Temporality
Time or temporality is a concept by which humans confront the experience of duration. Feminists across the globe have constructed theories, political programs, and fantasies based on an awareness of temporality, usually as a tool to confront long-standing myths, inequality, and oppression. Feminist history is especially concerned with temporality, but so are activists who invoke the conditions of women in the past and present that must be remedied in the future. Temporality is embedded in discourses of the body and sexuality, and in this respect, women are seen as especially time bound. Postmodern theory has provided feminism with new approaches to time—many of them seeking to confound what can be called ordinary restrictions on time and to overturn time’s seeming limitations. Nonetheless, temporality exists only in language that is already gendered, seeming to set limits to a revolt against time.