International Journal of Geographical and Spatial Studies
JGSS Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp. 75-85.
Print ISSN: 3105-1294; Online ISSN: 3105-1308
Journal homepage: https://www.gssjournal.com
DOI：https://doi.org/10.64058/JGSS.26.1.07
On Archipelagic Temporality
Abstract: This essay examines the colonial and capitalist organisation of time through a reading of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Édouard Glissant’s theory of Relation. It argues that Crusoe’s improvised calendar on the island is not merely a practical device for survival, but a symbolic act of temporal enclosure through which European modernity imposes its linear, Protestant, and capitalist order onto archipelagic space. By inscribing days, weeks, and months onto the landscape, Crusoe transforms the island into a colonial prototype of disciplined labour, productivity, and historical legibility. The essay situates this act within Marx’s critique of abstract labour-time, E. P. Thompson’s account of industrial clock-time, and the broader history of capitalist temporal discipline. Against this homogeneous and measurable temporality, the essay turns to Glissant’s notion of archipelagic time: a nonlinear, relational, and opaque temporality shaped by slavery, creolisation, rupture, and survival. Through the figures of errantry, opacity, and the Whole-World, Glissant offers a poetics of time that resists both colonial historicism and capitalist synchronisation. The essay ultimately proposes archipelagic time as a decolonial and planetary alternative to the temporal regimes of empire, capital, and redemption.
Keywords: Glissant; archipelago; Robinson Crusoe; E. P. Thomson; modernity
Author Biography: Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies and founding director of the Centre for Technology in Humanities at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. His research interests include Continental philosophy, critical theory, and cultural studies. Email: tglee@khu.ac.kr
标题：论群岛时间性
摘要：本文通过解读丹尼尔·笛福的《鲁滨逊漂流记》以及爱德华·格里桑的关系理论，探讨殖民主义与资本主义的时间组织形式。文章认为，鲁滨逊在岛上临时制作的日历不仅是一种实用的生存工具，更是一种象征性的“时间圈地”行为——欧洲现代性正是通过这种行为，将其线性、新教式的资本主义秩序强加于群岛空间之上。通过将日、周、月铭刻于自然景观之中，克鲁索将岛屿转变为一处彰显规训劳动、生产力及历史可读性的殖民地原型。本文将这一行为置于马克思对抽象劳动时间的批评、E.P.汤普森对工业钟表时间的论述，以及更广泛的资本主义时间规训史的语境中进行探讨。与这种同质化、可测量的时间性相对，本文转向格里桑的“群岛时间”概念：一种由奴隶制、克里奥尔化、断裂与生存所塑造的非线性、关系性且不透明的时间性。通过“漂移”“不透明”“全—世界”等意象，格里桑提出了一种既抵制殖民历史主义又反抗资本主义同步化的时间诗学。本文最终提出，群岛时间可以作为一种去殖民的、具有行星尺度的替代方案，用以对抗帝国、资本与救赎所支配的时间体制。
关键词：格里桑；群岛；《鲁滨逊漂流记》；E.P.汤普森；现代性
作者简介：李泽广，韩国庆熙大学哲学与文化研究教授，人文技术研究中心创始主任。其研究领域包括大陆哲学、批判理论及文化研究。电邮为tglee@khu.ac.kr。
Received: 30 Mar 2026 / Revised: 20 Apr 2026 / Accepted: 30 Apr 2026 / Published online: 30 May 2026 / Print published: 30 Jun 2026.
