“Even as it silently structures our everyday lives, time is not given or natural; rather, its meanings and forms shift historically and are culturally specific. The concept of time that undergirds the Western academy derives from a Judaeo–Christian notion of time as linear, constant, and irreversible (Lee & Liebenau, 2000). As such the ideas of linear history, progress, and including Darwin’s evolutionary theory originate from this linear concept of time. As this linear and unfolding trajectory of time gained prominence, it became possible to quantify time in standardized units. In HE, linear concepts of time underpin our theories of student development, faculty development, etc. For instance, consider how the language of ‘stages in development’ are all tied to progress, which are in turn connected to linear notions of time and history.
Yet, before the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiann Huygens in 1657, time was measured in relation to physical and biotic phenomenon such as the cycles of the sun, moon, seasons, and harvest (Lee & Liebenau, 2000). Consequently, with the introduction of the clock, time was delinked from human bodies, and human bodies from nature. The clock produced our consciousness of minutes or seconds, and engendered the notions of accuracy and punctuality so familiar to us now. Weber (1958) has noted, as well, the ways in which the intersections of capitalism, religion, and morality, have given time a particular value: it is something that can be ‘wasted’. To this end, the idea that if we do not use time properly, then we would remiss salvation in heaven—hence the ideas we have today such as ‘waste of time’. More recently, Castells has pointed out that instantaneous communication technologies have shifted our relationship with time. He suggests a ‘timeless time’ concept (Castells, 2000).
Alongside the technological innovations mentioned above, time became a new commodity of modernity that necessarily enfolded an ‘Other’ notion of time. According to Mignolo (2011) and Anderson (2011), time is an epistemic tool through which a chronology of difference was created by colonial logic. Time became a trajectory against which to measure indigenous and other subaltern individuals and groups in terms of the degree to which they are out of sync, behind in development, anachronistic, and resistant to progress (Anderson, 2011). Linear Eurocentric notions of time were used to sort individuals into opposing categories such as intelligent/slow, lazy/ industrious, saved/unsaved, believer/heathen, developed/undeveloped, and civilized/ primitive; in the process, most of the world’s people and their knowledge came to stand outside of history (Fabian, 2002).”
—Riyad A. Shahjahan, “Being ‘Lazy’ and Slowing Down: Toward decolonizing time, our body, and pedagogy”
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