Description
This paper offers an analysis of the deployment of time by conservatives engaged in the defence of the British Empire. Specifically, I capture two alternative conceptions of how conservatives present time. The first, I term the “continuous one nation” conservative approach: there is a temporal arc that links the empire with the present – a moral continuum that binds the actions of the past with today’s living community. The second is the “temporally segregated neoliberal” approach: the past is ontologically and normatively distinct from the present; it is over and complete and does not meaningfully impinge on the present. I explore these conceptions of time through an unpacking of four tropes of colonial apologia. 1. That citizens can feel pride or shame for their nation’s past. 2: That Britain provided prosperity and democracy in ways that endure today. 3. That contemporary racism and inequality are not a direct result of empire. 4. That one cannot judge the past by today’s standards. I discuss how, despite time and its passing being crucial to conservative ideology, the tendency among conservatives to shift between the “one nation” and the “neoliberal” conceptions of time reveals an incoherence at the heart of this tradition.
