Renewed calls for decolonizing anthropology in the 21st century raise the question of what work earlier waves of decolonization since the 1960s have left undone. Some of this work should focus on the classification of human differences, which figured prominently in all phases of the discipline’s history: as a methodology in its racist phases, as an object of study during its late colonial phase of professionalization, as self-critical reflexivity in the 1980s and 1990s, and as a renewed critique in the 21st century. Can a universal methodology of studying classifications of human kinds arise from the discipline’s past of colonial stereotyping? I argue affirmatively, through an approach that recognizes time as the epistemic condition that connects past and present positions to present and future methodologies. Firstly, my analysis distinguishes the parochial embedding in colonial culture of Durkheim and Mauss’ ideas about classification from their more universal intentions. This is then developed into a threefold reflexive and timeful methodology of studying classification’s nominal-descriptive, constructive, and interventionist dimensions—a process of adding temporality to the study of classification. Subsequently, Anténor Firmin’s 19th-century critique of racial classifications, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness help to show how this threefold methodology addresses the insufficiently theorized process of being classified and discriminated against through racial categories wielded by the powers that be. These arguments radicalize the essay’s timeful perspective by concluding that we need to avoid modernist uses of time as classification and adopt the aforementioned threefold methodology in order to put time in classifications of human kinds. This reverses modern positivism’s subordination to methodological rules of the epistemic conditions posed by contingent history and shows instead that the universal goals of methodology should be understood as a future ideal.

21 世纪对人类学非殖民化的再次呼吁提出了一个问题，即自 1960 年代以来的早期非殖民化浪潮中哪些工作没有完成。其中一些工作应侧重于人类差异的分类，这在该学科历史的所有阶段都占有突出地位：作为种族主义阶段的方法论，作为职业化后期殖民阶段的研究对象，作为自我批判的反思在 1980 年代和 1990 年代，以及作为 21 世纪的新批评。研究人类分类的通用方法是否可以从该学科过去的殖民刻板印象中产生？我肯定地论证，通过一种方法，将时间视为将过去和现在的立场与现在和未来的方法论联系起来的认知条件。首先，我的分析区分了涂尔干和莫斯关于分类的思想在殖民文化中的狭隘嵌入与他们更普遍的意图。然后，这被发展为研究分类的名义-描述性、建设性和干预性维度的三重反思性和及时性方法——一个为分类研究增加时间性的过程。随后，Anténor Firmin 对种族分类的 19 世纪批判和 WEB Du Bois 的双重意识理论有助于展示这种三重方法如何解决通过种族类别被权力所掌握的种族类别进行分类和歧视的理论不足的过程。这些论点通过得出结论，我们需要避免现代主义使用时间作为分类，并采用上述三重方法，以便将时间放在人类的分类中。这颠倒了现代实证主义从属于偶然历史所构成的认识条件的方法论规则，相反，它表明方法论的普遍目标应该被理解为未来的理想。