Being left behind beyond recovery: ‘crip time’ and chronic illness in neoliberal academia

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we use crip time to reflect on being left behind in relation to normative temporalities, based on our experiences of living with Energy Limiting Conditions (ELC) while at different career stages working within and in collaboration with UK academia. Chronic illness has a profound and long-lasting impact on people’s lives, and for many conditions there is currently no prospect of recovery. Living with ELC often demands careful pacing of activity; navigating spaces and institutional structures designed for ‘normative’ bodyminds often takes longer, leaving many of us out of sync with normative temporalities, and some of us excluded altogether. Crip time is an approach that recognizes that disability and chronic illness often involve reorientations in time and, like queer time, crip time also troubles ideas of productivity and of the future. In this paper, we use crip time to explore the ways in which we, as chronically ill academics, are left behind in a sector characterized by a drive to hyper-productivity. In so doing, we consider how academic normative temporalities leave behind those whose bodyminds work differently, and explore the possibilities crip time might offer to imagine more inclusive practices.