Time back : expanding our capacity for liberatory struggle through temporal sovereignty

I argue that temporal sovereignty is an important, though often neglected, dimension of grounded normativity that increases our capacity for liberatory struggle by expanding our political imaginary, or our capacity to conceive of both the means and ends of liberatory struggle. Grounded normativity, an ethical framework generated by engagement with particular Indigenous lands, presupposes understandings of both time and “sovereignty” that substantially differ from western conceptions. I define temporal sovereignty as the capacity for and enactment of temporalities generated through grounded normativity in reciprocal relationships with particular lands and other beings who live there. In Turtle Island, this specifically means enacting temporal ways of being-in-time that are nonlinear, land-based, and relational. Temporal sovereignty necessarily affirms self-determination as it is enacted with reciprocal responsibility toward others and the land that generates it. I add to the literature on temporal sovereignty, a term originated by Mark Rifkin, by connecting this concept explicitly to grounded normativity and debates in Indigenous political thought about “sovereignty” and self‑determination. I specifically define sovereignty (in italics) as a relational, land-based enactment of reciprocal obligations that affirms self-determination. Further, I contend that the enactment of nonlinear, land-based, and relational temporal frames via reciprocal, land-based, and relational sovereignty — in other words, the enactment of temporal sovereignty— expands the political imaginary. Thus, temporal sovereignty increases our capacity for liberatory struggle, a term I use to encompass resistance, prefiguration, resurgence, and assurgence.