Abstract
Musing about the state of time studies today and its future is in some ways a circular mission, not unlike the way the definition of time tends to spiral on itself in self-definition when trying to pin it down to a fixed or linear point. What does a future or forward movement look like in a space where there are still so many uncertainties about the nature of time, on both the scientific and human scale? How do you develop the future study of the phenomenon that is most fundamental to our world views and experience, when the notion of the future is at flux by the mere existence of time studies and its probing of the future? I believe the charge of time studies is to remain as fluid and undefined as time itself, while continuing to take up questions and challenges that can lay the groundwork for practically shaping or shifting the meaning, perception, understanding, and experience of time.
Some of the critical tasks necessary to this charge are determining ways to go beyond the page, go beyond observation and academic discourse to begin to fundamentally and practically alter the ways that we interact with time on a daily basis. Scholars of time should be looking for the places where theory and time design can fuse – supporting alternative theories and documenting subjective or contextual experiences of time across fields, such as law, architecture, psychology, social work, and public policy. How can time scholars influence the everyday person to intentionally experiment with time and its measurement?
Over the years, time studies has explored what it means to understand or experience the non-linearity or subjective nature of time as part of global or local timekeeping and calendaring methods, and additionally, how our concepts and experiences of time can be widened by a broader recognition of time as variable and significantly impacted by one’s community and cultures. How often have these explorations been shared with communities outside of academic circles? Is time studies a passive observer, an extractor of temporal experiences and temporal data, with a non-reciprocal (or linear) relationship to the people and communities it studies? Can and should time studies actively participate in realigning or even dismantling systems that deprive people of temporal and spatial equity and that raise irreparable conflicts in timelines?
As anthropologist Kevin Birth argues, “the dominant temporality associated with time as linear and consisting of uniform containers is disruptive to alternatives, including temporalities of hope” where we perpetually engage with time as if it is scarce, running low, or running out (2017, 94). The economic and capitalist futures constructed by government powers, as Birth puts it, “limits the imagination and provides an inescapable and nonnegotiable structure for the future” (2017, 94).
Time scholars are well-positioned to negotiate and imagine new regimes for the structure of time that are non-deterministic, not associated with economic gain. These alternative futurities are preconfigured for hope, creative control, and meaningful access. A new regime of temporal abundance versus temporal scarcity in our collective futures renders time as a renewable resource that can be created, reclaimed, and redeemed.
The role of time and temporality is inextricably linked to a variety of systems and institutions that touch the moment to moment lives of people, and as such, have a specific and direct impact on the lives of low-income and racialized individuals and families. In the future of time studies, time scholars are actively addressing the ways in which traditional, linear future(s) are made inaccessible to marginalized people and communities. Time scholars will intentionally develop futurity concepts and support alternative temporal technologies that specifically benefit those who are considered time poor or delayed on the progressive timeline where the arrow of time only points forward. In the future we have fundamentally shifted our orientation in terms of what kind of times we value.
Class oppression and institutional racism are reinforced by the union between time, temporality and the law, and yet, these areas are underexplored areas in critical writing on time and legal discourse. These relationships play a daily and crucial role in how people – particularly people of color and poor people – are valued, treated, punished or underserved by and within society. Alternative temporalities and further reflections on the temporal structure of the law and decision-making can inform legal perspective, legal rights, and the impact of future law-making on poor and historically marginalized communities in very real, practical, and specific ways.
For example, time inequities show up at every step of the displacement process resulting from urban redevelopment, from the short or waivable notice requirements for termination of a lease agreement, to the time required for a family to vacate their home if evicted or displaced, which is often severely out of sync with the time needed to secure new housing. Gentrification and redevelopment taking place in marginalized communities serve to condense time, disrupt communal temporalities, erase public memory, and challenge or foreclose access to the temporal domain of the future. Because of the perceived failure to accelerate quickly enough on the progressive, capitalist space-timeline and arrive to the futures envisioned by the state, these marginalized communities are locked into a narrow temporal present(s), bereft of tools, disconnected from resources, with limited and inequitable access to time, memory, space, and rooted location.
What time scholars can offer to the future is resistance through remembrance and ever-expansive timescapes that disrupt the timeline, or otherwise hack it to open up accessibility into the future(s). Through the development and refinement of temporal technologies, time scholars can construct portals, time capsules, and temporal displacement devices that help us define, find, create, escape, and/or return to the future(s).
