“Leisure” and “working time”: the disappearance of temporal frontiers

Abstract

The passage from a working society, centred in an productive ethic, gives way to a consuming and hedonist society in which leisure time is consumed like a merchandise instrumentalized by the Culture Industry (Adorno). In this article we defend the thesis that the prominence of leisure over working time is possible because the former became a productive time by means of the new technologies, the Culture Industry and the consumerism. The analytical categories of both temporalities become even more undistinguishable in a economic and social system dominated by the uniformities of a time which is a sub-product of the merchandising. Making usage of the Frankfurt critic of the culture, the sociological concepts of liquid society (Bauman) and flexi-time (Sennet), this article analyses the invasion of leisure by working time which makes impossible the distinction between them as opposite categories and makes us considering both as part of the same productive logic of late capitalism.