ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the concept of historical time articulated by the anti-colonial movements and continued into the postcolonial present, and how it departs from a linear progressive concept of historical time. The temporal logic of international norms, as progressive projects, hews to the latter formulation. The chapter also analyzes the colonial episteme that has been reproduced, first by anti-colonial activists, and now by postcolonial subjects. It explores three examples of the tension between these two concepts of historical time: indigenous land title in Canada, debates over abortion in India, and bans on same-sex desiring behavior in Africa. Scholars of postcolonial politics have recognized the difference between this linear version of modernity and what is unfolding in the postcolonial world. The trajectory of political change in the postcolonial world – keeping the past alive rather than superseding it – defies the expected trajectory of change in the literature on international norms.
