Distant time: A response

Abstract

This response appreciates the commentators for engaging so generously with the concept of distant time. Each of these commentaries addresses different aspects of the paper and also raise very important questions about the wider applicability of distant time across spaces, technologies, territories, and people. I will first start with addressing the critique of ‘distant time’ as an authorial gesture and therefore suggest a more expansive idea of technology that is ubiquitous in both colonial Shimla and its proposed smart future. Seen this way, the notion of distant time is also a topological intervention on the grid producing an affective technology of governance that recalibrates the parameters of temporal justice. Finally I will chart out a framework of temporal tactics and techniques that unpack further the notion of distant time in the postcolony.