Who decides on time? Mad time as a disruptor to normative research politics and practices

Aimee Sinclair ^*

• Curtin University, Perth, Australia

There is an increasing recognition of the epistemic injustice perpetrated against individuals deemed mad, and subsequently, a push for the inclusion of such voices in research and academia. Yet despite being predominantly enacted as progressive, the inclusion of individuals deemed mad within research practices and spaces often fails to disrupt the ways in which methodology is conceptualised and practiced, contributing to the ongoing psychiatrisation and exclusion of Mad practices, and more broadly, failing to produce alternatives to carceral responses to madness. In this article I consider both the potential for methodology to produce temporal violence, as well as the potential of Mad time to disrupt normative, and often sanist, research practices. To do so, I weave together theorising on Mad time, post-qualitative inquiry, the experiences of peer support workers, and my own temporal conflicts attempting to madden research within academia. I propose three ways in which Mad time may provoke alternative methodological practices that move us closer to epistemic justice: through re-thinking data, embracing stumbling, circling, scrambling (becoming), and valuing variations in pace. I conclude with possible implications that thinking with Mad time might have for research and activism both within, and outside of, academia.