Narrative time and International Relations

Telling a story can explain how an event came about. It can thereby also change how we grasp temporality. In this article, I will discuss Paul Ricœur’s notion of ‘narrative time’ in the context of International Relations. Viewed from this perspective, narratives not only explain, but also mediate two ways of understanding time, phenomenological and cosmological, by weaving experienced time and natural time together. How they do so will be shown considering three tools: calendar, succession of generations, and trace. The calendar and the succession of generations interlink, through narratives, physical and biological elements with experience. This includes the creation of ‘temporal watersheds’ by extraordinary events, periodisations, traditions, and the recasting of preceding academic generations. The trace gestures at the temporal implications of the sources on which IR builds by referring to their time bridging function.