Queering Time

The concept of “queering time” is an ambitious topic, which deserves further study. Jack Halberstam is perhaps one of its most vocal theorists, insisting that there exists a “queer time”: 

“Queer time for me is the dark nightclub, the perverse turn away from the narrative coherence of adolescence – early adulthood – marriage – reproduction – child rearing – retirement – death, the embrace of late childhood in place of early adulthood or immaturity in place of responsibility.” (182, GLQ, Halberstam).

For Halberstam, queer time is a theoretical and lived resistance to normative life patterns: “It is a theory of queerness as a way of being in the world and a critique of the careful social scripts that usher even the most queer among us through major markers of individual development and into normativity” (182, GLQ, Halberstam). Elizabeth Freeman similarly leaps from this conclusion into the idea of “chrononormativity,” a clever parallel to “homonormativity.”

Yet the idea that queer lives, unregulated perhaps by the same life patterns, have something universal in common, is a bit questionable. Does there also exist a queer experience of aging?

Books

Gender: Time, edited by Karin Sellberg, Macmillan Reference USA, 2018, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks. Gale eBooks.

Gender: Time offers an excellent overview of a rapidly developing set of theories, surrounding time. It includes a chapter on Transgender Temporalities, referencing a short 2014 essay by Kadji Amin in TSQ, that posits the maleness of transgender men as  ““asynchronic” —irrespective of and elusive to a biological sense of time.” Primarily, however, this chapter grapples with the work of Halberstam, Freeman, and Michel Foucault.

The section on Postcolonial Time could definitely be expanded into a book-length work, but this introduces the idea of panoptical time: “Time itself in [Anne] McClintock’s formulation is a mode of surveillance (time becomes panoptic); time is a way of both placing the world on a scale and ensuring that it is watched through this lens, or through the metaphorical central tower of the panopticon design” (224, Gender: Time). The chapter on Memory Studies is notable as well, for bringing gender into conversation with questions of identity/memory.

Selected Other Reading about Queer Time:

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

Gender transitions in later life: The significance of time in queer aging. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 57(2-4), 161-175.

Kidd, J. D., & Witten, T. M. (2008). Understanding spirituality and religiosity in the transgender community: Implications for aging. Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging, 20(1-2), 29-62.

Special issue: Queer Temporalities. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13, nos. 2–3 (2007).

Slowness and Time

In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. Carl Honore. 2005. 

The most compelling aspect of In Praise of Slow is arguably its thesis: that the “modern world” is overly influenced by technology, and thereby approaching an unsustainable pace. Honore does not delve beyond his own experience, so we are limited to his pop-journalistic interpretations of a “super slow” exercise studio, and tantric sex.

There similarly exists a self-proclaimed World Institute of Slowness, founded by Geir Berthelsen in 1999 as a think tank, but perhaps simply a marketing campaign to promote “slow living” in several areas (“Slow Planet is the commercial manifestation of the concept of slowness.”). The most noteworthy of these seems to be the “Slow Food” movement, or the Norweigan “Slow TV” programming, which started in 2009. The site claims a link between slow living and environmental sustainability, but does not particularly substantiate the claim.

A recent article by Vincenzo Di Nicola offers a gender-biased overview of “Slow Philosophy,” citing 15 world philosophers but not one woman. This provokes the question: how is gender excluded from the existing Slow movement? Care work has an inevitable slowness, which has not yet been heralded by this movement.

Space, Time and Medicine. Larry Dossey. 1982. Shambala Press. 

The book raises intriguing spiritual questions about, as the title suggests, a speculative relationship between time, space, and healing. Dossey is known for promoting alternative strategies to health, through bio-rhythms and other experimental treatments. However, this book mostly deals with the philosophical and cultural aspects, teasing apart various cultural assumptions, and invoking the perspectives of theoretical physicists. “How would a concept of death be structured which would incorporate a view of nonlinear time,” he asks, citing Einstein and Bohr, who both articulated non-linearity in their work.

Dossey asserts that in the modern, Western tradition, “we have historically failed to understand what life is” – concluding that since every culture around the globe has conceived of an afterlife, we may be missing part of the larger picture.

Focus Questions:

Does the “Slow Movement” meaningfully intersect with “queer time”? Do you associate “slow living” with a particular age group? 

Who has the ability and leisure time to enjoy a “slow” lifestyle? How does the “Slow Movement” overlap with issues of age, race, and class?

Gender non-conformity has recently been associated with a “youth culture,” or as a temporary phase. How can we re-imagine the journey towards gender expansive living, as an important part of the life path, as well as its intersections with older age?