ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to discuss the ways in which the poetics of waiting are intertwined with the politics of waiting, and furthermore, that in some cases the dimension may be what asks for more focused attention. It explores Palestinians in Oslo and their ways of acting on time and their situation of empty liminal being and introduces to a set of engaged forms of waiting among Charismatic Christians in Ghana. The book shows how western modernity creates novel spaces of experiences and horizons of expectations that depart from Christian eschatology. The watchful waiting for a messiah who will come like a thief in the night that many Christians enjoin on one another is premised on the idea that at any moment a future could arrive totally independent of the causal thrust of the present.
