About being in time

About being in time 1

ABOUT BEING IN TIME: RESPONSE TO COMMENTARIES BY BILL

AUERBACH, CAROLYN DINSHAW, AND ANN PELLEGRINI

Studies in Gender and Sexuality

Katie Gentile, Ph.D.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

524 W. 59th Street

New York, NY 10019

keywords: racism, queer temporality, temporality, trauma


RUNNING HEAD: About being in time

ABSTRACT

This paper is a response to commentaries by Dinshaw,

Auerbach, and Pellegrini on “Temporality in Question” (this

issue). This response describes in more detail the ways the

author integrates psychoanalytic and queer theories of

temporality, by outlining a way of bringing the two forms of

analysis together in the reading of fetal personhood cases.

This response also explores further the profound racism and

classism in the administration of these personhood laws and

the ways they enact Alexander’s (2010). description of the

new caste system.


I am honored and thrilled to be able to converse with

Bill Auerbach, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Ann Pellegrini about my

paper “Temporality in question: Psychoanalysis meets queer

theory to explore the troubling temporalities of fetal

personhood.” It is always a privilege to have discussants

think with you about your work and here I have been lucky

enough to engage with people who explore time in different

ways. I am going to respond to or discuss each of their

commentaries by theme, starting with Dinshaw’s important

observation about my lack of attention to psychoanalytic

theory.


About Bion/being in time

Dinshaw (this issue) brings up a very important point of the

role of psychoanalysis in my work and my potentially

throwing it away. I do not throw out psychoanalysis in terms

of time but I did edit it out for “time” in terms of the

length of this panel. I have written extensively (Gentile,

2006, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014, in press a; in press b) about

the absolute necessity to integrate psychoanalytic notions

of time with those of cultural and queer theory in order to

begin to grasp the complex temporal foundation of

subjectivity. Indeed, in my mind we will only ever

understand the grasp, allure, and control of affective

economies, the ways affective networks become contagious and

spread, by situating time and space as the very center from

which subjectivities are produced. Psychoanalytic theory is

the basis for this understanding. As Dinshaw reflects,

psychoanalysis does allow for ambivalence, including the

tensions between asynchronous and more linear temporalities.

Indeed, as I hope to clarify here, it is from this space of

ambivalence that the multiple “potentialities” (Muñoz, 2009)


of time can be generated and embodied. However, as my

forthcoming book explains in more detail, psychoanalytic

theory itself does not always adequately hold this

ambivalence. Certainly there are expansive theories of being

in time (Winnicott, 1971; Bion, 1962; Loewald, 1980). Boris

(1994) builds on Freud’s Nachträglichkeit where the present

is haunted by the past and the present in turn creates a new

past. This two-way highway as Boris describes it, can

generate multiple times but they are not simultaneous and

they remain linear. Thus the potentials of asynchronous

times, the use of space to expand potential times, are not

theorized by current psychoanalytic theory. There is also a

reductive defense elevating the Oedipal temporality and

ideals of family, even though that family is becoming more

diverse. By holding on to the Oedipal so tightly, linear

time is reinforced, if only in the generational struggle,

the substituting of sons for dads, daughters for mothers

(Loewald, 1980), and of course with the reproductive

mandate, psychoanalysis’ own version of canonized

reprofuturity. Of the few psychoanalysts who currently write


about time, most reify linear, unidirectional cause and

effect as the foundation of symbolic thought (e.g. Lombardi.

2003, 2008). Still psychoanalysis does provide an invaluable

tool to articulate the unique functions that I see in the

fetal fetish.

For instance, both Auerbach and Pellegrini (this issue)

call upon Bion (1990 and 1962, respectively) to describe

preconceptions and representations and the workings of

trauma. Auerbach describes the primordial state of time

ordered by concepts such as cause and effect, before and

after, linear past, present, and future. I see these

particular orderings as an example of what Bergson

(1913/2001) calls the spatialization of time as it is

extended through space to be laid out chronologically.

Calling upon Bion (1990), Auerbach describes the ways

dissociation disrupts the body and mind. He weaves a

beautiful and rich multimodal picture of just how deeply

trauma disrupts thebvery cells of our being.

Pellegrini playfully calls upon Bion’s (1962) notion of

preconception to discuss my paper on preconception care to


which I referred in the presentation (Gentile, 2013). But

preconception care is only “pre” in the biological sense, in

that it is before, prior to a woman’s egg being fertilized.

Medically the irony of preconception care is that there is

no longer a “pre.” All women are expected to behave as if

they are already and always pregnant. The expectant

anticipation that Bergson (1913/2001) would see as

generative is collapsed here and made concrete. This is not

Bergson’s notion of anticipating the unfolding rhythms of a

tune, nor is it Bion’s notion of preconception expectation.

Although it is important to note that Bion’s notion of

expectation itself relies upon a temporal capacity - the

accumulation of interactions from which an expectation and

preconception can be culled. We must not take this quite

complex capacity of accumulating for granted. While this

capacity emerges and remains in the social space between, it

is felt to be internal, and most theorists, including Bion

(1982) and Winnicott (1971), describe it as such. It is from

within this social space where patterns of interaction have

been gathered and held and played with, that an experience


of going on being emerges. It does so through the generation

of anticipation and expectation. In these anticipations, a

faith in continuity, what might be understood to be an

absorption in Bergson's duration, enables the emergence of

the capacity for experiencing in time. Here time is not

necessarily linear. Bergson’s time is similar to what

Auerbach described as Loewald's (1980) notion of eternity,

the fourth time that extends in all directions

simultaneously. Preconception care and the draconian

response of personhood amendments rely on the enforcement of

prediction, not anticipation. Prediction becomes a highly

disciplined risk management strategy of planning required of

neoliberal subjects in emergency time (Hesford, 2008). Space

for other times is collapsed.

As Pellegrini observes the fetal fetish declares not

only a future but a “promise of absolute satisfaction” (p.

from journal). Ahmed (2007/2008) observed that the tricky

quality of happiness is the promise that never comes to be.

As I have written elsewhere (Gentile, 2013; in press b) the

brilliance of the fetal fetish is that this promise of


happiness can continually be deferred. The transformative

promise of the fetus operates only in the future and any

discomfort or failure of happiness in the moment can be

deferred to the future. For instance, if you have

debilitating morning sickness it is a sign of a healthy

fetus/baby-to-be. The future transformative happiness of

having a baby folds into the present to make new meaning of

the current feelings of illness. This deferral continues as

one can bank happiness as hanging out there in the near

future, say, when the baby sleeps through the night, or once

it is passed the ‘terrible twos,’ or when it goes to school,

or perhaps college, etc.

Psychoanalytic times of catastrophe

To better articulate the way I see psychoanalytic and

cultural theories of time potentially playing off and

building upon one another, let me return to the discussion

in my paper about the role of catastrophe in shaping current

cultural time. According to Cooper (2006), catastrophic risk

is unlike other forms of risk because catastrophe actually

disrupts traditional rational forms of decison-making


because it is based on speculation. There is no exact “when”

(p. 125) in a catastrophic future. According to Cooper, the

only way to face up to such a future is to become “immersed

in its conditions of emergence, to the point of actualizing

it ourselves” (p. 125). In other words, our collective

psychic defense to attempt to continue any semblance of

going on being in the face of catastrophe is to live in a

state focusing primarily on conditions of the emergence of

catastrophe – i.e. a state of hyper-vigilance. Understanding

the characteristics of such a state and the ways in which it

functions to both soothe and rile the nervous system relies

on psychoanalysis. However, psychoanalysis needs cultural

theory to better understand that the brilliance of using the

fetus as a fetish object in the face of catastrophe is that

it enables the cultural body to not just actualize the

conditions of the emergence of this catastrophic future, but

to do so within a “real” and fantasized material body – the

fetus. This concretizes the defensive outlet, again,

psychoanalysis. But returning to cultural theory, the fetus

provides even more defense against catastrophe as it enables


us to actualize these conditions not just within a fetal

body, but within a fetal body that is within the maternal

body, the space rendered abject (Kristeva, 1982) within the

culture. Thus, time and space are central then to the use of

the fetus in the face of catastrophe, and like any truly

useful and thus, intractable defense, it provides an

important secondary gain – maintaining a fantasy of

masculine impenetrability in the face of catastrophe by

projecting all vulnerability not just on to the identified

female body, but in to it where it can be embodied by the

fetus and the potential fantasy fetus. The space of capacity

to create time, to use duration, is then collapsed into the

uterus in a magnificent construction of defense against

annihilation anxiety.

Furthermore, given that time and space are central to

the production of subjectivity, a future of catastrophe and

the resultant annihilation anxieties can function as a

seismic disruption to being. This disruption does not have

to result in a clamping down of time and collapse of space,

but it often does. Certainly as Dinshaw reads Dean’s (2011)


article on bareback time we can see the ways impending death

can actually be used to expand one’s life. However I

disagree with her locating this enrichment within a time

rendered suddenly linear or/and unidirectional.

Psychoanalysts are used to “door knob comments,” the ways

the end of the session is used to suddenly deepen the work.

This use of termination is central to short term therapy.

Now I am not equating the termination of a session with a

terminal diagnosis, merely pointing to the ways limits on

time can prove useful. A terminal diagnosis, however, does

not guarantee an expansion in the meaning of ones life. Dean

does not describe impending death alone changing lives but

instead it is the capacities to create space in time, to

render the potentially strangling linear unidirectionality

to become filled instead with spaces for diversions. It is

not linear time then, that closes down possiblities, but the

collapse of space (Layton, 2010; Gentile, 2013, in press a,

in press b). It is not the linearity that proves generative,

nor the certainty of an end. Instead it is the space of


time, the space to expand, contract, change direction, shift

allegiances that is transformative.

Using psychoanalysis in this way is absolutely

necessary in order to understand the intense desperation

motivating us to cling to the fetal fetish object. The fetus

then functions not just as a “lure for feeling” (Whitehead

cited by Shaviro, p. 8), as described in my paper, but as

the only available container that can possibly hold us

individually and collectively, in time. After all, if

catastrophic not knowing disrupts our capacities for

prediction, it threatens our very psychic organization. Here

again is where psychoanalytic theory becomes indispensable.

If we pause this cultural theory for a moment we can trace

the foundations of time and space psychoanalytically in the

development of subjectivity, in order to differentiate

prediction – that conjures a linear collapse of potentials,

from expectation – that can create the space necessary to

generate nonlinear and multiple potentials.

Subjectivity, memory and meaning-making emerge from

expectation. Expectation is not a cause and effect


prediction nor is it an internal capacity, as it is in a

continual state of re-emergence within the social spaces

between things, objects, and beings (see Gentile, in press

a; in press b). Expectation enables the ‘future to come’ to

remain both with us and ungraspable (Braun, 2007, p. 17),

always unfolding and multiple. This differentiation of

expectation from prediction is imperative to understanding

the difference between facing catastrophe as annihilation or

attempting to use it to generate the space necessary to

create multiple futures, thus, multiple presents and pasts,

as Dinshaw cites of Dean’s (2011) article. This generation

of space is possible through a psychoanalytic understanding

of the creation of the capacities for time and space. It is

this understanding of psychoanalytic based capacity

(integrated with cultural theory) that can help illuminate

how it is that networks of affective communication in the

face of catastrophe can form both the potential spaces of

resistance and those of social control (Clough, 2004;

Massumi, 2002). The longer version of this paper and my

forthcoming book have the space required to do a better job


integrating cultural theories of time and space with those

of psychoanalysis.

One could also use psychoanalytic theory to interpret

the obsession with fetuses and babies as a very dangerous

displacement of anxiety in the face of global climate

change, perhaps based also on the guilt of realizing the

devastated planet these fetuses will inherit.1 In this

context controlling the uterine environment is a

displacement, an attempt to cleanse our guilt and the

environment through fetal personhood amendments and

pregnancy exclusion laws. It is easier than doing the work

necessary to provide a healthier, less toxic, postnatal

environment and it functions to displace the blame for toxin

related health issues to the maternal. Are fetuses also the

symbolic pesky canary in the coal mine, alerting a

1 I thank Steve Botticelli’s question during the original

panel event for highlighting the complicated role global

climate change and environmental destruction could play

here.


dissociated cultural body of the toxic environment we have

created?

As Pellegrini observed during the panel discussion,

climate change is what Morton (2013) calls a “hyperobject,”

something so massive in time and space it cannot be fully

grasped by humans even as it emphasizes the limits and

fragility of human existence. In the face of environmental

destruction and ungraspable hyperobjects, who wouldn’t run

to the fetus to gain some semblance of control?

Related to this ungraspable existential crisis is

religion, which I did not discuss in my paper. Fortunately

Auerbach goes directly to religion, describing the time of

religion and its similarities to that of personhood

amendments. His image of the pouring down of babies is

amazingly apt. Auerbach does a wonderful job bringing in

this very important component to fetal personhood. I would

only add that as babies are “pouring down around us” it

appears some are to be rescued while others are to be

disavowed/incarcerated. I will elaborate on this

momentarily.


Then there is the virginal conception. I bring this up

because fetal personhood amendments are proliferating as

birth control is losing insurance coverage as assisted

reproductive technologies and preconception care are taking

over what used to be considered women’s health care. As

such, there is now the possibility of the virgin birth, a

baby made without any overtly sexual vaginal breeching (i.e.

by a catheter not a penis). But whether one is subject to

“pronatal” policies of biomedicalization and rabid assisted

technologies (and as such, rendered capable of producing a

virginal baby free of original sin), or personhood

amendment-fueled criminal justice interventions, seems to

depend entirely upon ones income and ethnic and racial

identity.

Race, Class, and Trading Futures

Pellegrini uses the term “futures trading” to

underscore the neoliberal spirit of capitalism at work in

the preconception care guidelines—responsible female

subjects take control and exercise choice. Of course as she

notes, the notion of agentically trading futures is a rouse.


These futures are not emergent and full of potentialities

(Muñoz, 2009) nor is their movement in the hands of the

women. Instead these futures are rigid and unyielding,

created by the interlocking systems of biomedicalization and

criminal justice that function in what Alexander (2010) has

called the new caste system.

Pellegrini urges me to make clearer the ways race,

class, and gender intersect to wring the life and

potentialities (Muñoz, 2009) out of futures for pregnant

women of color in particular. Indeed, pregnant women of

color, unlike most white women, do not have the space to

“trade futures.” In an expanded version of this paper

(Gentile, 2014; Gentile, in press), I spend more time

describing how the fantasy fetus floats alone in a void but

this fetus has translucent, usually white skin. This

whiteness, along with its translucence, signifies

vulnerability and the need for protection or rescue. The

cultural values placed on bodies is clear in these

discourses. As the criminal justice system incarcerates

pregnant economically disadvantaged women, primarily women


of color, under the pretense of “protecting her fetus,” they

are merely succeeding in imprisoning multiple generations

simultaneously. As the cases I discussed demonstrate, even

though the women were oftentimes jailed due to their

identified “failures” to engage in adequate prenatal care

behaviors, once incarcerated, the state itself did not

provide these things. Therefore, it is impossible to hold

any illusions that these personhood cases are actually

motivated by a sense of care toward the fetus. While white

women are steered toward assisted reproductive technologies,

poor women of color are criminalized (Ginsburg & Rapp,

1995). The racial dynamics here are clear. Women of color

are a danger to their fetuses. In February, 2011, a huge

billboard went up in downtown New York City with the message

“The most dangerous place for an African American baby is in

the womb.” It was sponsored by a Texas organization called

Life Always and mounted just in time for Black History

Month. The legal cases I discuss seem to be motivated by

this message. While at this point in time it seems all women

are an inherent threat to their respective fetuses


(preconception care guidelines make that very clear), white

women are steered toward biomedicalized interventions that

function to patrol their appetites and curtail their

behaviors. Poor women of color are subject to government

systems – child protection, home visits, and the criminal

justice system. It is a facet of the new racial caste system

except as Alexander (2010) would also note, it is not really

new.

In the U.S. there is a horrific history of Black

women’s reproduction being controlled and interfered with by

white men of economic means. As Alexander (2010) describes,

earlier systems of slavery exploited and controlled Black

labor. The criminal justice system and the new caste system,

in contrast, just function to “warehouse” the Black

population who are seen as unnecessary to the growing global

market (Alexander, 2010). By incarcerating pregnant women of

color, the system is “warehousing” two generations

simultaneously, damning both, rigidifying the future of

both. As Paltrow (2013) terms it, these are the new “Jane

Crow” laws, as these laws take away the mother of the


family. In communities that have been disemboweled by the

incarceration of men, wedding drug laws to fetal protection

laws is the potential nail in the coffin. It completes the

picture of mass incarceration by locking up all of the

parents. As Kimberley Crenshaw (1991) and Patricia Hill

Collins (1990) urged years ago, we must conceptualize

identities intersectionally. Personhood amendments trade

their futures by emphasizing the race in gender and the

gender in race.

Ending with psychoanalysis, Layton (2014) writing about

neoliberal culture recently cited Bion’s (1962) notion of

the importance of creating the capacities to feel pain vs to

suffer pain. “[W]hen we are unable to suffer unbearable

pain, we substitute a pain that we are better able to

control” (Layton, 2014, p. 170). In this light personhood

amendments can be seen as a controllable substitute for

feelings of annihilation anxiety and uncontrollable

vulnerability with the secondary gains of enacting a

profoundly murderous racist misogynous rage.


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