ABSTRACT
Based on ethnographic research in a Baltimore, MD emergency room, a milieu I entered as both anthropologist and rape crisis advocate, this chapter argues that distinct, incongruent, and divergent configurations of space and time mark the nexus of clinic and courtroom, reshaping the relationship of care to investigation, and projects of healing to projects of justice, which are at times closely attuned and other times disparate. I explore the underpinnings of topological time as a particularly productive approach to violence and the law, and to linger over how thinking with topology might offer us insight into the temporality of subjectivity in the aftermath of sexual violence. Approaching time as topological, I build on the work of Michel Serres, drawing together biography, ethnography and philosophy. Excavating topological figures within the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maurice Blanchot, I further develop a temporal topology of contingent anticipation.
