Gwyllu’r Gorwel? Grym amser ac iwtopia yn stori fer ‘Amser Presennol ac Amser Gorffennol’ Joseba Sarrionandia (Halved by a Horizon? The power of time and utopia in Joseba Sarrionandia’s short story ‘Time Present and Time Past’)

This article deals with the short story ‘Denbora Presentea eta Denbora Pasatua’ (Time Present and Time Past) in the collection of poems ‘Hnuy illa nyha majah yahoo: Poemak 1985–1995’ (Poems 1985–1995) by the Basque writer Joseba Sarrionandia. Using the bloody events of March 1988 in Belfast, Book XI of The Confessions of Saint Augustine as well as the theme of time travel that runs through the short story, Sarrionandia investigates the nature and power of time and its relation to identity, nationalism, exile and political belonging.

These elements are analysed in the context of the politics of aesthetics and literature as well as the relationship between identity and political violence. Reference is made to the work of a number of scholars,including the philosopher Jacques Rancière, the political theorists Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney, the critical scholar Jenny Edkins and the political economist Amartya Sen, in order to argue that the concept of difference within political communities as well as between them remains core to the vitality of cultures coexisting with each other.