Every once in a while, I encounter the writing of an author who is not only brilliant, but who is working on a whole different mental and temporal level. This is a perfect description of Rasheedah Phillips, whose new book Dismantling the Master’s Clock is all at once a theoretical Afrofuturist powerhouse, a love-letter to Black community, and an empowering call for all people to reevaluate the ways that Western perceptions of time and race have created systemic harm for Black communities. Continuing the work of Afrofuturist theorists like Sheree Renée Thomas and Kodwo Eshun, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in Afrofuturism, quantum time, and critical race theory.

Phillips, a “queer housing advocate, lawyer, [… p]arent, interdisciplinary artist, and co-creator of the art duo Black Quantum Futurism,” combines her research skills and creative viewpoint in this work. Her title, “Dismantling the Master’s Clock,” is a reference to Audre Lorde’s essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” By referring to this seminal Black theoretical essay, she signals that her work will challenge readers to dismantle what they think they know about time and to acknowledge the ways that Western, linear notions of time have dominated scientific and social discourses to the detriment of Black, African, and other Indigenous ways of knowing.

Phillips  draws from her experiences as an artist-in-residence at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, and interviews she conducted during her time there. She draws on physicists’ theories of charge-parity-time symmetry (CPT) and connects these to notions of “Colored People Time.” The latter is a common stereotype of Black peoples as lazy, and in the juxtaposition Phillips argues that modern physics, considered by contemporary society to be cutting-edge science, challenges Western notions of linear time in ways that call to mind teachings of time that have been part of Black and African cultures for centuries.

Phillips states the major premise of the book in the first chapter, “CPT Symmetry and Violations”:

by decolonizing time—by breaking free of the master’s clock that has been instrumental in sustaining systems of oppression—we can forge new pathways for liberation that are attuned to the realities, histories, and futures of Black communities. The act of reclaiming both time and the nature of reality itself is a profound step toward manifesting temporalities where Black experiences and knowledges are centered (p. 23, emphasis in original).

Phillips sets the stage for her argument in Chapter One by introducing readers to foundational theories of temporal mechanics and their interpretations by Western scientists like Isaac Newton, philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle, and the books of the Bible. Phillips argues that these perceptions of time have led to Western understandings of time as linear and progressive, a view which is “entangled with the legacy of colonialism and of the Eurocentric worldview that has been instrumental in shaping the ‘empirical’ science that often bolsters racist and colonialist narratives of progress and development” (p. 36). She notes that such views were also imposed on Indigenous peoples by Western colonizers and slaveowners, who stressed making the “best” use of time through hard work and efficiency.

Phillips emphasizes by contrast that alternate physics theories like CPT, which challenge notions of time as linear and irreversible, have the potential to open new avenues of thinking about time and race: “By taking seriously the notion that time could be nonlinear and multidirectional, we open possibilities for alternative frameworks in understanding history, progress, and human interaction” (p. 35). Phillips takes on this work herself by pointing out the ways in which narratives of time have been purposely dominated by one cultural viewpoint to the detriment of cultures that hold space for more fluid or cyclical views of time. She demonstrates that imposing a forced view of time, and linking this view to “progress,” strips Black communities of “the agency to define their own temporal experiences and realities” (p. 51).

Chapter Two, “Bending the Arrow of Time,” moves into an explanation of time as expressed in Black and African cultures. Phillips explains the goal of this chapter as “elevating Black temporalities […] These modalities are not just alternative temporal frameworks but rich, relational space-times where Black people engage with the universe in ways that diverge markedly from dominant Western narratives” (p. 55). Through examples of Black and African knowledge systems—such as Swahili concepts of Zamani and Sasa, the West African spiritual concept of Ifa, the Malian notion of Bamana, Akan perspectives of kra (the soul), mogya (blood), and sunsum (spirit), the Bantu language term “ubuntu,” and the “time-binding” Griot—Phillips highlights the diversity of thinking in African cultural views of time and explains the ways that such views parallel cultural practices and rituals linked to community building.

Shifting to US Black cultural views of time, Phillips uses examples of “hairstory”—the time-value given to Black hair maintenance and the family and community building that results from shared hair experiences—and Afrofuturist depictions of dark space phenomenon, a concept embodied by musician Sun Ra in Space Is the Place (1974) and continued by author Sheree Renée Thomas in her seminal Afrofuturist Dark Matter anthologies (2000, 2004), as well as Phillips’s own work with her Black Quantum Futurism art duo. This chapter gives a multidimensional view of African and Black temporalities, which offers an important addition to Afrofuturist and scientific thinking that resists describing African and Afrodiasporic knowledge in reductive ways.

This cultural complexity is also present in Chapter Three, “CPT Symmetry and Violations of Black Space Time,” which takes on the concept of “Colored People’s Time” and explains the ways this term has been used both within and outside of Black communities to uphold the idea that Black peoples are incapable of or unwilling to conform to Western societal expectations of punctuality. Phillips notes:

The disparaging rhetoric of CP Time, with its insensitivity toward non-Western cultural values of time, has deep historical roots and can be traced back to the legacy of colonialism, white supremacy, and slavery in the United States. To comprehend the extent of the stereotype’s racist ramifications, we must understand the historical backdrop against which the dominant culture’s emphasis on ‘being on time’ was imposed upon marginalized communities (p. 93).

Using examples ranging from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) to J. L. King’s CP Time: Why Some People Are Always Late (2007), Phillips demonstrates how the negative connotations of CP Time—and through them, of Black peoples and their communities—have been maintained for centuries. She juxtaposes this negative rhetoric with positive descriptions of Black temporality, such as Zora Neale Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1934) and civil rights slogans like “The Time Is Now,” to show how Black culture has historically fought for the right to their own temporal freedoms, often linked to societal freedoms specifically withheld from Black communities. Throughout this rich explanation, Phillips weaves the story of Black clockmakers Benjamin Banneker and Peter Hill, craftsmen whose contributions to early US clockmaking efforts have gone relatively undocumented, to provide further historical context. These examples, brought together, show the critical importance for Black communities to “not only reclaim their time but to redefine it, creating spaces where time bends to cultural rhythms, historical reckonings, and futuristic aspirations uniquely our own” (p.138).

How time is claimed is also considered in Chapter Four, “Time Zone Protocols,” in which Phillips describes the history of the International Meridian Conference (1884) and Daylight Savings Time in order to demonstrate how Eurocentric powers were able to leverage these efforts to establish the Greenwich meridian, essentially placing London as “the temporal center of the world” (p. 141). This temporal shift created a time system in the US and several other countries that is inherently harmful for all people, but for Black people in particular. She offsets this history with a productive description of her efforts in 2020 to create Time Zone Protocols, an artistic and creative research project which resulted in the Prime Meridian Unconference, where participants “embraced temporal abundance, empowering a departure from traditional systems of time management” (p. 142).

Chapter Five, “Race Against Space Time: Centering Black Temporalities for Liberated Housing Futures” and Chapter Six, “Waiting, Wading, Weighting Time,” then both focus on the temporal injustices faced by Black communities. Through descriptions of the ways in which the US legal system employs time against poor, majority Black, and brown communities—which include the use of multiple mandatory legal appointments to maintain housing rights and the use of quick eviction processes that privilege landlord rights over tenant needs—Phillips argues that housing and gentrification efforts harm Black communities by treating them as temporary inhabitants of a space rather than working towards building long-term, affordable communities. In Chapter Six, Phillips compares the historical experience of African Americans to the ebb and flow of water:

What does it mean to be emancipated, pulled through the portal and out of slavery, only to be pulled back in by indentured servitude, or redlining, or forced sterilization, or police murder, while giving birth, or while sleeping, or while playing, or while protesting, or while …

The collective experience of Black people, caught in the ebb and flow of progress and setback, suggests that perhaps liberation cannot be measured in terms of “when.” The notion of “when” presupposes a linear progression toward a definitive endpoint, a concept that seems increasingly inadequate in capturing the complex reality of Black liberation (p. 285, ellipsis in original).

Although the image of Black liberation freed from a linear model of progress is significant and thought-provoking, Phillips is never one to end a chapter with pure theory. Chapter Six ends with an image of Phillips and Camae Ayewa engaging in a 2022 performance piece for Black Quantum Futurism in Kassel, Germany; the performance utilized a series of circular stages that moved with the current of the Fulda river as the performers used incantations and sounds to “[transcend] the limitations of the present moment” (p. 285).

Through her performance art, Phillips is able to provide examples of how authors and artists can utilize their craft to create temporal disruptions that connect past, present, and future to help Black communities envision new temporal orders. In Chapter Seven, “Project: Time Capsule,” she uses the example of the time capsule—a device that she notes is frequently used in Western culture to reinforce a linear time model focused on progress—to demonstrate how these time-keeping devices rarely contain narratives of Black communities. She argues that, by looking to quantum physics and its treatment of particles like electrons and photons as “exist[ing] in states of probability rather than certainty” (p. 291), Black communities can use the idea of “quantum time capsules” wielded by “Temporal Disruptors” to restore histories and futures that have been lost or negatively impacted by colonialism and enslavement (p. 295). Phillips also includes accounts of time capsules found in monuments to Frederick Douglass and KKK member Zebulon Baird Vance to showcase how the disruption of these monuments allowed communities to “hack linear time” and reveal further information about a past typically considered to be static and unchangeable. Phillips also addresses alternative time capsules like the Queen Lane and Queen Village potter’s fields in Philadelphia to educate readers about the ways in which Black lives were both erased and encapsulated in these burial sites often redeveloped into housing or public spaces, a further erasure of Blackness that can sometimes be rectified through recovery efforts backed by community support.

Dismantling the Master’s Clock does not include a typical conclusion. Instead, Phillips leaves readers with a cosmogram, a “two dimensional representation of a dynamic and multidimensional framework” (p. 328). This image is a further reminder that the facts and ideas presented in this text are not designed to be read in any specific order. As in quantum physics, Phillips reminds us that sometimes we need to move backwards to move forwards, and sometimes we need to look into the future to clearly see the past and present. By honoring the wisdom of non-linear cultural thinking, Phillips argues that Black communities can discover ways to become temporal disruptors, whether by reclaiming stolen time, refusing to acknowledge linear narratives of “progress” as the only viable reality, or through artistic and community efforts that restore lost or stolen history. The practical examples Phillips provides transcend pure Afrofuturist theory, ensuring that Dismantling the Master’s Clock is all at once a significant cultural achievement and a blueprint for lasting temporal change.