Profanity #4. Locating time in International Law

0:07 Critiquing Linear Time: Futurism and Events in International Law Welcome to profanity #4 Locating time in international law. 0:11 Speaker 2 This is the fourth episode of the Law and Other Profanities Podcast, a doctoral program initiative at the heart of the Saint Paulo school. 0:18 Speaker 1 I'm your Co host Aditya Sharma, a PhD candidate at Saint Paulo School. 0:22 Speaker 2 And I am Jules Karic, a PhD candidate at Saint Paul School too. It is very easy to get lost in time, with time and within time. Today, to help us locate ourselves in the spectrum of time, we have Professor Rebecca Minomadavi. 0:39 Professor Minomadavi is an Assistant professor at Transpo Law School and our work focuses on international law, law and technology, and international legal theory questions. She was a PhD from the European University Institute and the ECHO, the Institute of Social. 0:56 Thank you very much for being here with us today, and we have few questions to ask to you. To start off, we would invite you to introduce your work to the unfamiliar listener to your work, especially your conceptualization of time. 1:11 We understood that you engage with the dominant perception of time, with the issue of events and especially international law. This conception is, as you said, marked by events and linearity. So we would love you to to get back on this, to hear you and to hear you how you link you your two articles on, of course, futurism and events. 1:36 Speaker 3 Yeah, thanks a lot. Thank you for for having me and and maybe on the on the hope that I will help you locate time. Maybe I, I will I will already disappoint disappoint this hope if of course I I appreciate the proposed title and and framing of locating time, but it's a way for me to start also saying how the location of time or or the idea of of fixing time somehow might inadvertently reinforce the very approaches, the very dominant approaches to time that my works tries to to critique. 2:11 So the IT resonates with the very static or or dominant tendency in international law, but I think it resonates with other legal fields as well to to treat time as something static and controllable. 2:27 So in the the two pieces that that you refer to the the first one is on on futurism as being a neglected history in international legal thought and practice, and then making a move to Afrofuturism. 2:43 I expose how futurism operates as a narrative technology that, while seemingly focused on the future, actually serves to govern the present in very problematic ways. 2:59 So let me try to to explain this very briefly. The the key issue that I identify in these futuristic narratives is that international lawyers, thinkers, scholars, but also practitioners often tend to position themselves as expert fortune tellers in order to act and intervene as solution providers. 3:24 And we see this especially in areas in international law like new technologies and climate change. You've said that indeed, part of my work, especially over the past decade, has been focused on how low technology and society interact with and reshape one another. 3:41 And this is probably how I gathered and assembled some material about these approaches, these the dominant approaches to time. And then looking more broadly at different materials and different discussions in international law, I realized that this isn't just an exercise in international law, in technology. 4:02 It's an academic exercise, but not just an academic exercise. It's really a form of power and not any kind of power. The narratives, the futuristic narratives celebrate human agency and progress in a way that really reinforces existing power structures, perpetuates colonial attitudes. 4:25 And this is the the point where where I'm making an intervention in this paper and open a pathway to Afrofuturism. And maybe we'll talk about it. But first, and I I think I really value your invitation to make a parallel between this piece and the other piece. 4:42 Yeah, on that I could in praise of disorder calling for conceptualization of events. I challenge in this paper how we think about events in international legal history, and I argue that we've been trapped in a problematic way of treating events, seeing them as markers solely of short term time. 5:06 So treaty signings, court decisions, declarations, and even when scholars, even critical scholars, try to move away from the very linear progress narratives in international law, they still tend to use events as very convenient entry points or milestones in their storytelling. 5:31 And what I'm proposing instead is that we need to reconceptualize events as what I call polymorphous constructs. So complex phenomena that unfold over time and are shaped by multiple forces. 5:46 So I'm not suggesting to completely abandoned looking at specific moments short term time markers, but rather that we also make space for the coexistence of such shorter time marker with longer deeper events. So make space for discursive events for processes of contestations and looking them as events in their own right. 6:09 So basically I would say that both paper papers formulate a similar diagnosis that international law remains haunted by linear unidirectional approaches to time, either crystallized by successive narratives from past to present to future, or crystallized by events conceptualized as short term time marker punctuating these linear histories. 6:37 And they're not separate issues. The futurism in the event are are deeply connected in that sense by privileging most of the time agency and western agency and rationality while marginalizing other temporal experiences and epistemological sensitivities. 6:58 So same diagnosis and same attempt. Although this is of course something we could and should discuss at offering avenues for reimagining. So both articles try to pave the way for more emancipatory approaches to time in international law to embrace multiplicity, uncertainty, disorder rather than seeing these hours problems to overcome. 7:28 Navigating Critique and Reclaiming Futurism as Counter-Narrative Really, really interesting. Just a little comments because last time we were like, Sharon told us that we didn't share enough from our project. So a little point of view from from me. 7:44 So I'm working on the concept of genocide and it's an event in itself, which is itself difficult to, to put like bomb to, to, to put limitations on this. 8:00 And each one of the people will be present otherwise victims, the judges. Obviously the the the killers have have different perception of time on these particular events. And I also like the perspective you add on time on this to partition between present, past and future because it it reminds me of the regime historicity of Francois Tog and it is positioning on how as international lawyers you position yourself toward the past, present or future. 8:39 So could we say it's like a rhetorical question, but could we say that international lawyers according to you as a special or specific regime historicity toward the past and toward the future regarding it through different lens, maybe a very quick answers to to move. 9:02 Speaker 3 Yeah. No, that's really, really interesting and thanks for sharing a bit about your own work and, and also highlighting how, although I would love to discuss it further with you, but how or what it changes or what it serves in your in the story you're telling to identify a genocide as an event in itself. 9:22 So this I would be really interested in unpacking because, yeah, because I, I think it's also very related to what I'm aiming to achieve by by offering these these avenues. And then, yeah, I, I think to, to go back to your question, I, I think mainly what I, what I, what I struggle with or what I'm frustrated by. 9:46 And I think frustration is a great, great pathway. Frustration is a great pathway to productive thinking. So my frustration with international legal thought and practice is that it fails to think of temporalities as coexisting, as overlapping as and thinking again about your about your research project and about mass atrocities and a genocide. 10:18 I think it exemplifies how we cannot keep on failing to account for the coexistence of temporalities, even the very notion of memory and how it affects judicial proceedings or legal contestation. 10:34 It's to my, to my understanding, absolutely essential now. 10:40 Speaker 1 Maybe this is just my projection, maybe this is just my fears that I'm projecting on to you as a question. But I would like to know how you navigate the conundrum of being stuck because in your work, which I found to be very fascinating and relevant to my work. 10:56 Because the I'm trying to look at Indian epics and modernity in a way which I am also quite unsure of right now. But I'm trying to find the way. But the epic that I'm looking at, Mahabharat and Ramayan, they can be situated to a time period of recitation but not general authorship of existence. 11:16 So for us, they are beyond time, they are ancient, but we do not ascertain when they are from where they are from. They're in the form of frame tales. So that's why I find your work to be fascinating, because it provokes me to think beyond time also. But coming back to the fear that I have, how do you escape the very thing that you criticize? 11:37 Because in your work on futurism, you do not label futurism as an evil, but you show the perils of navigating only through futurism. And then you present an alternative to the West centric modes of futurism that we have been used to our condition to through the lens of Afrofuturism, which I found to be fascinating. 11:57 There were few artists whose names were there in the citations who I listened to. So it was fascinating to see them in a way where I wouldn't have expected them to be. And that's also in a way I think achieved. What was one of your goals? To disrupt my thinking or to disrupt your readers thinkings? 12:14 But again, the alternative to West centric futurism that you propose is also futurism of some other kind. How is this coexistence sustained in your academic work? And I know that there is room for it, but how do you, in good conscience or in good spirit, or motivate yourself to work with that, with that clash, with that conflict coexisting with your newer thoughts? 12:39 Speaker 3 Now that's a really, really fascinating question And, and of course you frame it as, as such an humble way, but it's always only our projection. So in, in a sense, it's also the reason why we're doing this, this job and that we want to engage in intellectual spaces. 12:55 We create some sort of idea and then others project things onto it and, and then we have this kind of, of, of really enjoyable discussions. I so you talked about alternatives and looking or, or projected onto my turn to Afrofuturism as being an alternative. 13:19 I tend not to, but I didn't really unpack this so it's a great opportunity to do so. An alternative would still or still or embraces What is the first dominant option somehow So it fixes it fixes the dominant option. 13:34 I really see this move as offering space for counter narratives and and resistance in the way we frame our histories. And there you're right that I had two options. 13:50 I had either the option of resisting through refusal, so I could have finished the paper after the first part that highlights what is so problematic with dominant futuristic narratives and international legal thought and practice. 14:05 And I was very lucky to discuss this with Sandhya Paruja, who was at the LSU when I presented the piece a few weeks ago. And and she was, she made a really strong case for the politics of refusal instead of the second option that I propose here in the piece, which is the reclaiming option, the reclaiming of futurism. 14:27 And to me, I had no other choice but to try and reclaim futurism because I had just demonstrated how it was a powerful technology for governing the present, so I couldn't just give it away. 14:43 I think the, the really powerful counter narrative or counter move here is not just refusal, but really trying to open different ways of thinking about how we can engage with the future in a way. 15:00 And, and yes, what, what Afrofuturism offers us and, and maybe will impact this afterwards. But it's a a powerful counter narrative technology and it's one that I think is not just an alternative but but really operates as contestation in in this space. 15:22 Speaker 1 I I keep thinking of this because as researchers in international law, we criticize the entire machinery of international law while subsisting in it. That is our bread and butter. But so how? How do I make war with my bread and butter? 15:39 Do I starve? 15:40 Speaker 2 Do I? 15:41 Speaker 1 Do I switch to gluten free food? There are a lot of different ways of thinking and I think one problem with the podcast medium is it can't account for my head nodding, which I was being vigorously while making this case. And I also saw this in your piece on on disorder and events where every time you criticize something you also give it space for existing in its own right. 16:06 And that is what prompted me. So I think near the end of your piece on events, you, you, you have spent a considerable amount of time telling us why it might benefit us to think of events as something not being static, or it's not a single point of time, not a treaty, but as a long chain of events. 16:24 But at the end you also see that, yes, that is one way of seeing, but it doesn't mean that seeing events the other way is completely wrong. There might be some merit in treaties also as important dates if that was my take away from. So I think what I really liked about both of your papers that I read through here was you provided the the thing that you are criticizing, if I can call them things, the space to exist for themselves in a different form. 16:52 Speaker 3 Yeah. So that's, that's really helpful to have this kind of feedback. I'm and I think I'm half intentional about it. But after all, I'm, I'm maybe not that cynical or not as cynical as I as I thought I, I was. But it's also because I think it's, it's probably in, in our times of rise of authoritarianism. 17:14 I think critique has a role to play in more than the construction. So I think in, in really formulating avenues for counter conduct and being potentially very specific about it, or at least sufficiently specific to allow for other reimaginings and or other vocabularies, other grammars, other modes of being, other modes of interacting, of telling stories. 17:50 And I think that's why also it's so vividly present in these two most recent pieces of mine. And it wasn't so much the case in in previous works, but I think yes, it's it's due to my also embracing of, of a sense of responsibility. 18:09 The Travel of Ideas: Beyond Western/Non-Western Binaries Just a very small question relating to that. And if if we drop the age of ideas which wait up to a certain some ideas can exist for 100 years and still be alive, but we only look at the age of us as human beings engaging in scholarly discourse. 18:32 Do you think it's a, it's also a generational problem that, and it's, and I won't push this just onto international legal scholars with a critical bent of mine, but to general international legal scholars that we cannot think of a world without international law because we do not know of a world without international law. 18:50 So do you think that is in some kind an impediment to our way of thinking? And maybe that is why it prompted me to ask this question. I cannot think of a world where I am where I can be both right and wrong, where I can critique something and still live with it because have been conditioned into a world where there's a Latin Max. 19:10 In fact, if you come to the court, come with clean hands and only then we'll entertain your case properly. So if you are proper, we'll listen to you or else you don't have a valid point. It's how we are treated as lawyers. So it's conditioning to me. So that's do you think we do not know better and that's why we don't think of anything better? 19:26 Speaker 3 Yeah. So I think it's it, it pertains to two things. First of all, that so when whenever we deconstruct how structural and inequalities, historical modes of oppression still manufacture in a very vivid way modes of living, how how bodies, behaviors, societies evolve and and that international law has played a crucial role in this. 19:51 It also it again, it, it brings us back to the, the futurism, Afrofuturism discussion to the fact that it also means that after the construction, if we let go, we'll let go of a very powerful tool. So it's one, I think a belief, although I, I don't really like this, this semantic choice, but a belief in, yeah, the, the, the power of international law that that makes it difficult to neglect. 20:22 For me, it would be very difficult to look at the world not seeing or unseeing what I'm able to see through international legal language or through my understanding of how it plays out in the world. So this is probably part of the part of the answer to your question. 20:40 And yeah, I, I think it's, it's also, it's also probably also being aware of our own limits and how we can act in the world. This is how I feel the most connected to my students, how I think I might, I can make change at my own level. 21:02 So it's probably why I keep on engaging with it. 21:07 Speaker 1 On engagement, I have another question. This might go on a different tangent and this is again a very selfish choice that I asked this question because it pertains to a key problem that I have been having that has this has been a discussion that has dominated a certain section of the PhD room. 21:24 Also, can ideas be western or non western? So I see in your work you use a lot of western things, you use fuku a lot. And I also went beyond your pieces on futurism and read your monograph on drones as technological machinery. And I found the second last chapter where you use his concept of discipline fascinating. 21:45 And you use the concept of discipline on, for the lack of a better word coming to my head right now, on subjects which are non Western. So and you use it to their benefit. You use it to make a case for them not to be subjected to the atrocities of drone warfare and drone systems and of international law in general. 22:06 So in a way in your work that I have seen you use non western ideas to I'm again very sorry and this goes against my ethos to engage in the binaries of Western or non Western because that is. 22:18 Speaker 3 We're stuck within these binaries anyway, so don't worry. 22:21 Speaker 1 But you use the work of non western ideas. You use Afrofuturism to imagine something that might also have a consequence in the western world. I think the podcast might did not capture my air codes, but I still and and you use Poco to show the plight of people in the non western settings. 22:42 So do you think these ideas can be bound by space and by time just to plug in time also, are they old? Are they new? The utility of ideas, of thoughts, of something that can bring benefit to some kind of people. I think because the overarching theme of this episode is time, I think the subtext is hope. 23:04 What can we do better as as people? So yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts on that. 23:08 Speaker 3 Yeah. And, and maybe because of course, so it's a bit anti climatic, but I, I kept on thinking also also about your previous question. And we've had discussions also on your, on your own PhD project. And, and one name that comes to mind, and it brings us back to your question now is homie Baba and the idea of inhabiting an unhomely world. 23:29 And I think here it's also it, it relates to the, to the notion that we keep on interacting with international legal concepts, international legal institutions, despite from the fact that we see them, that we blame them also for the, for, for, for, for the phenomena that we described. 23:46 But to your question, which is a really important question, I think, although of course we cannot help but framing them in in ways that replicate the binaries that we are also critical of etcetera. So I see both the interests and in asking the question and the discomfort with it, which takes some courage. 24:05 So first of all, Congrats. Congrats for this. Well, I, I of course, ideas emerge within situated context. This ever confined by again geography or temporality, or anchored into fixed modes of thinking. 24:27 Ideas again travel, they intersect, they they reconfigure one another. And then the critical task for us is not to police their boundaries rigidly. Imagine how terrible our or how how boring even our our collective and individual endeavours would be if we were to police one another for how we rigidly should or not apply this or that concept, but rather to engage with them reflexively. 24:57 So again, it's a call to embrace disorder, density, complexity, and, and living with these ideas. Some, some traces. More importantly, though, when you, when you formulated this question, now, I, I, I thought that I think that it's really a call for reflecting on our own positionality and situatedness as scholars. 25:21 And of course, I am. And I don't think any of us, we are not universal thinkers who can effortlessly master, deploy conceptual tools from all philosophical traditions. 25:38 So our choices of theoretical frameworks of course reflect our own intellectual trajectories, our own conceptual limitations as well. And of course, acknowledging this situatedness is crucial. It's reminds us. 25:54 And I take the question as a reminder of why I am remaining humble and reflexive about the limits of my perspectives, my partiality. It's only after familiarizing myself a great deal with Afrofuturist movements and, and still I feel that I'm I'm a bit of an imposter. 26:17 When I, when I was writing this piece, I felt, OK, I'm, I'm not mastering enough because we always have this, again, modern Western expectation for oneself that we we should master things before we start deploying them. But it's only after familiarizing myself with these movements that I felt comfortable trying to incorporate it in my scholarship. 26:42 Yeah. So that would be my answer to your question a lot, a great deal of humility, not just hope. 26:47 Speaker 1 I like the humility and hope. And I think underneath the subtext of hope, there's also some I detect, at least for myself, some amount of despair that we can do the best that we can. Because, and I draw this from a very interesting anecdote that I actually mentioned in the submission that I sent to you last week. 27:06 So Amritya saying June, he writes about how the Portuguese brought chillies, red chillies from Newfoundlands to India, which is a very sad thing. I mean, it was an exploit of colonization, but what the Indians did with the red chilli doesn't make the Portuguese middle men job, only characterize the use of red chilies. 27:32 So now we have red chilies everywhere in India. So the usage of red chilies by Indians right now doesn't make them any less Indian because of the origin. So there is one way of being caught in despair and ruminating and we should be, we should be ruminating about everything. 27:49 But also I think there is a strong case for adapting to the needs also. So I think that's why we have good, tasty food. 27:58 Speaker 3 But no, it's, it's it's thanks for for adding this, this story to to the mix. It's it's, it testifies to the, to the fact that it would be almost dangerous, but also deprive us of a lot of joy in, in doing our our job if we were to be originalist thinkers trying to trace and maintain the origins of concept. 28:27 It it made me think, for example, instead of the archaeological concept that I, that I mobilize the, the guardian concept. I thought at some point of the the concept of palimpsest, the palimpsest that is articulated in post colonial S yeah, post colonial scholarship and and by South Asian scholars, which refers to a manuscript that or a manuscript page from which the original writing has been erased to make space for new writing. 28:58 Yet traces of the original then remain visible beneath the surface. So I could also have mobilized this, but it would be, I mean, first of all, it's again, it's, it's a choice, a conceptual choice that reveals my own positionality, the type of concepts I've been most familiar familiarizing myself with a. 29:20 Speaker 2 Little last main questions, I would think there's 2 after, but last big questions. 29:31 The Critical Role of Fiction and Hope in Legal Scholarship Aditya, you mentioned hope and now I want to to go back on this issue of hope or issue or not. So at the end of your futurism article, you've finished by writing a, a very well written I, I must say a little epilogue, A fictional narrative where the character hopes that in the future Law will be able to punish new forms of warfare. 29:54 I think he used the psychological warfare use of, of new weapons. It, it reminds me of my own issues of do we trust we should trust law being able to find new forms of, I don't know, genocide crimes. 30:13 And in general, I, I, I just asked myself, do you trust law to bridge this gap between the new forms and new practices that you can see concretely in the world and the current state of law? In another works you seem to, to be able to find optimistic approaches, for example, Afro futurism. 30:35 So would you say that you are able to find optimism in law? Should we be optimistic about law and should we have faith in law both as a discipline and as a technology? 30:51 And for us, as a new PhD student, do you think it's a good idea to trust law, especially in our current global context? And is it relevant for us to, to, to trust law in our current state of research on law? 31:09 Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a, it's a grand question, big question. Yeah. So we we will stay for for a while with with each other, not just half an an additional half hour. No, no, but a series of of episodes. 31:26 Well, first of all, I would refer back to Homi Baba and the notion of inhabiting an unhomely world, and this is than than an Ave. for hope. But also I want to thank you for this question because it allows me to reflect on how different modes of writing actually createspace for maybe even more interpretation. 31:49 So my intention with this epilogue was to critically reflect on deeper assumptions about the, about the rule of law. So I think you, you, you identified the, the core, the core quest in, in this epilogue. 32:10 But also I think it's now an opportunity to to reflect more deeply about the rule of fiction and non fiction in legal scholarship and and storytelling. But but to address the epilogue itself. While it might appear as a hopeful narrative, and I think it's the case in a lot of Afrofuturistic moods, it might appear as a hopeful promise when we have this kind of fictitious projection onto the future. 32:39 But in fact, it serves and it was really what I meant to do with this. It serves to highlight current inabilities of of the law. So it was a way to expose the limitations of existing legal frameworks to highlight how the law fails an IHL. 32:58 In that case, international humanitarian law fails to account for the multiplicity and complexity of harms that are produced by contemporary warfare. So in a way, the characters hope for law to punish these new forms of harm is less an expression of optimism and more a way to reveal or exacerbate and intensify the pitfalls of of current equal frameworks, which are often reductionist and equipped to address the layered realities of violence and oppression. 33:33 And it's it's a way to kind of amplify something that already exists. Again, it's a narrative technology that is very much anchored in the present. But then I think the fact that you interpret it this way it it it's really thought provoking for me because it serves to challenge or or to still keep on reflecting about the the records to other modes of writing in our field. 34:03 And here the goal. But it's it's really just done in an epilogue. I know that scholars try to do it in longer manuscripts and articles to challenge the belief in the rigid dichotomy between fiction and non fiction, dichotomy that often sees non fiction as more serious, more legitimate within academic and legal discourse, which can be extremely limiting. 34:31 And even when engaging in this exercise, I was amazed by how because I was so trained with the current codes, the writing codes, I felt stuck creatively engaged with other modes of narration. 34:50 And here fiction, far from being a lesser form of an inquiry, seemed to me like it. It could serve as a powerful tool to describe. Yeah. To decode or disrupt the codes of the field to, to break down the conventions. 35:07 Yeah. So I don't know if I really answered your question. It was kind of a way that I circumvented. I circumvented your question in a way. 35:17 Speaker 2 Final little question, you said that you were beyond the non fictional mode of writing which is seen as the best one for Academy. And did you received critiques or maybe comments on this particular end of your after future futurism article? 35:38 Did you receive something? 35:40 Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a, that's a really good question. I think I do it in a mild way because I keep it for the epilogue. Yeah. So that's also the reason why it ended up being accepted for a publication after going through double-blind peer review in a journal that is a very good journal, but has generally rather orthodox approaches to. 36:04 So this one is the Journal of History of International Law. OK, the. 36:07 Speaker 2 Germany. 36:08 Speaker 3 The is for the events. Yeah, he studied in Germany for the for the for the reflections on on time lately. But but then I had a really good, good interactions with Francesca Yorlalo, who has written a book on custom and who, who is a historian, but also a great storyteller and who was encouraging me some to do something that I didn't have time to do. 36:38 But I I would love to do. Is that she was encouraging me to insert some sort of vignettes telling or unpacking the story that was appearing only in in the epilogue and and making it appear throughout to kind of show exactly what Afrofuturism produces as a literary gesture in our field. 36:59 So it's probably something that I will keep on on playing with as an idea. 37:05 Speaker 2 So maybe for the future, New articles new. 37:09 Speaker 3 Little. 37:09 Speaker 2 Epilogues or bigger epilogues articulate, articulated differently. So do you think that for this particular article article you wouldn't be published if it was longer or not in the epilogue? 37:26 Speaker 3 To be honest, I don't know. I feel that there is, and it's probably thanks to also another generation being very curious to have different approaches to writing and thinking in the field. 37:43 I think these spaces are more open than what we think to this kind of, of, of writing or decode, Yeah, other types of writing, other types of thinking. In the end, I, I, I, I'm far from reinventing the wheel in these articles, but I, it's, it's a bit, there are weird creatures in, in this space. 38:07 And, and it, you know, publishing them in, in, yeah, highly ranked journals was possible. So it means it testifies to the fact that I don't know if there is necessarily hope in the law itself, but there is definitely hope in in legal legal scholarship. 38:26 Speaker 2 Writing so we find another type of hope and it's good right now. 38:34 From PhD Vertigo to Admiring Gen Z's Unapologetic Courage And finally, we we used with our colleagues to ask 2 brief questions and that we are posing at the end of all our podcast and our episodes. First question, and I've been very quick. 38:49 What has been the most prominent failure or most prominent failures that you have faced while pursuing your PG research or in your general Academy journey? 39:00 Speaker 3 This is really an A huge question, right, Big one, and also a shiny one because so one way is to think about it in terms of failure and another is to think about it in terms of productive challenge that we faced. 39:16 And I would rather you also approach what you feel is a challenge as not a failure. So I would, I would first of all call for reframing. Reframing of this. No, but it's also, you know, it mirrors a bit the capitalistic mindset because when we think of failure, we think of the results, the output that failed rather than the whole process. 39:38 And the reason why you're asking this question, I think is really smart. It's because you're, you assume that we have learned something from this. So I think it testifies to the fact that you are a brilliant individual's thinking or, or can committed to lifelong learning. 39:54 And, and therefore I think it's in the spirit that you're asking the question. So I was thinking and and maybe one key or moment of realization where I felt some sort of Vertigo in my PhD journey. 40:14 Is a moment where I had been drafting, I think it was my first chapter. So after the the first document where we formulate the the research statement, etcetera. So it was the first chapter that I was I was producing and I had laboriously conducted for the first time a discourse analysis of the Obama administration's rhetoric on on the drone program. 40:40 So I had immersed myself in the material carefully identifying the common threads between the all the discourses, etcetera. So I was expecting feedback from my supervisor who who was Nihal Bhutto to simply help me refine it further. 40:55 I was quite happy that I was able to produce this, this very long chapter and instead my supervisor back then and now he, he became a friend. So it shows that then we can also disrupt hierarchies. After, after the PhD was over, I stopped calling him a professor after I defended it's not a call for people to do the same, but I was also very differential and but this is another story. 41:22 So he told me very kindly but but firmly that the analysis was useful, but I should throw the paper away. He said it this way and start writing it from scratch. And so yeah, exactly. That was my feeling. 41:38 I remember feeling this sort of Vertigo in that moment, as if the ground Bruno was shaking beneath my my feet. But it it wasn't just really the daunting prospect of starting over, but it was also the realization that academic writing isn't just about assembling thoughts and elements rigorously together, no matter how difficult thorough the process had been, But it's was really about storytelling. 42:07 I think this is, it was a shift for me that it was about weaving threads together in a way that would be digestible, even enjoyable. So it was really about trying to a knit a story net that that really captures the reader and, and I, it's still something that I, I, I bear in mind when writing and that I struggle with and sometimes fail to, to really accomplish. 42:34 But it was really a turning point, I would say. And it felt, it felt, yeah, difficult at the time, but and, and the for the story, for the, the, the anecdote, when I told him years after about this, he couldn't remember. 42:51 So he didn't remember that he had put me in this, in this space of anxiety and and Vertigo. 42:58 Speaker 1 I think I should be using the transcripting software for this very specifically because you're also my supervisor. 43:05 Speaker 3 I. 43:05 Speaker 1 Think I would have to learn a lot more from this. And the last question which also while we were brainstorming to add, you're a bit ashamed because you are quite a young academic. But the question is how do you vibe with Gen. Z? And it's not if I can answer and if it's brownie points for me. 43:22 Yes, you vibe very well. What is the method? 43:25 Speaker 3 That you employ well, first of all, you traced rightly that you had to ask me the question because I had to ask Google what the vibe means. So you see that there is some generational gap and and that I'm not part of Gen. 43:41 Z. So I wasn't really convinced by the definitions that I found on, on Google. And I the way in which you will, you will tell me if, if, if I accurately interpreted it. But I think it's a lot about admiration. 43:59 So how, how do I or why do I, how do I connect? And for me, connection is, is also through admiration. So what I admire most about Gen. Z is, is probably something that could be qualified as really an unapologetic commitment to accountability and, and a willingness to challenge systems, norms that don't serve their community or don't serve marginalized communities, don't serve the world. 44:30 And it seems to me that that the, the students I'm I'm privileged to interact with have grown up in an era of unprecedented access to information. And this was not my case. So this is where the generational gap really, really matters. 44:45 And new challenge, new channels to expose harms in a, in a horizontal way. And I think this has given them you really a sharp discerning perspective, a capacity and and really determination to see through facades, demand accountability without so much paying attention to verticality and and hierarchy. 45:10 So in in a bit of a subversive way that I really admire. Yeah, I, I don't know. Then then I was thinking also at how, you know, I, I recognize that having grown up without the Internet or social media until I was almost an adult, I feel that I approach technology with nostalgia sometimes for slower offline connections. 45:35 But I've realized also in conversations that many Gen. Z people also express a longing for spaces to disconnect, slow down, etcetera. But probably, maybe I, I think I, I need to be less intentional about it. 45:54 So I often very easily and with pleasure go off the grid, spend weeks with piles of books and no consultation of emails or social media whatsoever. So this is maybe, but on tech, I must say that Gen. 46:11 Z knows technology and what it can create of the worst so well that they don't carry the same fantasies about the digital world that older generations might. So in a way, my critical approach to technology relates very well or echoes very well this this critical attitude. 46:30 But yeah, to to go back maybe and, and on this note to the free spirit of of Gen. Z, it's something that we can witness, I think first hand in the changing composition of student cohorts, even here at Transpo. For a long time, Transpo students challenged the status quo, but in ways that we're careful not to disrupt too much, not to bring discomfort too much to places of power Exactly among institution dominant firms, the media. 47:03 And we see a new wave of courage, I would say among many students today who are really willing to prioritize ideas and political struggles over their own short term personal or or easiest carrier interests. 47:21 So this is a boldness encourage that I find incredibly inspiring. Often times I must say that I and others in the faculty feel that we are not up to the to the task to to match this courage and and boldness. 47:36 Yeah, it happens. Yeah. 47:39 Speaker 1 Interesting. 47:41 Speaker 3 No, but, but also at the same time, to be fully honest, it, it's also a courage that makes me worry and, and maybe it's another way of understanding vibing, It's caring. So we, we talked about authoritarianism earlier. 47:57 So we are entering a phase of growing authoritarianism globally where boldness and refusal to conform can really come at the expense of significant personal costs. So the care that I have for, for my students and, and, and in general for, for Gen. 48:17 Z individuals is leads me to worry a bit about the, the, the risk they face in a world that is increasing increasingly hostile to dissent. So their, their, their courage still remains really a light in in dark times, a light which give me, gives me hope and strength. 48:40 Yeah, it gives. It gives me hope and strength certainly, and a lot of inspiration. 48:45 Speaker 2 Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for this enlightenment. Yeah, yeah, very enlighten. 48:51 Speaker 1 Great. I was. I was very inspired by you saying that you could go off the grid so easily because I read a paper and I reward myself by watching Instagram games for. 48:59 Speaker 3 15 minutes. 49:00 Speaker 1 But what I found to be more inspiring and that might probably serve as the closing statement was that in our bid to locate time, I think what Julie and I have understood is we don't need to locate time, but maybe this is the time for hope. 49:17 So I think on that optimistic. 49:18 Speaker 2 Finish on that. 49:19 Speaker 1 Don't. We'll finish it. Thank you so much for your. 49:21 Speaker 3 Time, Professor, Thank you for the great discussion. Thank you.