CJD ｜Call for Papers: Unbinding Temporalities
2026-04-14
Unbinding Temporalities ｜ 解綁時間性
During the 1920s, the Bergson-Einstein debate regarding philosophical versus scientific knowledge of time marked a significant crossroads in the epistemological trajectory of time. Bergson’s philosophical approach to time, termed "duration," emphasizes its fluid, internal, and metaphysical features. To Bergson, the linear and spatialized "clock time" could not capture essential temporal experiences, such as memory, premonition, and anticipation (Canales 2015). In contrast, Einstein, through his groundbreaking theory of relativity, established the authority of science by viewing time as secular, measurable, and objective, and by contending that the perceived flow of time is a psychological phenomenon.
In the following century, shifting patterns in politics, economy, technology, and social relations have led to unprecedentedly deep understandings of both human and non-human time. Moving beyond the Bergson-Einstein debate, scholars have adopted variegated approaches to explore contemporary temporalities. A growing dissatisfaction with teleological, linear, and singular forms of temporality is now shared across the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The timeframe bound to a hegemonic Western history becomes anachronistic.
Foundational sociological works treat time as socially constructed and represented (Durkheim 1961, Bourdieu 1963). Marxist critiques examine timed labor, time discipline, and "time-space compression" in the development of capitalism (Thompson 1967, Ong 1987, Harvey 1989, Ingold 1995). Postcolonial scholars investigate the violence inherent in the norms of Western and settler time (Chakrabarty 1997, Rifkin 2017). Anthropologists propose the term “chronocracy” to illustrate the temporal manipulation in the governing structure (Kirtsoglou and Simpson 2020), while geographers extend multiple spatiotemporal dimensions in the world through concepts such as "timescape" and "future geographies" (May & Thrift 2001, Anderson 2010). As Laura Bear (2016) notes, the rise of the "temporal turn" is not merely a result of intellectual debate; it resonates with an increasing sense of uncertainty and insecurity in modern life, where one frequently experiences conflicts in time. By elaborating on human and non-human engagements with time, extensive scholarship has worked on: the affect in/with time (optimism, expectation, aspiration, and the “not-yet”), the labor in/of time (waiting, speculation, planning, and projectization), the pacing of time (acceleration, slowness, delay, and pause), and the economy of time (debt, credit, and the “real time” and “just-in-time” production).
Alongside these developments, recent scholarship has foregrounded the entanglement of temporality with affect and queerness. Affect theory, for instance, has challenged the assumption that time is experienced only through conscious cognition, emphasizing instead its preconscious and embodied dimensions (Massumi 2002). Queer theory has similarly critiqued normative temporalities organized around reproduction, linearity, and progress. From Heather Love’s (2007) notion of “backward feelings,” which reorients attention toward the lingering injuries of the past, to the refusal of reproductive futurism (Edelman 2004) and the reclaiming of the future through a call for “queer utopia” (Munoz 2009), queer temporalities disrupt the alignment between time and teleological development.
In light of these works, we invite authors to unbind temporalities in relation to their own research. Suggested (but not limited to) the following themes:
Temporalities and the sense of time during war
The philosophy of time
Histories and temporalities
The politics and ethics of time
Technics and time
Temporalities of social movements
Temporalities of capitalism (with respect to factory, infrastructure, logistics, and platform economy, etc.)
Haptic temporalities
Temporalities and affect
Temporality and disability/debility
Hope, despair, and the making of the future
Nostalgia, anachronism, and obsolescence
Queer temporalities
The promise of happiness and affective expectations
Temporalities and the built environment
New reflections on time-space theories
Uncertainty
Rhythmanalysis
AI Usage Disclosure
To ensure transparency in scholarly work, authors are requested to disclose any use of AI tools (e.g. for research assistance, drafting, rephrasing, translation, data analysis, or otherwise) in their full-paper submission.
Submission Guidelines
Maximum length: 6,500 words (including bibliography and notes).
Language: English or Mandarin Chinese.
We accept scholarly articles, conference reviews, interviews, photo essays, video essays, and book and film reviews. We welcome both single-authored and co-authored manuscripts.
Full Paper Submission Guidelines available at https://cjdproject.web.
How to Submit
We invite you to submit an abstract (300-400 words in English, 450-600 characters in Mandarin) alongside information about author and affiliation at the following application form.
Submission link: https://forms.gle/
Abstract submission deadline: April 30, 2026
Selected articles will be published on the CJD website (ISSN: 2709-5479) and in a special issue of our booklet (ISSN: 2709-7943). Authors of selected articles with a Taiwanese post office bank account will be awarded 4,000 NTD per article.
For more information or any questions, please visit: https://cjdproject.web.nycu.
References | 參考文獻
Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777-798.
Bear, L. (2016). Time as Technique. Annual Review of Anthropology, 45, 487-502.
Edelman, L. (2004). No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1963). The attitude of the Algerian peasant toward time. In: Pitt-Rivers J (ed.) Mediterranean Countrymen, Paris: Mouton and Co, pp. 55–72.
Canales, J. (2015). The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time. Princeton University Press. 3.
Durkheim, E. (1961). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Joseph W. Swaian. New York: Macmillan.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell.
Ingold, T. (1995). Work, Time and Industry. Time & Society, 4(1), 5-28.
Kirtsoglou, E. and Simpson, B. (2020). The Time of Anthropology: Studies of Contemporary Chronopolitics. Routledge.
Love, H. (2007). Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Harvard University Press.
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.
May, J. and Thrift, N. (2001). Timescape: Geographies of Temporality. Routledge.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. NYU Press.
Ong, A. (1987). Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline. State University of New York Press.
Rifkin, M. (2017). Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination. Duke University Press.
近期新聞 Recent News
