Inphilosophy,temporality refers to the idea of a linear progression of past, present, and future. The term is frequently used, however, in the context of critiques of commonly held ideas of lineartime. Insocial sciences, temporality is studied with respect to the human perception of time and the social organization of time.[1] The perception of time in Western thought underwent significant changes in the three hundred years between the Middle Ages and modernity.[2]
Examples inContinental philosophy of philosophers raising questions of temporality includeEdmund Husserl's analysis of internal time consciousness,Martin Heidegger'sBeing and Time,J. M. E. McTaggart's article "The Unreality of Time",George Herbert Mead'sPhilosophy of the Present, andJacques Derrida's criticisms of Husserl's analysis.
Temporality is "deeply intertwined with the rhetorical act of harnessing and subverting power in the unfolding struggle for justice."[3] Temporalities, particularly in Europeansettler colonialism, have been observed incritical theory as a tool for both subjugation and oppression of Indigenous communities, and Native resistance to that oppression.[4]
Inhistoriography, questioningperiodization, and as a further development after thespatial turn, social sciences have started re-investigating time and its different social understanding.[5][6] Temporal turn social science investigates different understandings of time at different times and locations, giving rise to concepts such astimespace where time and space are thought together.[7]
