Time, Temporality and Violence in International Relations

'Modern politics has been shaped both by specific understandings of the temporality of human existence and by enormous forces demanding either amnesia about temporality or its translation into overbearing narratives of a linear history. The consequences can be read through our prevailing accounts of sovereign states, international relations, modernization, development, citizenship and the status of humanity as such. While still resilient, these accounts are being challenged at every turn. Shaped especially by postcolonial critiques of international relations, this remarkable and provocative collection of essays reports from many sites at which the politics of temporality and the temporalities of novel forms of politics press against the waning authority of all spatialized categories.' -R. B. J. Walker, University of Victoria, Canada

'An exceptional assemblage of essays written by am impressive array of critical theorists, artists and poets. The contributors lay down a powerful intellectual challenge aimed at disrupting dominant therorizations in IR, to "unhinge time from its presumed neutrality",and provoke engagement with the temporal structure of the relationship of politics and violence. The authors expand the anticolonial and postcolonial critique of the project of Modernity and the West or Global North as the primary temporal analytical site against which all else is to be measured or interpreted. The book provokes its readers to transform assumptions and re-imagine possibilities of an anti-racist and decolonial vision of world politics, focused on "the politics of life" and immanent transformations of social relations.' - Barry Gills, University of Helsinki, Finland

'Modern politics has been shaped both by specific understandings of the temporality of human existence and by enormous forces demanding either amnesia about temporality or its translation into overbearing narratives of a linear history. The consequences can be read through our prevailing accounts of sovereign states, international relations, modernization, development, citizenship and the status of humanity as such. While still resilient, these accounts are being challenged at every turn. Shaped especially by postcolonial critiques of international relations, this remarkable and provocative collection of essays reports from many sites at which the politics of temporality and the temporalities of novel forms of politics press against the waning authority of all spatialized categories.' -R. B. J. Walker, University of Victoria, Canada

'An exceptional assemblage of essays written by an impressive array of critical theorists, artists and poets. The contributors lay down a powerful intellectual challenge aimed at disrupting dominant theorizations in IR, to "unhinge time from its presumed neutrality", and provoke engagement with the temporal structure of the relationship of politics and violence. The authors expand the anticolonial and postcolonial critique of the project of Modernity and the West or Global North as the primary temporal analytical site against which all else is to be measured or interpreted. The book provokes its readers to transform assumptions and re-imagine possibilities of an anti-racist and de-colonial vision of world politics, focused on "the politics of life" and immanent transformations of social relations.' -Barry Gills, University of Helsinki, Finland

'Time, Temporality, and Violence in International Relations: (De)Fatalizing the Present, Forging Radical Alternatives is obligatory reading for anyone interested in understanding how space and time constitutes the unyielding forms (sovereignty, the state, etc.) that are the staple of research in International Relations. Exploring time’s transformative promises, the texts assembled in this volume dare to unsettle the spatializing political categories of world politics, which hide how and why colonial and racial violence have constituted the global present.' -Denise Ferreira da Silva, Queen Mary University of London, UK

'Refusing to cede time to colonial and neo-liberal tempos and chronologies, Agathangelou and Killian bring together an accomplished range of authors who rethink the past, present and fate of international relations in stunningly diverse ways.' - Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary University of London, UK