ABSTRACT
The study of narrative time has a long history in the humanities and social science disciplines. Interdisciplinary temporality studies move narrative time out of the conceptual realm of representation and into consideration as dynamic activity in praxis. In this view, time is a cultural and political concept that narrators use to interact with others and their environments. Some markers of time like sunrise and sunset link geography to cosmic context, and some markers of time link cycles of growth in the land and in the human body. Nevertheless, human uses of time are powerful and cunning processes of meaning that orient perception, understanding, and action in physical contexts. Time operates in narrative and other symbolic processes— such as rituals, drawing, dance, and music. With oral and written, verbal and visual narrating, our various projects, across the Americas and Eastern Europe, occur in action research. In our research, we interact with and collectively investigate with peoples experiencing displacement, loss of land, and related problems that threaten their daily lives and livelihoods. In these contexts, time is contentious, in particular revolving around the issue of modernity—a notion emphasizing future time in a way that does nothing less than define the goals and values of human life. Time is, in brief, a narrative process for mediating human and natural life and the destruction of life.
