Arranged Contingency

On the Temporal-Normative Orientation of Fridays for Future

Abstract

The point of departure of this article is the diagnosis of a crisis of temporal orientation under late-modern conditions. It examines how the climate movement Fridays for Future responds to this crisis and establishes new normative standards. From a sociology of knowledge perspective that conceives of time as a normative ordering principle, the case analysis of the blog series »Summer of Utopias« (Fridays for Future 2021) reconstructs how different temporal modes are narratively interwoven within the movement’s discourse. Their interplay gives rise to the case structure of arranged contingency, in which possibilities and obligations are perspectivally related to one another. As an expression of a late-modern search for temporal coherence under conditions of radical contingency, a utopian temporal imperative can be derived from this structure, which renders contingency manageable through moral and political responsibility.