Telling Time

Abstract

Having defended a basic theory of timing, chapter three develops a framework more closely fitted to IR. Drawing from narratology, it formulates an account of narrative timing, which shows how we configure and re-configure narratives to place confounding experiences in a meaningful, serial whole. After emphasizing narrative elements common to all IR scholarship, this chapter shows how narrative emplotment unfolds a temporal world using four distinct timing techniques: the synoptic theme, which acts as the timing standard; creative filtration, which determines what processes matter; cleaving experience, which establishes the story’s durative presence; and concordant discordance, which reinterprets unintelligible and overwhelming experiences as key plot drivers. It then illustrates these narrative timing operations in familiar IR explanatory forms. Finally, the chapter discusses how narrative timing further elaborates the problem of Time and why some narrative temporalities become reified, passive timing meters, which aesthetically resolve that problem while blinding us to its future return. Chapter three closes by highlighting key conclusions from Part One and their implications for IR.

Peace needs constant reproduction: The temporality of the diplomatic system

“…Its indifference to happenings stands in contrast to kairotic moments, or instances of potentialities that condense forcefully into an opportunity to control the unfolding of events into specific directions (Hutchings, 2008: 4–9). Time is said to be kairos if this potentiality is successfully activated, and it turns to aion if the opportunity lingers on for a seeming eternity, creating situations that desire a yet-unfulfilled redirection of ambiguous happenings (Deleuze, 1990: 162–168; Hom, 2020: 214–215). One could also claim that all three concepts are bound by the political practice of ‘timing’ whereby power centres impose (narrative) connections upon non-spontaneous relations (Hom, 2018: 73; Lundborg, 2016).…”

The question of truth: how facts, space and time shape conversations in IR

“…Some of Heidegger’s insights relate to ongoing discussions on temporality in IR. Andrew Hom (2018, 2020) – not unlike other contributors (Hutchings, 2008; McIntosh, 2015; Solomon, 2014; Teles Fazendeiro, 2019) – has touched upon the importance of timing in IR theorising. Building on Norbert Elias’s processual sociology, he demonstrates how timing allows human communities to measure and compare change and continuity with one another (Hom, 2020).…”

“…Andrew Hom (2018, 2020) – not unlike other contributors (Hutchings, 2008; McIntosh, 2015; Solomon, 2014; Teles Fazendeiro, 2019) – has touched upon the importance of timing in IR theorising. Building on Norbert Elias’s processual sociology, he demonstrates how timing allows human communities to measure and compare change and continuity with one another (Hom, 2020). But ‘no timing mode is ever complete in the sense of providing an ironclad way of establishing relations successfully and usefully in perpetuity’ (Hom, 2020: 37).…”

“…Building on Norbert Elias’s processual sociology, he demonstrates how timing allows human communities to measure and compare change and continuity with one another (Hom, 2020). But ‘no timing mode is ever complete in the sense of providing an ironclad way of establishing relations successfully and usefully in perpetuity’ (Hom, 2020: 37). Timing is but a representation of an open-ended unity, that is, of ‘temporality’.…”

“…In such cases, explanations are liable to being assessed against each other since they are grounded in a similar ontology. To that end, when novelty challenges existing frameworks, facts may otherwise be retrofitted or revised within an existing temporal (and spatial) framework, what Andrew Hom (2020) otherwise labelled the ‘problem of time’ (pp. 38–40).…”