“The Taut Elastic of Time”: Polytemporality and the Black and Green Atlantic in Colum McCann’s <i>TransAtlantic</i> (2013)

This article analyses Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (2013) as a polytemporal novel by focusing on the representation of the entangled histories of Irish and African American diasporas. Drawing on philosophical theories of time as well as on cultural studies on the Black and Green Atlantic as a theoretical framework, the study examines how TransAtlantic challenges the traditional linearity of historical narratives by presenting past historical events as dynamically connected with present and future orientations. Ultimately, this contribution suggests that TransAtlantic not only reimagines transatlantic relations from the point of view of the Irish and Black diasporas but also constructs a broader Pan-Atlantic memory of anticolonial resistance.