Time and the Body: Re‐embodying Time in Disability

Abstract

We live our lives within the context of time. Ageing and death are constant reminders of the precarious nature of human existence. The immense range of technologies and strategies used to measure, manage and order time throughout the ages are testimony to our preoccupation with bodily extinction and our sense of powerlessness in the face of the relentless passage of time. Time is more than just the context for our lives, time is the medium through which our lives are lived. We experience our lives through the medium of time. Development, maturation, learning, wisdom, and serenity are critically related to the passage of time. Similarly, the powers of reflection, retrospection, self‐knowledge, and contemplation, evolved through time, become tools to excavate new meanings from old experiences. Time is an urgent and omnipresent factor in the work of health professionals. It is the framework within which treatments are pursued, management strategies are instigated, progress is measured, and discharge decisions are made. Professional workers negotiate with time in order to make sense of an illness, to predict the progression of the disease, and the impact the condition may have on a person's life. These cognitive negotiations are an ongoing, but often invisible, feature of professional client relationships. Though the concept of time as a framework for illness is intriguing, in this paper I plan to focus attention directly on the relationship between time and the body, specifically the relationship between disability and time. Disability represents a disruption in the inexorable progress of bodily ageing. It presents us with a rare opportunity to view the frailty of the body and the fleeting nature of time. The process of rehabilitation is more than a rescheduling of events or reframing of personal goals. It is a much more thoroughgoing process of reintegration of time with the body and the body with time. Time is reembedded in the body; the body is reconstituted in time. While time assumes a dictatorial role in the management of the damaged body, it is the re‐embodiment of time in the body that points to new opportunities and a chance to remake a life that has past. Using examples from research projects, the paper will identify and discuss aspects of this process.