Living and Dying in Shadow Times

Normative time frameworks obscure the ontological ambiguities of lived time, particularly in relation to illness and death. These forms of ambiguous lived time constitute what we call ‘shadow time’ – the unnoticed and the unknowable in our dominant temporal order. We examine what we call ‘diagnostic time’, ‘prognostic time’, ‘terminal time’ and ‘mourning time’ as shades of shadow time that elude the ordering of time that orders life. A critical stance to temporality is necessary, we argue, in order to recognise the regulatory imperatives of normative time, to mark the slippages between the demands of normative time and how time is often lived (out) and, importantly, to do justice to those living in the complicated ontological ambiguities of lived shadow time – where we see the intricate folding of life and death