Temporality in the contemporary global south novel

Abstract

This chapter reads two novels from the Global South, Guyanan Wilson Harris’ The Dark Jester (2001) and Kenyan Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust (2013) for the ways in which they mobilise a set of alternative temporal models roughly aligned with what Harris calls a quantum poetics. The chapter suggests that such Global South fictions provide models of temporal ‘elasticity,’ ‘complementarity,’ ‘bridging,’ ‘connectivity,’ and ‘generativity’ that implicitly go against the grain of segmenting, commodifying, linear Euro-American time that has been an essential element in the imperial conquest of the globe, the colonial exploitation of many of its populations, and the increasingly evident destruction of the planetary environment.