Non-linear time

“Beginning with the Special Theory of Relativity, time increasingly came to be seen not as an inevitable progression along a linear scale to which all humans were subject, but as a construct that could be conceived in different ways” (Katherine Hayles, quoted in Haraway 1991, 207).

“Anachronic and anachronistic concepts of time have long preoccupied art historians . . . prompting radical reconsideration of periodisation, chronology, and the very concept of linear time” (Smith and Patrizio 2026, 63).

“This linear Newtonian past → present → future structure, although useful as an organising principle, derives from a very specific—and biased—tradi­tion . . . Oral Western and non-Western cultures have conceptualised time in cosmogo­nies that transcend [this structure]” (De Rebetz 2023, 12).

References

De Rebetz 2023

De Rebetz, Clara de Massol. Remembering the Anthropocene: Memorials Beyond the Human. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

Haraway 1991

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Smith and Patrizio 2026

Smith, Olga, and Andrew Patrizio. “Introduction: Time.” In Methods for Ecocritical Art History, edited by Olga Smith and Andrew Patrizio, 59–65. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026.