Colonization is about control of land, people and their resources. Colonization has a special relation with time. The colonized people we not considered to be coeval with the colonized. They considered the colonized people as to be underdeveloped and behind time. This sense of lagging in time justifies, naturalizes and normalizes colonization and imperialism and positions it as a way of bridging the gap . But imposition of a lag in time is detemporalisation of the colonized people. Colonization did not just detemporalised, it also deterritorialized them. The temporality of the people come under the temporal pressure of the colonizer which produces or invents the a temporal gap between the colonizer and the colonized. The synchronizing of the temporality of the colonized with that of the colonized produces the superior location of the colonizer and produces an evolutionary view of time.
The denial of coeval time produces colonial difference. Colonial difference produced coloniality of power and justified the dominance and conquest of the colonizer. It produced colonization as civilization. Colonization, therefore, had a regime of time to back its oppressive project. It produced a gap between the colonizer and the colonized. It hierarchized the colonizer and his/her culture. Hence, colonization took upon itself a civilizing mission. This civilizing mission was Eurocentric. It also grew around the axial point of capitalism. Because colonization was viewed as civilizing mission its brutalities and exploitations were naturalized and even invisibilized. The colonization of the Americas led to the production of racism and exploitation of the blacks as slaves on the plantations fields and mines of gold and silver of the whites.
Time, under colonization, thus, became to be felt as money. Time became commodified and salaried employment came in force although the colonizers alone began to men high civil as well as military position in the colonial administration. Indeed, as time became money, whiteness began to be associated with the salaried. Time as money or a commodity was employed to serve the colonial master. It served to build capitalist driven world market. It is said that capitalism was born in southern Iberian and/ or Italian peninsulas in 11/12 centuries. But the coming of Americas, capitalism came into history in a big way.
Colonial time as money also became racist. It is at this point Europe as a geographic region became the center of this new colonial time. Diverse Europeans were bundled as whites. In fact, it is at this time, it has been said that Europe, especially western Europe became the center of the colonial capitalist power. Europe then became an universalizer. The Eurpean local culture became the model for all. In a very real way, the universal was born. One verse, ‘the European world ‘ became universe. All people had to mimic the Europeans and become modern/ developed/ civilized. Colonization became a means of universalization. The pluriversal world then became homogenized under the regime of time that animated colonization. Different peoples like the Aztecs, Mayas , Quechuas, Aymaras, Incas, Chibchas and others were reduced to one verse/ universe as ‘Indians’. So also the Ashantis, Yorubas, Zulus, Congos, Bacongos and others came to be universalized as negroes or blacks. In someway, all the colonized people were deprived of their root identities . They had to embrace a new assembled identity. Same appears to have happened to India. This bundling of people under one verse may have led to the rise of nations in the post-colonial world.
Colonial regime of time is actually a coloniality of time that produced coloniality of power by inventing colonial difference. It follows a linear time and puts everything in the order of things to serve the colonizer and capitalist market. Everything in the colonial order of things is homogenized and difference is hierarchized. Time becomes not just a background to this dynamic order of things but also produces a constant gap that keeps producing the colonial difference. Everything under colonization becomes in the gap of this elastic time. But the gap of time that denies coevalness to the colonized is never really filled. It is this gaping time that kept the colonial project continue for a long time. At several levels the colonial world denied simultaneity to the colonized. The colonized were always behind time and their development or modernization occurs only in their catching up with the colonizer.
We too live under colonial regime of time even in our postcolonial times. Although the colonization has historically ended. We are still mentally colonized. In order to decolonize ourselves, we may have to decolonize our understanding of time. We have the challenge to transgress the colonial regimes of time. We are still trying to mirror Europe in several ways. There are several Europes in our mind. Even what is thought to be indigenous ways of being humans, follow the colonizer in form and only enflesh the indigenous matter into that form. We, therefore, have the challenge to choose an in-between position. Thinking form a privileged position of being in-between, being-intersectional, far away from the colonial hierarchical binaries. Being in-between is being on the margins and the borders. It does not follow the certificate of purity associated by the racist colonizer. We, therefore, have the challenge to embrace a transgressive logic that is rhizomatic and non-linear. We have to live under a decolonial time regime. It will save us from producing coloniality of power in our postcolonial times.
