Teaching time as a social imaginary. Using speculative fabulation to deconstruct the hegemonic temporalities of modernity

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss our experience in teaching time to university students. Our analysis suggests that students’ sociological imagination and fictional creativity might be used as means to deconstruct the hegemonic temporalities of modernity. Specifically, we exemplify our claims by considering a set of classroom activities that use speculative fabulation in order to make students question key assumptions about the objective nature of time. The activities we discuss are based on an original combination of exposure to cultural products, reflective writing exercises, and moderated group discussion, thus opening up new horizons of temporal experimentation, exploration, and interpretation. Our activities invite students to imagine alternative temporalities that are decoupled from prevalent mindsets and challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions about the temporal worlds. The assignments are designed as imaginative scenarios, in which students are asked to question the universal, commodified, and absolute notion of time while becoming familiar with the work of relevant thinkers in sociology and anthropology. Based on our results, we conclude that speculative fabulation holds a strong emancipatory potential and is able to bring about significant changes in how students think about time, because it promotes more empowering and meaningful ways of engagement with the world.