IMC 2026: Sessions

Paper 810-a:

In the early medieval period, both Central Europe and China experienced the southward migration of nomadic peoples. Confronted by culturally more advanced peoples, these groups employed narratives of ethnic origin to consolidate their rule, win popular support, and establish the legitimacy of their governance. Yet the construction of these ancestral narratives was not instantaneous; it evolved through a process of change and development. Comparing the early medieval barbarian tribes with Wu Hu(五胡) in their exploration of ancestral origins reveals several notable characteristics: initially, both groups linked their origins to culturally more advanced peoples; yet as they grew in strength, both subsequently distanced themselves from these earlier associations. The divergence lay in the governing ideologies employed: the barbarians leveraged Christianity, which emphasised the pursuit of the afterlife, while the Wu Hu utilised Confucianism, which focused on the present reality and permitted the transformation between barbarian and civilised states. Precisely because this transformation was possible, the Wu Hu regarded themselves as distinct branches of the Huaxia people, a perspective conducive to the eventual formation of the Chinese nation. Conversely, the barbarians' reliance on Christianity, which lacked a concept of earthly unity, led to an overriding identification with their own ethnic group.

Paper 810-b:

It would be difficult to make the case that the world needs another paper on Augustine’s philosophy of time. But what the world does in fact continue to need in the twenty-first century is an account of temporality that centres the experiences of those who are always on the move: pilgrims, refugees, migrants. Taking its theoretical inspiration from Thomas Nail's concept of "kinopolitics," this paper combines Augustine’s arguments about time and migration (peregrinatio) within the concrete context of late ancient and early medieval North Africa, when migrant communities were known to flow in both directions across the Mediterranean. Augustinian temporality might turn out to be best described as migrant time.