Johannes Fabian argues in his Time and the Other that “geopolitics has its ideological foundations in chronopolitics.” Bauman summarizes the argument: “The modern perspective ‘denied coevality’ to any form of life different from its own; it construed the Other of itself as ‘living in another time.’ The allochronic distancing device (Fabian’s felicitous term) seems to be a variant of a more general expedient: construing the Other (defining the Other) in a way that a priori decides its inferior and, indeed, transcient and (until disappearance) illegitimate status. In an age of the forward march of reason-guided progress, describing the Other as outdated, backward, obsolete, primitive, and altogether ‘pre-,’ was equivalent to such a decision.”
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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