squeeze as “heterochronies” or “heterochronias” (Reference Deckner, Hartmann, Prommer, Deckner and GörlandDeckner 2019) to reflect on desired ways of caring, relating and living as an “absolute break with . . . traditional time” (Reference Foucault and MiskowiecFoucault 1984). Heterochronies are, therefore, alternative temporalities in the present that experiment with reconciling multiple caring temporalities and challenge the hegemonic monochronicity. By expanding and experimenting with multiple temporal experiences and realities, a “virtuous circle” could be set in motion in which the experience of nurturing temporalities could lead to their expansion (Reference TrontoTronto 2013: 157). Feminist chronopolitics could then have an impact on a better life for all in the present and in the future.
Acknowledgments
I foremost thank Mareike Gebhardt and Marlon Barbehön for their great engagement as guest editors of this special issue and all contributing articles. Special thanks go to all participants of the author's workshop “When Is Democracy? Towards a Political Theory of Time” in Münster, Germany, in 2023, for their valuable and constructive feedback on the first draft of this article. I am also extremely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments.
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