Hello!
Here's some quick thoughts I've had on the past two classes, specifically relating to time.
***
EM: Do you need a break?
DFdS: No, no: I just need a minute
I was struck by this exchange, which took place in the middle of the second class, between Erin and Denise daSilva. Following it there was a pregnant silence, one in which the previous 90 minutes of discussion percolated through the group as a whole. It gave me pause to think of what had just occurred: da Silva had been offered a full break, in which things would be wrapped up and a new stage would begin, but instead she opted for "a minute", after which she would continue.
This momentary incident was all the more remarkable given what da Silva had just finished discussing: the facet of her work which entailed a refusal of time as it has been dominantly construed in modernity. It occurred that this minute she needed had nothing to do with 60 seconds on the clock; she could have equally said that she just needed a second, and the same interval would have come to pass. Rather what she took was an interval not in the class, but from it: that interval which enables us to step out from what we're engaged in, to create a temporary breathing space, to pause briefly off a trail. Such minutes (a by-word for almost the smallest amount of time possible) are what allow us to go on, to maintain our precarious positions in straining structures, despite our mounting fatigue.
One thing which I had trouble with in the reading was what was meant by her claim of going beyond the terms of time towards what she called "the plenum". It was only on the way home I realised the encounter proffered an answer: those intervals which share the same names as the terms of time we're accustomed to, but in fact are of a different order entirely. In so far as it is not of the order of metric time, the words "minute" or "second" mean the same here, in that each points to something entirely different--some other plenitude of potential which inheres between, but cannot be pinned down.
**
Such thoughts returned to me after the discussion of Thursday's film showing. Given that much was mentioned concerning questions of experience, especially between autistic experience and the neurotypicality it has been traditionally measured against, I wondered whether the same forces that erect the time daSilva refused were related to those which maintain the fiction of neurotypicality. To put it another way, the question that bothered me related to the link between time and neurotypicality.
This query was provoked by Erin's point that autistics only say important things, as that's all the time they are afforded.
In the terms raised above, the question pressed whether the arrangement of the being able to take such time in moments of fatigue, those that we take for granted, may follow a very different path; and those who cannot navigate neurotypical time with relative ease are penalised, not because of any lack on their part, but rather because neurotypical time does not afford them what they need.
The Sparrow reading makes the beautiful point that it is those of us who do not have autism that in fact constitute it; I take this to mean that autism, just like neurotypicality, is not a thing in and of itself, but is produced by a relation, by an ordering which, as Erin's work makes clear, means that certain experiences are more valued than others. I wonder whether such urgency, such lack of time afforded, follows the same path: that those who do not have autism make up the urgency which autistic people feel, that non-autistics make up the very temporality which does not afford the time people with autism need.
Here's some quick thoughts I've had on the past two classes, specifically relating to time.
***
EM: Do you need a break?
DFdS: No, no: I just need a minute
I was struck by this exchange, which took place in the middle of the second class, between Erin and Denise daSilva. Following it there was a pregnant silence, one in which the previous 90 minutes of discussion percolated through the group as a whole. It gave me pause to think of what had just occurred: da Silva had been offered a full break, in which things would be wrapped up and a new stage would begin, but instead she opted for "a minute", after which she would continue.
This momentary incident was all the more remarkable given what da Silva had just finished discussing: the facet of her work which entailed a refusal of time as it has been dominantly construed in modernity. It occurred that this minute she needed had nothing to do with 60 seconds on the clock; she could have equally said that she just needed a second, and the same interval would have come to pass. Rather what she took was an interval not in the class, but from it: that interval which enables us to step out from what we're engaged in, to create a temporary breathing space, to pause briefly off a trail. Such minutes (a by-word for almost the smallest amount of time possible) are what allow us to go on, to maintain our precarious positions in straining structures, despite our mounting fatigue.
One thing which I had trouble with in the reading was what was meant by her claim of going beyond the terms of time towards what she called "the plenum". It was only on the way home I realised the encounter proffered an answer: those intervals which share the same names as the terms of time we're accustomed to, but in fact are of a different order entirely. In so far as it is not of the order of metric time, the words "minute" or "second" mean the same here, in that each points to something entirely different--some other plenitude of potential which inheres between, but cannot be pinned down.
**
Such thoughts returned to me after the discussion of Thursday's film showing. Given that much was mentioned concerning questions of experience, especially between autistic experience and the neurotypicality it has been traditionally measured against, I wondered whether the same forces that erect the time daSilva refused were related to those which maintain the fiction of neurotypicality. To put it another way, the question that bothered me related to the link between time and neurotypicality.
This query was provoked by Erin's point that autistics only say important things, as that's all the time they are afforded.
In the terms raised above, the question pressed whether the arrangement of the being able to take such time in moments of fatigue, those that we take for granted, may follow a very different path; and those who cannot navigate neurotypical time with relative ease are penalised, not because of any lack on their part, but rather because neurotypical time does not afford them what they need.
The Sparrow reading makes the beautiful point that it is those of us who do not have autism that in fact constitute it; I take this to mean that autism, just like neurotypicality, is not a thing in and of itself, but is produced by a relation, by an ordering which, as Erin's work makes clear, means that certain experiences are more valued than others. I wonder whether such urgency, such lack of time afforded, follows the same path: that those who do not have autism make up the urgency which autistic people feel, that non-autistics make up the very temporality which does not afford the time people with autism need.
Beautifully said. In my work I work with the concept of event-time to speak of a time that is emergent in the event. The feeling of time moves us, and yet we are too often moved by a time without feeling, a time prescripted, measured.
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