Time-Maps

This article considers how time, space, and history are mobilized across a contemporary range of debates in postcolonial studies, world literature theory, and memory studies. The time-maps surveyed all revolve around Eurochronology and its contestations, and range from novels by Joseph Conrad and V.S. Naipaul, to a video installation and essay by the South African artist William Kentridge, to the critical study of the Indian Ocean world. Traversing literature, art, critical theory, and personal story, the essay provides an imaginative and imagistic guide to new ways of thinking time. It concludes with a speculation on the promise of a “soft” rather than “mean” time, the latter evoking imperial standardization and the former describing a terrain in which affect and history are set in rippling motion.