Turning Temporal: a Discourse of Time in IR

Abstract

Recent studies dedicated to time in IR often begin with the claim that the field has long relegated time to a background position, and only recently begun taking the concept seriously, with many fruitful insights. In this article, I refuse this interpellation to ‘take time seriously’, instead proposing we read these claims as part of a discourse, that is, a set of regularities through which we organise and distribute time as an object of knowledge in IR, and through which we come to govern ourselves and others. First, by engaging works of the ‘temporal turn’, I describe four procedures through which the discourse of time in IR is organised: opposing conceptual fields, scaling objects, naturalising and repressing desires, and strategic inverting. Second, I argue this reading shows that the temporal turn might ultimately fall short of realising its proclaimed aims. However, and third, I propose we take this not as a failure, but as the effective working of the discourse. Fourth, in doing so, I suggest the discourse of time effectively ‘changes the subject’ in terms of both the problems posed and the subjectivities constituted in relation to them – in the field of IR, but possibly also more broadly.