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Part of
Time Representations in the Perspective of Human Creativity
Edited by Anna Piata, Adriana Gordejuela and Daniel Alcaraz Carrión
[Human Cognitive Processing 75] 2022
► pp. 81–98

Chapter 4
Working on it

The creation of chronological time in political discourse and the democratic meaning of elections

| Bar Ilan University

Following elections, processes of interpretation in the political discourse shape the meaning of elections. I draw from theories of democracy, time, and meaning to posit the concept of chrono-work, and suggest that creative construction of connections between past, present, and future horizons shape the meaning of an election, and that this process is critical for the democratic meaning of elections. With a qualitative analysis of media discourse in two case studies – the 1949 and the 1988 Israeli elections – I show that when these connections form a chronological narrative, an election obtains a democratic meaning, whereas when the narrative is non-chronological, an election’s democratic meaning is challenged. I discuss the implications for the role of creative time for the democratic role of elections.

Keywords: chrono-work, election interpretation, Israel, narrative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Chrono-work: A theoretical framework
  • 3.Is chronology democratic?: Chrono-work and the democratic meaning of elections
  • 4.Background and methodology
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1The 1949 Israeli election
    • 5.2The 1988 Israeli election
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.75.04lav
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