ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the critical methodology of space and time that provides the basis for the analysis of Libya. It explores the three main points of critique of liberal hegemonic space-time. First, the liberal image of space/time relies upon a fiction of discrete bounded sovereign units. The second point of critique of the liberal view of space/time is of its progressive teleology. The third point of critique focuses on the conflation of speed and progress in liberal narratives. Humanitarian intervention rests upon a hegemonic image of space and time in which political space is delineated by clear boundaries. The moral import of postcolonial critique is a destabilisation of the false certainties of imaginative geographies that emphasises the link between knowledge and violence. The examination of the imaginative geographies of the Libya intervention delineates this link between the representation of the other and their spaces, and the mobilisation of violence to save the other.
