Periodization and the political: Abdallah Laroui's analysis of temporalities in a postcolonial context

Abstract

This paper challenges the common opposition between periodizations as a heuristic means for historians, on the one hand, and as a political element in narratives of groups and origins on the other. It conceives periodizations as elements within wider social uses of time and, thus, the symbolic production of the political. I demonstrate this by analysing the works of the Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui (*1933) on modernity, historical representation, time and difference. First, I look at how Laroui spells out the relation of particular and general periodizations. Then I compare his approach to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s in his book Provincializing Europe. I interpret their discussion of time and temporalities as a response to a general problem in the theory of history, as well as an expression of a certain way of experiencing a globalised modernity in (post)colonial contexts. I argue that the core of their critique is the challenging of hegemonic representations of time and the breaking up of unified time into multiple temporalities. Finally, I look closer at the various articulations of this Denkfigur (figure of thought), especially regarding the postcolonial context and Walter Benjamin’s notion of empty, homogenous time.