Telling Time

Having defended a basic theory of timing, chapter three develops a framework more closely fitted to IR. Drawing from narratology, it formulates an account of narrative timing, which shows how we configure and re-configure narratives to place confounding experiences in a meaningful, serial whole. After emphasizing narrative elements common to all IR scholarship, this chapter shows how narrative emplotment unfolds a temporal world using four distinct timing techniques: the synoptic theme, which acts as the timing standard; creative filtration, which determines what processes matter; cleaving experience, which establishes the story’s durative presence; and concordant discordance, which reinterprets unintelligible and overwhelming experiences as key plot drivers. It then illustrates these narrative timing operations in familiar IR explanatory forms. Finally, the chapter discusses how narrative timing further elaborates the problem of Time and why some narrative temporalities become reified, passive timing meters, which aesthetically resolve that problem while blinding us to its future return. Chapter three closes by highlighting key conclusions from Part One and their implications for IR.