Silent Order: the Temporal Turn in Critical International Relations

Recently, more and more International Relations (IR) scholars have begun to recognise time explicitly as a political phenomenon and an important element of IR theorising. Spanning different approaches and substantive concerns, their efforts suggest that IR is taking a ‘temporal turn’. This is most evident in the field’s critical wing, which has expanded our perspective on time and challenged temporalities associated with sovereign politics and mainstream theories. However, critical treatments of time also manifest four discursive habits – two targets of criticism and two alternatives – that reproduce hidden tensions and contradictions detrimental to the temporal turn. First, scholars incoherently denounce timeless visions of politics. Second, attacks on linear time obscure a variety of hegemonic temporalities and reproduce assumptions that critics wish to challenge. Third, advocates of heterotemporality amass woolly alternatives, foreclosing analysis and dialogue. Finally, times of rupture recapitulate a liberal-idealism that depoliticises temporal enquiry just when it could be pushing the politics of time further. These habits hamstring conceptual development and critical IR’s ability to contribute distinctive perspectives to a field growing increasingly interested in time. To redress this, the paper identifies and sharpens critical IR’s temporal tensions, shows how they encourage particular visions of time and politics, and suggests initial steps towards maximising the critical potential of time.