Idleness: Or, How Raymond Queneau's The Sunday of Life Explores Profane Time, in Playful Dialogue with Hegel and Kojève

This chapter asks what it would mean to think about temporality in terms of idleness. Is it possible to conceive of such a thing as free time, or must the time we live in always be committed to a project or a goal? Exploring the notion of idleness through the debate between Raymond Queneau and Alexandre Kojève about the interpretation of Hegel in modern-day France, the chapter pivots on Raymond Queneau’s novel The Sunday of Life (1952) and Kojève’s review of the novel, which saw Queneau’s characters as “post-historical” figures and introduced the idea of désœuvrement (idleness) in philosophical thought. This debate paved the way for a poststructuralist notion of idleness, conceived as désœuvrement. Looking back at Queneau’s novel, the chapter suggests that it may lead us toward an understanding of idleness that is apt in our day. Rather than seeing idleness as an end figure or discussing it as a vague poststructuralist concept, it suggests that the figure of idleness has do with a profane worldview that starts to dominate in modernity.