Time and temporality

This conceptual chapter addresses how health and environmental humanities engage with the modern Western technologies of time and temporality, as said technologies condition and sustain contemporary biopolitical discourses and social relations associated with healthcare and the environment. The chapter identifies “crisis” and “terminality” as the two foundational temporal arrangements of the two fields, which have emerged as critical interruptions of the necropolitical dynamics in medical practice and environmental governance. While reviewing the historical context and theoretical development of the two fields through these two temporal prisms, this chapter incorporates analytical insights on time from other academic disciplines concerned with corporeal vulnerability and institutionalised violence, for the purpose of expanding the relevance and implications of this discussion beyond its original scope.