ABSTRACT
Opposition to linear time, and particularly to the ways in which linear time supports exploitative capitalism, as well as settler colonialism, is not at all a recent theoretical innovation. The rejection of “chrononormativity” (to use Elizabeth Freeman’s term) has long played a role in activist movements and in disciplines established by groups constituted by historical (and actual) injury, resulting in a variety of non-normative chronotypes and chronopolitical time structures: queer time, crip time, woman time, sick time and sleepy time, to name only a few. Taking its cue from these embodied critiques of normative linear time, this chapter will investigate one particular example of the chronopolitical effect of “the classical” as a pseudo-temporal category – the exclusion of Islam. It will show that temporality operates as an aspect of the Westernese framing of the classical and set out some alternative temporal constellations – including futurisms and a-histories – for a critical ancient world studies (CAWS) committed to opposing both this disciplinary Islamophobia and the naturalising of Western linear time.
