Temporal turbulence in the polycrisis: Editors’ introduction to the special section

Abstract

In this introduction to the special section, we outline the central questions that animate our concerns about the diverse forms that temporal turbulence is taking in the context of intensifying climate change and precipitous biodiversity loss: Does the contemporary conjuncture of ‘colonial-ecological crisis’ compel a more thoroughgoing review of ideas about time and temporality across the disciplines? What relationships exist between the long durée of European colonialism and ongoing environmental collapse in different parts of the world? How are dominant actors – legal, political and corporate – seeking to disable or dilute challenges to long-entrenched temporalities, both colonial and capitalist? And why is temporal multiplicity or ‘pluriversality’ so important in the contemporary conjuncture, not only for conceptualizing the world-historical processes that have precipitated this polycrisis but also for the possibility of new affective orientations and more creative policy innovations? As the four contributions to this special section demonstrate, albeit in relation to different institutions, in different registers and drawing on different disciplinary knowledges, there is an urgent need to both conceptualize and seek strategic solutions for the eco-political challenges of our time in more temporally plural, expansive, multi-directional, relational, moral and decolonial ways. While the climate crisis is often treated as a technical problem – or at least one amenable to forward-looking solutions that do not require wrestling with colonial pasts or neocolonial presents – the contributions to this special section all suggest otherwise. Taken together, they argue for a powerful reimagining of the temporal coordinates, assumptions and logics that characterize the present moment, and they gesture towards new temporal practices that might prove more genuinely responsible (and responsive) in the face of intensifying political, social and ecological turbulence.