QUEER TIME
on land chronologies, dialectics and positionalities

by Hadass Rozental & Vaishnavi Chandra Kumar

The Oxford Dictionary defines land as the part of the earth’s surface that is not covered by water, as opposed to the sea or the air. For Capitalism, land is real estate—property defined by borders and ownership. In Hinduism, land is Bhumi (భూమి), personified as the goddess of Earth, bringing fertility to the soil and harvests. In Hebrew, land is both Eretz (אֶרֶץ) and Adamah (אֲדָמָה). The concept of land in Judaism is tied to identity and divinity; Eretz is God's first creation, while Adamah shares an etymological root with Adam (man).

So “we begin, as all stories do, with land.”¹ As a physical element, with its inability to move, land is a foundation that creates site specific constants that influence human identity and behavior. These include sustenance, clothing, shelter, community and so on. However, our understanding of land is defined by variables that we ourselves have created. This speculative and suggestive work on Queer Time began by interrogating the ways in which humans inherit definitions of land.

If every human, born into a single land has a different relationship with it, then, over a millennium, a repository of infinite collective histories is formed. Within the physical limits of a geography, it is not possible to fit every history like a jigsaw puzzle. A system like this one needs a different understanding of time; a temporal framework which allows different histories and identities to coexist rather than compete; a personification of time as queer, with the ability to embody multiplicities in cultures, narratives, identities.

If time were imagined as a matrix of stories, might we, then, observe time through the logic of simultaneity? What would make it possible for multiple narratives to be apprehended—not one after another, but at once? Can we explain different temporalities as if they are not distinct, rather how they impact their environments together?

The case of nomenclature

Our discussion about queering of time calls for a new rhetoric. The framework borrows attributes from the field of linguistics, by taking two complementary approaches: diachronic, which considers the development and evolution of a language through history; and synchronic, which considers the language at a specific moment in time, regardless of its past and future. The intent of this text is not to provide a singular method of analysing conflicts, but rather observing them in a way that considers their multifaceted evolution and an instance, a punctum or threshold simultaneously.

The first step in establishing such a system is to reconsider the politics of naming. Sites of conflict are sites of multiplicities; they are often multilingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-temporal. Agitation, in such situations, often stems from dismissal or non-recognition of viewpoints, privileging one history while silencing the other.

In order to sustain productive frictions in conversations, we see a need to establish a language that makes space for diversities to exist in resolution processes, one that names without excluding and acknowledges without flattening. To foster an inclusive discourse, we suggest reexamining nomenclature as a non-linear, inclusive, and spatially decentered reading system. The new textual structure resists hierarchical frames by returning to etymological roots that resonate across groups. Below is a proposed working nomenclature system and formatting structure:

Spatial ID: Use a directional coordinate system anchored in natural geography and relational location, rather than nation-state boundaries.
Structure: [direction]: [region] [dominant_landform][conflict description]

To situate this idea within a physical space, we examined a set of sites of intense contestation.

The index:

[cen-NE India] : [banks of Sarayu]
[protecting histories and prayers]

[west-SW-Colombia] : [rainforests of Amazon] [disclosing the commons]

[cen-SW-USA] : [mesas of Arizona]
[physical temporal thresholds]

[cen-NE India] : [banks of Sarayu] [protecting histories and prayers]

Land [noun, myth, colony] : A sacred site, the birthplace of a Hindu god, a place of prayer for Muslims, a place of worship.

Faith is a core principle that influences world views and decision making for many individuals. In a country like India, which hosts a vast number of religions, there are bound to be tensions in the myriad of belief systems. Ayodhya, is one such city in Northern India, a sacred site of worship that has over the past century been transformed into an interspace of conflict. With a layered history shaped by mythology, colonialism, and the politics of worship, the site has been claimed by two major religious communities of the region. Hindus believe Ayodhya to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, asserting that a temple once stood at the location. While Muslims claim the holy site for Babri Masjid, which was constructed during the 16th century under Mughal rule. The legal dispute over the site began in 1885 and intensified over the decades, culminating in the violent demolition of the mosque in 1992 by Hindu nationalists. This act activated the prolonged legal battle that concluded with a 2019 Supreme Court ruling sanctioning the construction of a Hindu temple on the site. ² A grand Ram Mandir (“temple” in Hindi) was officially inaugurated in 2023.

While not negating the original intent behind the construction of the mosque, its four-century long presence has accrued a historical and emotional significance to a community of people which seemed to have been disregarded in the process of looking for resolution. The site emerges as a polysemic one—held together by sanctity, yet pulled apart by different interpretations of that sanctity. In a country where the communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims have been aggravating since its independence,³ this particular site has become an epicenter of dissatisfaction warranting opinions across the subcontinent. Understanding such views are formed and how they morph into narratives is a necessary step in queering chronology itself.

The conception of Queer Time began with conversations about this topic with a diverse group of people. A recurring theme in these interactions was the perception of being neutral, framed as an unbiased argument.⁴ This appeal for neutrality, which stems from a sense of hyper-objectivity, is one that holds a sense of self proclaimed fairness. It comes from the understanding that the individual does not have any personal stake in the context. However, there is no such thing as neutrality. Acknowledging our positionalities is crucial to every situation and especially in political ones. We argue this shift away from neutrality as we are rejecting the notion of objective solutions in the act of queering time.

Religion can foster a strong sense of belonging, but the exclusivity of existing within one religion also creates divisions. Temples and mosques are in their essence spaces of assembly, allowing people to gather around shared beliefs. Yet the act of assembling is limited to active practice at active sacred sites of a specific religion itself. The Ayodhya case was ruled in favor of the Ram Mandir, a verdict that did not merely resolve a legal dispute but monumentalized a victory for one and, inevitably, a loss for the other.

This memorialization of the temple may seem like the end of a long drawn conflict, but the precedent the verdict has set for similar sites across India is one to be concerned about.⁵ Patterns of state supported erasure and rebranding of sites appear to be cropping up across the country, making conversations about queering of thought and queering of time relevant, now more than ever.

Babri Masjid Mosque, Ayodhya, India circa 1860-1880

Protestors at the demolition site of Babri Masjid, December 1992

[W-SW-COL] [rainforests of Amazonia] [disclosing the commons]
Land [verb, produce, production and restitution] : Fertile lands for food, resilience of vegetation reparations of the state through official memories

In 14th century Britain, land used to be a shared resource. The division of land was a division of labor as opposed to a delineation by boundaries. The beneficiaries of land were also its stewards. Analyzing land within any context, inadvertently winds back to a point in our linear history when a numerical potential was attached to it to determine productivity and capital. This phenomenon called the ‘enclosure of the commons’ refers to the privatization of shared resources and is still a largely on-going process.
Colombia is a country endowed with natural resources, particularly sought after for its rich agricultural lands. But its history of violence, manifesting in various forms and scales, has left this land in a state of limbo. Today, the state scrambles to make reparations for its people: the natives, the Afro-Colombian diaspora created by colonialism, and the victims of militarization and the narco war. It attempts to do so through a process known as transitional justice. As a top-down initiative this undertaking appears promising, inspiring optimism for the nation. The three primary laws enacted for this purpose are: Law 975 of Peace and Justice (2005), Law 1408 of Enforced Disappearances (2010), and Law 1448 of Victims and Land Restitution (2011). Despite the efforts of these three laws, the reparation measures are not often considered satisfactory for the victims, with about 90% being declared as unrepaired.⁶ The gap between the efforts of the law and the effectiveness of its reparations can largely be attributed to the nature of the latter that rely on a non-physical asset: collective memory. A collective memory is both a polysemic construct and an active social process, wherein citizens continuously reconstruct their pasts and histories through the influence of social and cultural forces.⁷ Each of the aforementioned laws understands memory according to a specific set of criteria. However, examining these laws through their legislative language and the interpretive repertoires around memories allows us to raise imperative questions within this context.⁸

Memory that is made official through entities that define how it should be constructed is referred to as “institutional repertoire”.⁹ In Colombia, this includes bodies such as the National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation (Law 975 of 2005), the Center for Historical Memory (Law 1448 of 2011), among others.

ARTICLE 51. FUNCTIONS OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR REPARATION AND RECONCILIATION. The National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation will fulfill the following functions:

52.1 Guarantee victims their participation in judicial clarification processes and the realization of their rights.
The idea of creating a memory that represents a group of people from a governmental position perpetuates the notion of hierarchies—ones that, unsurprisingly, prioritize the image of the state. Not to be ignored is the perspective many victims hold regarding the complicity of the state in the very violence that caused this painful past. It is therefore prudent to ask: Who should be part of the institutions of reparations, and how should they be elected or organized? This invites us to consider horizontal systems of organization, models that transfer the right to decision-making to the victims themselves.

The Comision de La Verdad and Juridiccion para la Paz were efforts on a similar front, formed as an outcome of the 2016 peace treaty, and aiming to organize collective memory directly with the victims rather than in their name. In doing so, a space for dialogue was suddenly formalized between the victims and their oppressors. Nevertheless, the peace treaty legislation also introduced a twenty-year timeline for prioritizing budgetary resources for reparations.¹⁰ If it can be said that the institutions’ role, in cases such as Colombia's, should be to ensure the continuity of reparation processes despite bureaucratic hurdles, what does it mean when the same entity is limited by an “expiration date?”

The complexity of the conflict warrants time and space to evolve. Dealing with the notion of memory for transitional justice requires recognition that historical and collective memory are not necessarily the same. While historical memory seeks to represent facts and data as accurately as possible, collective memory refers to shared experiences that contribute to a sense of identity and belonging to a group of people. This distinction is not meant to question the validity of either type of memory, but rather to impress on the fact that when a state defines an official truth, it should also determine the scale of the memory.¹¹ This would involve estimating how many people a particular memory relates to.

The Republic of Colombia currently operates within a framework of victims and victimizers, attempting to re-establish territorial clarity. However, this binary approach has already—and will likely continue to—generate new conflicts in the process of transitional justice, as seen in the case of Cauca. A conflict arose in the department of Cauca over contested land due to governmental error. When Interior Minister Holguín Sardi allotted the San Rafael farm to the Nasa Indigenous people, as part of the Accords following the El Nilo Massacre and a formal acknowledgment of state responsibility,¹² it was done without regard for the fact that the site was already inhabited by Afro-Colombian farmers. An oversight that further aggravated an already tense relationship between the two communities, each holding legitimate claims to the land in their own right.
ARTICLE 12. The National Government, in consultation with the National Search Commission for Missing Persons, will declare as Sanctuaries, those places where, according to the information 784 Memory Studies 16(4) provided by the Attorney General’s Office, there might be bodies or remains of those enforced to disappear, including those places where because of geographic and topographic conditions, it is not possible to carry out exhumations. Except in those cases in which the location or exhumation of the remains is facilitated, for any reason, the conditions of the Sanctuaries of Memory may be intervened or altered [. . .]. In those places declared as Sanctuaries of Memory, national authorities will erect a monument in honor of these victims, for which they may allocate the corresponding budget (Law 1408, 2010: 4–5).
The law, as a noun, refers to a system of rules that a particular entity or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members, and which it may enforce through the imposition of penalties. In the context of transitional justice, however, the law cannot simply reduce the diverse and complex realities of multiple communities into a single, catch-all category such as ‘victims’. There is a need for less mechanistic, more responsive legal frameworks, as conventional laws often do not allow room for inconsistencies. In this case, for example, the failure to account for the existing relationship between Afro-Colombian descendants and Indigenous communities illustrates how legal mechanisms can overlook critical layers of lived reality.

ARTICLE 143. THE DUTY OF MEMORY OF THE STATE. The duty of Memory of the State has to do with promoting the guarantees and conditions of society, through its different expressions such as the victims, social organizations, the academy, think tanks, organizations for victims and human rights, as well as competent State agencies with the necessary autonomy and resources that can advance in memory reconstruction exercises as and contribute to the realization of the right of the victims and society to the truth.
Paragraph: In no case may the Institutions of the State promote or promote exercises aimed at the construction of a history or official truth that denies, violates or restricts the constitutional principles of plurality, participation and solidarity or the rights of freedom of expression and thought. The prohibition of censorship consecrated in the Political Charter will also be respected (Law 1448, 2011: 66).
The language of Law 1448 concretizes the singularity of an official truth, contradicting the inherent nature of plurality that it hopes to achieve. Instead, revisiting the idea of a repository of official truths could allow all victims to signify their histories. In the context of land, can we envision a new system of Disclosure of the Commons—one that reverses the concept of delineation and property? Commemoration and restitution need not be restricted to the documentation of pain and suffering preserved by the state. A communal approach to land that promotes the coexistence of these histories, enacted through practices of care, negotiated among multiple parties, suggests that peaceful assembly and coexistence themselves can become acts of commemorating the violent past. Rather than reallocating land parcels as restitution, generating commons and fostering a cooperative attitude, an ethic of showing mercy to land, may prove more productive.

[cen-SW-USA] : [mesas of Acoma] [physical temporal thresholds]
Land [pronoun, relationship, orientation] : Acoma in Keres is a “place that always was”

The Spanish Mission Catholic church of San Estévan del Rey sits on top of a 365-foot mesa, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is situated in Sky City–an Acoma Pueblo village known to be one of the oldest, continuously inhabited settlements in Northern America, dating back to the 1100s. The mission church was built between 1629 and 1640 in the aftermath of the 1599 Acoma Massacre–a three-day retaliation attack led by the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, which resulted in the death of hundreds of Acoma people, the occupation of the mesa, the enslavement of those who remained and their submission to Catholicism.¹³ In the following years, those who had escaped returned to Acoma and helped rebuild the village under Spanish rule.

The church consists of a large adobe structure rising 35 feet above ground, with several tons of masonry roof supported by massive vigas.¹⁴ The vigas, cut from Ponderosa Pines that are not to be found in the surrounding area, are a testimony to the labor conditions required to construct the church. With its altar built directly on top of a Kiva¹⁵–an underground space used for spiritual ceremonies and a place of worship–the church is not merely a symbol of its violent history, it embodies it.

In 2007 Acoma Sky City was designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as the Twenty-Eighth (and the only Native American) National Trust Historic Site.¹⁶ Notably, in the same year, a 36-feet tall statue–the largest equestrian bronze statue in the world–was dedicated to Oñate in El Paso, Texas.^{17 18}Two monuments arose simultaneously and less than 400 km away; one signified by the recognition of a people and their resistance to cruelty, while the other magnifying the very man responsible for it.

San Estévan del Rey is conflicted in its essence, yet it still functions as an active site of assembly. A place of worship for the Acoma people, for those who still practice the Catholic faith and for those who don’t. In a video shown to visitors, Melvin Juanico from the Sky City Cultural Center describes the practice of the Catholic faith alongside the Acoma cultural and religious faith.¹⁹ An interesting example of this unique practice is the four-day Christmas festivities, where ceremonial dances take place inside the mission church – “a beautiful celebration”²⁰ as Juanico describes it–that reinforces the synthesis of what is often perceived as two contradicting belief systems.

Sacred spaces or places of worship often have physically defined thresholds. These spatial thresholds determine the distinction between the sacral and the profane. For San Estévan del Rey, the thresholds that define the sacred space are also temporal. Outside visitors would first need to arrive in Sky City Cultural Center. Then, in the company of a local Acoma guide, travel by a shuttle-van to Acoma Sky City. There, during designated times and as part of a closed tour, they may finally visit the church. The temporal threshold controls who may or may not enter it, as well as determines the assembly and un-assembly of different people on top of the mesa.

“Every time the threshold of this church is crossed, whether by tourists or Acoma residents, this structure assumes a different identity,”²¹ write Audra Bellmore and Jane Sinclair in their essay. Rather than activating and deactivating the space, the threshold allows both the people and the structure to contain and maintain different identities that would otherwise be perceived as contradicting.

35-feet tall adobe structure of San Estévan del Rey. Acoma City, New Mexico, 1933

Sky City, Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, 1933

Epilogue

Time as an entity is intangible. In suggesting the idea of queering time, we do not propose any form of operation or control of time in itself. Rather identifying domains for possible action—be it in reimagining legislation, generating spaces of agonism²² or moderating accessibility of histories. Each case shows sites approaching reparations in different measures, where we attempt to read the narratives as multicentered.

In doing so we hope to infrastructure situations where differences do not disappear, but are held in tension through the same factors that cause the conflict. Queering as an act yields to the possibility of existing within contradictions, by choice, providing opportunity for more humane and inclusive worldviews.

Footnotes
[1] Nasra Abdullahi and Miriam Hillawi Abraham, “The Horn of Africa: Fracturing Timelines,” The Funambulist, no. 36 (June 2021), accessed June 22, 2025, thefunambulist.net/magazine/they-have-clocks-we-have-time/the-horn-of-africa-fracturing-timelines.

[2] "Timeline: Key Events in the Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir Controversy," Supreme Court Observer, accessed June 14, 2025, https://www.scobserver.in/journal/timeline-key-events-in-the-babri-masjid-ram-mandir-controversy/#:~:text=1885%3A%20Court%20Dispute%20Begins%20%E2%80%93%20Mahant,(DM)%20refuses%20him%20permission.

[3] Partition: Why Was British India Divided 75 Years Ago? 14 Aug. 2022. www.bbc.com, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-62467438.

[4] Vaishnavi Chandra Kumar, Hadass Rozental, rAADio, season 4, episode 404, “Queer Time,” Columbia GSAPP, July 18, 2024, 17:29, https://soundcloud.com/columbiagsapp/raadio-season-4-404-queer-time.

[5] Mukhopadhyay, Nilanjan. “One Year After Modi’s Ram Temple Consecration, ‘Dispute’ Has Become a Continual Process.” Thewire.In, 22 Jan. 2025, https://thewire.in/communalism/modi-ram-temple-consecration-vengeance-violence-dispute-structure.

[6] Rettberg A (2008) Reparación en Colombia ¿Qué quieren las víctimas? Bogotá: Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ).

[7] Halbwachs M (1992) On Collective Memory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

[8] Arboleda-Ariza, J. C., Piper-Shafir, I., & Prosser Bravo, G. (2020). Reparation policies in Colombia: Memory as a Repertoire. Memory Studies, 16(4), 777-793. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020982036 (Original work published 2023)

[9] Arboleda-Ariza, Piper-Shafir, & Prosser Bravo, (2020).

[10] Colombia, Acto Legislativo 1 de 2016 (“Legislative Act for Peace”), transitory article 3, Diario Oficial No. 49 927 (Bogotá, July 7,2016).

[11] ‘Scale of memory’ as a phrase refers to the practice of reading memories as cascading in range of influence as opposed to assuming the existence of singular overarching narratives, which is inherently exclusionary in nature.

[12] Bautista, Myriam. “El conflicto entre indígenas y afro-colombianos en el Cauca: sangre de tu sangre.” Razón Pública, 30 May 2011, https://razonpublica.com/el-conflicto-entre-indigenas-y-afro-colombianos-en-el-cauca-sangre-de-tu-sangre/.

[13] Frank Graziano, “San Esteban del Rey, Acoma Pueblo,” Historic Churches of New Mexico Today (New York, 2019), 104.

[14] Vigas are the wooden beams typically used to support roof structures in adobe buildings, commonly in New Mexico.

[15] Audra Bellmore and Jane Sinclair, “‘Displaced’ in Santa Fe: The Committee for the Preservation and Restoration of New Mexico Mission Churches and San Esteban del Rey Church at Acoma Pueblo; A Site for Global Tourism,” in Migrations and Connections: Latin America and Europe in the Modern World, ed. Pamela M. Graham, (Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, 2012), 103.

[16] “Historic Sites,” National Trust for Historic Preservation, accessed June 14, 2025, https://savingplaces.org/collections/historic-sites-collection.

[17] “Things To Do,” Visit El Paso, accessed June 15, 2025, https://visitelpaso.com/places/the-world-s-largest-equestrian-bronze.

[18] It is important to note that in June 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and the protests in defense of Black lives, two additional statues of Oñate were removed from their locations in New Mexico.

[19] Melvin Juanico, “Acoma--Sky City Pueblo New Mexico,” posted February 24, 2014, by Thomas Wilmer YouTube, 0:02:39, https://youtu.be/rkVxVfveNLc?si=WNtX0fW6DcFeNmzr.

[20] Juanico, “Acoma.”

[21] Bellmore and Sinclair, “‘Displaced’ in Santa Fe,” 103.

[22] Markus Miessen “Proximities,” in Agonistic Assemblies: On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality, ed. Markus Miessen, (Sternberg Press, 2024), 24-70.

Photo Rights
[1] Babri Masjid Mosque, Ayodhya, India circa 1860-1880.

Public domain, Getty Photos
By Samuel Bourne[1][2] (1834–1912) - http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/138760/unknown-maker-babri-masjid-faizabad-english-about-1863-1887/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=170133014

[2] Protestors at the demolition site of Babri Masjid, December 1992.

Public domain
By Duggempudi Ravinder Reddy - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154340514

[3] 35-feet tall adobe structure of San Estévan del Rey. Acoma City, New Mexico, 1933.

Public Domain
Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, and Padre Juan Ramirez. San Esteban del Rey Mission, Acoma Pueblo, Cibola County, NM. New Mexico Cibola County Acoma Pueblo, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/nm0067/.

[4] Sky City, Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, 1933.

Public Domain
Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, and Padre Juan Ramirez. San Esteban del Rey Mission, Acoma Pueblo, Cibola County, NM. New Mexico Acoma Pueblo Cibola County, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/nm0067/

A LIVING ARCHIVE OF PRACTICE