Social time and its representation in the performance-oriented society of the 19th century: liberalization - monetization - pluralization

One of the symptoms of the transition from the premodern society of estates to a modern civil society, as realized during the 19th century (at least at the ideological level) was the highlighting of time and its transformation into a secular instrument of liberal ideology. The monetization of time, expressed in Benjamin Franklin’s famous formulation „time is money“ (translated into Czech in 1838) allowed time to be conceived as a factor in social ascent. In contrast to the estates privileges that quarantees social status on given a priori selective principles, time was given to everybody and its appropriate utilization could ensure social ascent even for individuals from the lowest social strata. Hence time becomes a key component in the new liberal biographical project of social ascent, not only in the biological sense, but also with regard to the structure of social behaviour. Numerous instructions are given (even in fiction) on how to utilize time properly and transform it into material profit. As time in increasingly highlighted, so the importance of time periods and deadlines grows and need also incerases for synchronization and correct timing, because each actor noe disposes of his own time, which is not always compatible with the time of others actors. This study attempts to show how the new secularized time was represented in the emerging performance-oriented society and what consequences were in store for the monetization of time beyond this optimistic liberal discourse within the modernist generation at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries