The Politics of Time in International Relations
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829818774734 |
| Author | Sarah Bertrand,Kerry Goettlich,Christopher Murray |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818774734
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2018, Vol. 46(3) 251 –252
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829818774734
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The Politics of Time in
International Relations
Have we returned to an age of extremes? Have Brexit, Trump, and the rise of nationalist
populism sounded the death knell for liberal democracy’s promise of progress? Do ten-
sions between the West, Russia and China constitute a new Cold War? Considering the
global politics of Syria, militant Islam and the rise of the formerly-colonised world, can
we speak of one present with different political groups aspiring to the same future?
International Relations has always stood on foundations constituted by conceptions of
time. Ideas about repetition, change, contingency and historical context permeate its
mainstream and critical theories. The 2017 Millennium Conference: The Politics of Time
in International Relations, was held 21–22 October 2017 at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE). Our conference sought to draw our disciplinary
assumptions of time, temporality, and history out of the dark, to challenge and reassem-
ble them. Many prominent topics in IR, from the supposedly perennial quest for power
and security, to environmental degradation and social justice, are implicitly based in
historically and culturally particular conceptions of time. While many disciplines – from
sociology to culture studies to philosophy – have long grappled with ‘the fourth dimen-
sion’, the discipline of IR still has much to rethink.
Our conference also aimed to underscore the political aspects of what might appear to
be an abstract and philosophical dimension of human experience. Remembering the past,
narrating the present and anticipating the future can be sites of struggle, contestation and
violence. Who defines the concepts and measures of time and why? How are they
imposed, institutionalised, and enforced? How do conceptions of time underwrite capi-
talism, liberal democracy, national liberation, or the critical project? Does critical IR
scholarship have a future, let alone a present or a past? What are the roles of history and
memory in the discipline of International Relations or in the world of international rela-
tions? In what ways and to what effect has theory emptied time of God(s) and spiritual-
ity? What is the relationship of IR’s temporal assumptions with its spatial, methodological,
epistemological, and normative assumptions?
The articles assembled in this special issue of the journal offer insights to some of
these questions. They address questions of planetary politics, finitude and the
Anthropocene. They illuminate aspects of Self/Other memorialisation in the longue
durée, examine processes of conceptual synchronisation, and excavate the colonial and
postcolonial dimensions of political temporality. Some revisit the classics of the IR
774734MIL0010.1177/0305829818774734Millennium: Journal of International StudiesEditorial
editorial2018
Editorial
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