What does it mean to weave political time? Interview with Béatrice Hibou & Mohamed Tozy
In light of the recent publication of the English translation of their book, Weaving Political Time in Morocco. The Imaginary of the State in the Neoliberal Age by Hurst and Oxford University Press (originally published in French by Karthala), we talk to the two authors, Beatrice Hibou and Mohamed Tozy, about the central concept of this theoretically ambitious work: weaving political time. Béatrice Hibou and Mohamed Tozy answer our questions in this short interview.
What does it mean to weave political time?
This expression refers to the plurality of repertoires of representation, staging, action, rationality, and understanding that we reveal in the book through our close description of government practices and technologies of power, which play out over different temporalities and sometimes over the extremely long term.
This is the central demonstration of our book. Through the Moroccan case, we show that the state, its modes of government, its structures, its imaginary, can only be understood if we take into account this imbrication – this weaving, overlapping, interconnectedness – of different temporalities and durations.
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