Capitalism and Slowness: Resistance or Reterritorialization? The Case of Slow Food

In the age of capitalist – or more generally modern – acceleration, some theorists and social activists turned to slowness as a potential remedy to the systemic malaise. To assess the political and theoretical potential of such approaches, Krzysztof Skonieczny analyses the slow food movement as one of their most prominent examples. Having introduced the theme of capitalist acceleration via the works of Hartmut Rosa, the chapter presents key elements of slow food theory and practice, as well as the interpretations of the meaning of the movement with the lifestyle writer Carl Honoré and the philosopher Isabelle Stengers as main reference points. In his conclusion, Skonieczny shows that slowness, as resistance to capitalism, is a recognition of the false promise of efficiency that lies in an important facet of the capitalist version of globalization, and that to be politically effective, slowness needs to address and “slow down” the relationships that are streamlined through the capitalist division of labor.