Time and radical politics in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (Studies in Modern French and Francophone History)

By: Alexandra Paulin-Booth

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Synopsis: This book investigates how people have thought about and experienced time, and how their ideas about time have shaped their political views and actions. Using French thinkers and activists of the radical left and right between the Dreyfus Affair and the First World War as a case study, it argues that time provides an important means of exploring how concepts such as nationalism, revolution and social change were understood at the turn of the century. Attending to different experiences of time – the speed at which it was perceived to move, the extent to which the future was near and graspable, the ways in which the past was seen to impinge on the present – opens up exciting new possibilities for analysing politics, ideologies and worldviews.