How to prolong the event? action and institution in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to argue that in Hannah Arendt’s political thought one could find three different ways to understand the relationship between institution and event and, in connection to this, three ways to think political action and the temporality of the political: a dichotomous reading, a kind of mythical interpretation and a critical-relational understanding. The article argues that this third alternative is more adequate to think the paradoxical character of action and the way that it, being a gap, could prolong itself and have effects on the common world.