There are numerous themes that are likely to emerge during the course of this research. Here are some of the themes which we consider to be important.
Memory and forgetting are not simply an individual phenomenon, but is relational in terms of family and friends, and also societal and collective. Memories and the act of forgetting are social as well as cognitive processes and are passed from generation to generation. Paying attention to what we remember and forget can be important ways of destabilising dominant ideas history and power as they allow for different experiences and accounts to be considered.
MEMORY and forgetting
DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS
OF TIME
What is the right time?
Different cultures and people around the world not only have distinct calendars but different concepts of time. For example, many indigenous people around the world do not believe that time moves in a linear direction but rather that time is circular. So whose time is the right time? In addition to different concepts of time we can also feel time differently. For example, during crises, experiences of time and temporality are distorted, with many experiencing a slowing of time (Ogden 2020).Who decides when something has ended? How do different ideas of the end reproduce pre-existing structural inequalities?
Exploring different conceptions and perceptions of time will important themes in this research.
Who gets to decide when someone is late?
From ‘crip time’, ‘queer time’ to anti-racist and feminist critiques of time, different groups have drawn attention to the relationship between time and power, and the ways that dominant ideas of time often render marginalised groups, late, almost and out of time.
“Crip time... requires re-imagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of 'how long things take' are based on very particular minds and bodies. Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds."
Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip