Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories

Perverse Modernities

by Elizabeth Freeman

Time Binds is a powerful argument that temporal and sexual dissonance are intertwined, and that the writing of history can be both embodied and erotic. Challenging queer theory’s recent emphasis on loss and trauma, Elizabeth Freeman foregrounds bodily pleasure in the experience and representation of time as she interprets an eclectic archive of queer literature, film, video, and art. She examines work by visual artists who emerged in a commodified, “postfeminist,” and “postgay” world. Yet they do not fully accept the dissipation of political and critical power implied by the idea that various political and social battles have been won and are now consigned to the past. By privileging temporal gaps and narrative detours in their work, these artists suggest ways of putting the past into meaningful, transformative relation with the present. Such “queer asynchronies” provide opportunities for rethinking historical consciousness in erotic terms, thereby countering the methods of traditional and Marxist historiography. Central to Freeman’s argument are the concepts of chrononormativity, the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity; temporal drag, the visceral pull of the past on the supposedly revolutionary present; and erotohistoriography, the conscious use of the body as a channel for and means of understanding the past. Time Binds emphasizes the critique of temporality and history as crucial to queer politics.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Theory, LGBT, Philosophy, History, Academic

343 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[joshua sorensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok now do a queer reading of the mamma mia franchise

[Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to polish up a writing sample before sending it out as a part of my graduate school applications. Throughout the book, Freeman develops a theory of erotohistoriography. To put it simply (a grossly repetitive phrase used by Freeman herself, attesting to the convuluted nature of much of this book), the concept of erotohistoriography explains how queer writers and artists make sense of a collective past through a focus on corporeal pleasure, thus bringing ideas of temporality into conversation with the body and centering its erotic pleasure as the point of contact for understanding histories that run counter to our heteronormative understanding of time. Without going too deep into a theoretical hole, this theory helps provide a new theoretical framework to parallel the traditionally future-focused — pain and shame-focused in the case of queer historiography — rhetoric of queer theory.

[Léo · Rating 4 out of 5]

très bien, il y a des takes parfois sur les lesbiennes je sais pas par contre

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Freeman is totally my academic crush.

Aaaand I've finally finished this (prompted by a course) - it's excellent. One of the best, perhaps the best, book I've read on queer temporalities. Her elegant, but also frequently humorous and playful prose, often streamlines (in a good way) the theoretical rigor of her work, making it accessible and very portable. Her concept of "temporal drag" is particularly generative, as is the somewhat more unwieldy "erotohistoriography." I don't expect to unlink this from my brain any time soon.

[Tomo · Rating 2 out of 5]

an interesting intervention in the notion of queer temporality, but it wasn't really a fun read for me. she spends a few dozen pages analyzing a little-known lesbian film, which made me fall asleep...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few critics to give Isaac Julien's "The Attendant" a good critical consideration. Also, a necessary addition to our thinking about alternate temporalities and queerness.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Time Binds while listening to Meat Loaf's 1993 opus Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell is probably not what Elizabeth Freeman imagined her reader doing, but it is strangely apposite for at least one of the themes of this book: the fact that we are all in drag most of our (public) lives. The fact that Meat Loaf, a 1990s heterosexual male, spends the album in the drag of a 1990s heterosexual male, playing what he imagines a 1990s heterosexual male will do. I suspect when Mr Loaf was at home with Mrs Loaf and their three lovely Loaf children, he behaved and dressed somewhat differently.

"Tradwives" are in drag as tradwives: I suspect they even were in the 1950s when they are supposedly aping. I wear teacher drag for my dayjob, dressing as a respectable middle class heterosexual teacher and behaving in a way that such a person would behave, if he were to exist. Most of the time, we dress and behave as we expect people want us to behave and dress, not who we "are" (see Korzybsky for a refutation of that concept) but as a binary version of that locus.

Okay, long preamble to what Elizabeth Freeman is saying: she is looking at time and gender in some mainstream texts (Frankenstein, Midsummer Night's Dream, Orlando, Hamlet) and some low-budget queer cinema (you've either seen it, or you haven't heard of it - I haven't). Apart from the last film, The Attendant, these films seem largely devoid of what I would call eroticism, and The Attendant is about cross-racial queer S/M - I'll pass, thanks.

This sounds like damning with faint praise: but not in the slightest. This is a fascinating book and if, like me, you are puzzled by concepts of queer temporality, this is a very good primer. I suspect you will get something out of this book wherever you are on your faith journey, and if you are studying any of the above books, read this.

[fivestarbookreview]

In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman posits that much of queer life is a kind of temporal drag. That through consciously enacting gender or sexuality and through the jagged seams between these ideas, time itself warps. She writes: “By ‘time binds,’ I mean…that naked flesh is bound into socially meaningful embodiment through temporal regulation: binding is what turns mere existence into a form of mastery in a process I’ll refer to as chrononormativity. Pointing out that time itself has been bound to capitalism through an insistence on productivity, Freeman suggests queer joy and queer eroticism are ways of moving through oppression. Ending with an exploration of the time-bending powers of S&M culture, she illuminates how typical S&M scenarios can be read through the multiple lenses of time, race, power, and eroticism. ⠀

[Katarina Partika]

enjoyed the literal reading of hamlet TIME IS OUT OF JOINT! helped me understanding the other ideas brought up and drag as being a distortion of the past to reimagine the future

"Centered on a protagonist who eschews the marriage plot or
even its alternative, the revenge plot, Shakespeare’s play freezes narrative
movement, political/historical progression, and psychic development.
As John Hunt argues, Hamlet is a fantasia of corporeal disfigurement and
fragmentation, reducing the human form to ‘‘a collection of pieces whose
morbidity intimates their violent dissolution.’’ Hamlet’s disarticulated
body, as well the bodies of those around him, both registers and performs
time’s heterogeneity"

"a melancholic wish for the homoerotic Eden that is this play’s primal scene"

[RemediaF · Rating 2 out of 5]

it attempts to explore compelling themes within queer studies, but its dense and overly academic prose makes it challenging for a broader audience to engage. The book's disjointed organization and lack of concrete examples further impede understanding and connection with readers. While it delves into significant subject matter, its abstract analysis and assumption of prior knowledge may alienate those seeking a more accessible introduction to the topic. As a result, "Time Binds" falls short of its potential to deliver a truly impactful and engaging exploration of queer temporalities and histories.

[ND · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting, but hard to understand, like most queer theory. She should learn how to write about film, since she seems intent on analyzing film and video, but she has not bothered to learn the terminology, which makes her seem a little dense, not to mention pretentious. Even first-year film students know the difference between a splice and an edit.

[Maxime Perreault · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erotohistoriography, Prosthetic Memories, and of course Drag Time, were the concepts I will remember from this iconic book. I will probably have to read it over to completely understand it, or at least reread those few concepts and chapters. Like others noted, the writing can be circular and convoluted, but it still got me inspired, and I still enjoyed reading it (slowly).

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/3.75: at times too dense and the readings, whilst thorough and always convincing, left me desperate to find something else to connect to - though I am but a fledgling academic and lacking proper reading behind me! overall, generative, and will be super useful for my queer marxism diss.

[Rebecca Thacker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

[Lucía Cordero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leí su artículo del NYU Press y me voló la cabeza. Lo de la temporalidad queer...no voy a volver a ver el mundo igual después de esto.

[Doni · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want to read Freudian analysis of obscure Queer experimental films then this book is for you! It didn't do much for me.

[Cadence Ortiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5!

[Emma Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fascinating. i would recommend this to anyone who is interested in queer temporalities and queer a-formal stylings especially in the 90s/early 2000s (ACT up era)

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Freeman's work on queer temporality is incredibly fascinating regarding how different histories become embodied through certain acts and fashion, and also how chrononormativity produces straight temporalities that seek to bind queer histories. My chief complaint with the book is that I feel like the bulk of its deep ideas come out in the introduction and preface, making it so a person may not necessarily need to read the rest in order to have a decent understanding of the book's central subject. Nonetheless it is a fascinating read.

[Irene Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time Binds is a powerful argument that temporal and sexual dissonance are intertwined, and that the writing of history can be both embodied and erotic. Challenging queer theory’s recent emphasis on loss and trauma, Elizabeth Freeman foregrounds bodily pleasure in the experience and representation of time as she interprets an eclectic archive of queer literature, film, video, and art.

[Madelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Unbinding time and/from history means recognizing how erotic relations and the bodily acts that sustain them gum up the works of the normative structures we call family and nation, gender, race, class, and sexual identity, by changing tempos, by remixing memory and desire, by recapturing excess."

[Michael Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful snapshot of how time works for the queer subject.

[Mills College Library]

306.76601 F8552 2010