Chrono-Politics of Resistance: Temporality and Subaltern Agency in Global South Graphic Narratives

Time is never neutral; it is a weapon, a site of violence, and a means of resistance. Colonial modernity structured the Global South as a space “out of time,” bound to narratives of belatedness and underdevelopment. This article interrogates how contemporary graphic narratives from South Asia, Africa, and Latin America challenge these temporal hierarchies through the lens of “chrono-politics”—the politics of time. Building on postcolonial temporality (Mbembe, Chakrabarty) and subaltern studies (Spivak, Guha), this paper argues that the graphic narrative form, with its unique capacity for temporal layering, creates narrative spaces where silenced histories resurface and subaltern agency becomes legible.