Writing Timelessness

Abstract

In the preceding chapters we encountered the emergence of two very different, yet similarly prominent, conceptions of temporality within the War on Terror. On reflection, it seems almost remarkable now that this one discursive framework could accommodate such radically distinct claims to temporal discontinuity and linearity: not least given the speed with which each of these shapes surfaced following the events of 11 September 2001. Discussions of rupture and revolution, as we have seen, coexisted surprisingly neatly with statements of historical continuity or evolution. No overt sense of contradiction, ambiguity, or incoherence appeared to accompany the administration’s mix-and-match approach to the temporal in their discussing this conflict.