The coloniality of age: Navigating the chronopolitics of Black childhood

Abstract

AbstractFor Black, Indigenous, and other colonised peoples, decolonisation and racial justice are urgent imperatives, but their demands are often dismissed as utopian, impossible, or otherwise out‐of‐time. This article therefore introduces the coloniality of age as a theoretical framework that aims to open up possibilities for otherwise worlds. Departing from established accounts of the coloniality of time, the coloniality of age grounds the analysis of racialised time in the chronopolitical formations of tempus nullius and the paternalistic paradigm. Alongside the doctrine of terra nullius or ‘uninhabited land’, the doctrine of tempus nullius or ‘uninhabited time’ works to deny Black peoples the ability to make and remake history on their own terms. Supplementing theories of the barbarian other, the paternalistic paradigm identifies patriarchal father/child relations as a conceptual and historical precedent to race. The coloniality of age directs the analysis to the temporal limits of coloniality. I argue that the temporal limits of coloniality are constituted by Black childhood; the coloniality of age figures Black childhood as an age with no future. This framework is then applied to analyse young Black peoples' counter‐narratives of Black childhood. The counter‐narratives of being ‘stuck’, ‘growing up’, the ‘pace’ of racism, and ‘regressing’ centre the temporal agency of Black children as they navigate the chronopolitics of Black childhood. Each of these counter‐narratives unsettles the coloniality of age. Read together, the counter‐narratives tell a larger story of Black children confronting the temporal limits of coloniality, refusing the terms of White futurity, and instead opting to grow otherwise. The article concludes that Black childhood might be reframed as an age with otherwise futures beyond the temporal limits of coloniality.