This project considers the particularities of the temporal experience of the Black diasporic subject, asking how histories of enslavement, colonisation, displacement and movement affect an understanding of time. The hope for this project would be to come to an understanding of the experiences which produce overlapping unities of temporal experience across Black diasporic communities.
Black people’s positionality within a temporal order has often been dictated by European temporal regimes in ways that have also solidified into hierarchies, utilised to legitimise colonial exploitation, enslavement and forced labour. Repeatedly we see the African continent figured as ahistorical, as if African history began with its interaction with Europe. The seemingly endless mutability of African temporality in the European imaginary, and the ways in which it is mobilised informs a particular experience which is informed by histories of transatlantic, diasporic movement, erasures of pasts and in some cases, futures.
This project engages with both traditionally textual literature, as well as film and digital media in order to examine the various iterations of artistic renderings of Black temporality.
