In Saving Time (Random House, Mar.), Odell investigates alternative ways of understanding and evaluating time.
How is this book different from those on optimizing productivity?
The word saving in Saving Time is really meant more in the sense of “rescuing”—a way of thinking about time that’s hard to access if we’re living with this mindset that time is money. One of the arguments I’m trying to make is that, if you keep speaking the language of “time is money,” you risk making the problem worse by entrenching this old relationship that comes out of a very industrial context.
You highlight the distinction between the ancient Greek concepts of chronos, or linear time, and kairos, which suggests “a critical moment for action.” Why does the latter resonate in periods of uncertainty and change?
I feel like kairos captures the feeling in which things that happened in the past still have a very live edge. After I finished writing the book, I saw everything in the present as evidence of things that had happened in the past, in this very real, concrete way. That’s really compelling to think about in terms of justice, because there’s a way of looking at history in which people have long wanted the same thing, and never gotten it, and that desire has stayed alive the whole time. In working towards justice in the present, you’re not isolated from those desires of the past.
How does fostering an awareness of one’s environment help to develop a less linear understanding of time?
The buckeye tree that I talk about in the book goes through an identifiable progression that you come to expect, but it’s not linear in the way we think of calendar time. When the tree starts to turn yellow, it’s not all at once. You can see these different stages existing simultaneously in the same tree. And it’s also very material, right? Clock time and calendar time are very abstract; the tree’s physical state is not abstract. Especially during the pandemic, I really turned to concrete, material evidence of change and progression; I found it very necessary for combatting a sense of dread and nihilism.
I was fascinated by the book’s discussions of “crip time” as a rejoinder to capitalist, optimized notions of time.
One of the great insights of disability studies is that disability is not a static category of people. All of us will experience disability at some point in our lives, whether through aging or illness or something else. That’s such an important way of thinking about it, because when you realize that it’s kind of a continuum it leads to a response that’s so much more humane and generous. You want to imagine a world in which disability is not a disaster. But current expectations about work and time and keeping up are disasters for anyone who is experiencing disability.
