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Time is not a metaphysical dimension independent of human struggle and agency, but a set of practices through which social and political life is organised. Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and protests against racism can all be understood as timing struggles - clashes over the organisation of dynamic structures, institutions and relationships - that are imbued with political power but also the potential for resistance.
Augustine once confessed that 'time' was a word 'forever on our lips', but what did he know about eternity, having never lived through 2020?1 The first month of any country's Covid-19 lockdown felt to most like a year; and the actual year itself seems to extend interminably and intolerably. We cannot stop talking about time these days. In addition to the ways that the pandemic changed our relationship to time, the ongoing Brexit process resounds with temporal rhetoric, and dauntless anti-racism protesters have invoked the weight of history to call for a new era of police accountability. These episodes attest to time's importance, and reflect an elevated importance for time over the past few years, with both politicians and the wider population describing it as an overwhelming force, an ever-expanding now, a valuable and dwindling resource, a dimension of hope, a lever, even a herald of independence.
While doubtless unsettling, this current moment also offers an opportunity to scholars of time, providing a trove of empirical data about the socio-political importance of time. The sheer volume of time talk is noteworthy in its variety, but it also raises a question: Why now? Why are so many different people from all walks of life talking about time more than ever and - as we will see - never as before? We can learn much by tracking what they are saying, but we also need to pay attention to why and how they are saying it, if we want to emerge from this moment with a greater understanding of time's relationship to politics.
In what follows, I offer a brief explanation for why we are talking about time so much, followed by three examples. I begin by introducing timing theory, a distinctive approach to organising various time symbols in a very loosely unified framework. I then illustrate the importance of timing to...