This project investigates how the acceleration of pace across several zones of life affects politics, with specific attention to the areas of democratic governance, war, capitalism, globalization and cosmopolitan activism. Rooted in the works of theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Sheldon Wolin, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Virilio, it seeks to investigate the challenges which acceleration places to the practice of politics, as well as the opportunities it might provide in fostering democratic governance, economic equality and pluralist social orientations.

Most accounts of acceleration fall into one of two camps; pro-speed or anti-speed. In the pro-speed camp, the acceleration of the pace of life is seen as a wellspring of increased global productivity, efficiency, economic equality and by extension, democracy and humanitarianism. Conversely, the anti-speed camp sees in speed merely the acceleration of violence, exploitation and oppression. Contemporary narratives of speed thus tend to fall into either a generalized utopianism or dystopianism. The philosophy of speed which this project seeks to develop breaks from the unilinear narrative of both these accounts by identifying a fundamental ambiguity in the character of acceleration. This ambiguity is located in a distinction (developed by Deleuze and Guattari) between speed and velocity. Whereas velocity is a quantitative metric, speed describes a qualitative movement, a singular and unpredictable swerve which brings with it the emergence of the radically new. As a result of this, acceleration tends to unsettle stable narratives unfolding mechanically in linear time. This unsettling character of speed can provoke a sense of resentment amongst those who are uncomfortable with the idea of a world of becoming, and lead to occasionally oppressive and violent attempts to suppress this fount of change and uncertainty. Though this project does not seek to ignore the violence that can develop from acceleration, it does hope that an attentiveness to the newness of acceleration can help us to ward off fascistic desires for control and reactionary drives for violent deceleration, while also leaving us open to search for new opportunities within speed which might foster more democratic and pluralistic tools and orientations.