Neurological Disturbances and Time Travel

Abstract

This paper, positioned at the intersection of anthropology, science and technology studies, and feminist affect theory, considers shifts in memory and neurological disturbances that accompany traumatic brain injuries. Anomia, or anomic aphasia, is the inability to recall certain words, names, or colors caused by damage to the parietal or temporal lobes in the brain. Anomia is a disorder ‘on the verge’ – there but not quite, a forgotten memory, reluctant to be conjured. How might experimental ethnographic memoir help us uncover such forgotten memories and make sense of neurological disturbances pathologized by science and medicine? My account contributes to a growing body of literature that uses ethnographic memoir as political critique, blending the personal and theoretical, situating the intimate within larger historical and social contexts. It suggests that ethnographic memoir, with attention to the affective interiority of memories, merged with theoretical analyses and political critiques of medicine and/or therapeutic interventions, offer new understandings of being and temporality.

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