“When the master of clocks confiscates the political hourglass”

Ophélie Roque is a French teacher in the suburbs of Paris. She has published Black Mesa (Robert Laffont, 2023), his first novel.

A few years ago, Emmanuel Macron recognized that politicians were, he was the first, “obsessed with their relationship to time”He adds that the presidential function made its first representative the “guardian of time and therefore of the necessary accelerations”. We will discreetly pass over the evocation of “necessary accelerations” so much has our president, little by little, abandoned his role as guardian to turn into a jealous Cerberus. No one, apart from him, is able to approach the hourglass. He alone guards the entrance and amuses himself, from the threshold, by watching the sand – in vain – flow. There is a little Ubu side to the Élysée which, if he did not intervene in the middle of a crisis, could almost be pleasant. There is something of the order of the joke or the running gag in this nomination always announced, always deferred.

In the meantime, Emmanuel Macron enjoys paralyzing the country with the obstinacy of the bedridden person who refuses to get better or the vain constancy of Bluebeard’s wife who always asks:

“- Anne, my sister Anne, do you see anything coming?

-I see nothing but the sun shining and the grass turning green..

Like us, the unfortunate princess is forced to perpetually listen to a perpetual echo. So, what an idea to always want to ask! When it’s no, it’s no! Move along, there’s nothing to see! And nothing more to hope for. And yet we are right to persist in this way! In politics, time is not only a fundamental thing but the very heart of power. State authorities have always done everything to regain control of nature and impose on the people the logic of the clock (and especially of their watch).

More than just a takeover, we find ourselves faced with a real loss of meaning. What could possibly justify or explain such an expectation?

Ophelia Roque

These were the bells of the medieval city, the revolutionary calendar and, more recently, the change of time. The measuring instruments used to divide time into squares have always been manifestations of power. Whether it is the church bell, the factory bell or the army bugle, what breaks the silence is not only noise but the tangible – and almost palpable – presence of the hour which, already, no longer truly belongs to us.

However, for 56 days, it has been clear that there has been a blockage. Political time has been confiscated by an individual who enjoys, and wears us down, by delaying the appointment of a prime minister. More than a simple takeover, we find ourselves faced with a real loss of meaning. What could possibly justify or explain such a wait?

Also readHugues Portelli: “How Emmanuel Macron killed the Fifth Republic”

Everything becomes absurd, the game and the political body have become wheels that turn empty. The object has lost its hub and the carter, slumped on the side, laughs at the thing. It’s sure to work a lot less well now. This is no longer a dissolution, nor even a big wash, it is the legitimate political framework that finds itself fragmented, dislocated, pulverized. Chronos thrown down from the throne! Note the fine irony since he was thrown into the abyss by his son Jupiter. The knots of filiation are decidedly very obscure to untangle in Emmanuel Macron.

French politics took hundreds of years to shape itself, often slowly, before the last two centuries came to accelerate the tempo (especially since the great economic crisis of 2008)! But here, we are not facing a welcome slowdown, everything is congealing like fat in a broth that is cooling. It is ugly, unappetizing and we feel vaguely embarrassed when observing it. The president’s inaction goes in this direction. It is becoming embarrassing. And for him. And for us.