Generating subjectivity through the creation of time.

Abstract

Time has been revived in psychoanalysis, especially in relation to infant research. This paper builds on ideas of time and rhythm from psychoanalysis by integrating Bergson’s notions of duration and affect and queer theories’ ideas of cultural spaces. Together, these theories create a vision of development as an ongoing process of affect regulation based in the emerging capacities to gather time. Here bodies come into being as they are produced in social spaces even as these bodies then reshape those social spaces. Thus, this theory integrates the cultural. These ideas will be demonstrated through a close reading of a case study of 18 years of one woman’s diaries. These diaries tell a story of a childhood shaped by invasive and abusive parents followed by an adult life marked by intimate partner violence and bulimia. Focusing on three specific entries like one would examine moments in a session, this paper will track how the diarist demonstrates an emerging capacity to recognize, regulate, and experience affect as she is able to gather and rearrange time in her diaries.