African temporalities: race and the Augustinian philosophy of time

Abstract

A recent issue of the journal South Atlantic Quarterly, edited by Habiba Ibrahim and Badia Ahad, bore the title “Black Temporality in Times of Crisis.” Its cover featured a banner asking: “After hope, then what?” For communities seeking emancipation, the question of the future is always also the question of hope. Augustine bound future and hope together in his Confessions, too, though he never guaranteed our hopes would soon be fulfilled. That same ambivalence concerning hope can be sensed in the discourse around black temporalities.

Our tendency to pluralize—to move from temporality to temporalities—is a tacit recognition that time does not have to mean the same thing to every community. Cultural pluralism goes hand in hand with chronological pluralism. Augustine acknowledged hermeneutical pluralism when he remarked that there can be multiple true interpretations of the same Biblical passage. Chronological pluralism would mean acknowledging that there can be multiple true ways of experiencing time.