Abstract
In this paper, I consider the concept of trans dissociative time through the lens of madtime, aiming to understand how dissociative temporalities both structure the transnormative life narrative in ways that bind it to chrononormativity and can be leveraged to resist this narrative. I characterize three qualities of trans dissociative time: 1) frozen, as time is stopped or paused in the present; 2) split, as the lifespan is divided into multiple subsequent or simultaneous narratives; and 3) blurred, as temporal boundaries are made fuzzy or disoriented. I use the lived experiences of myself as a transmasculine nonbinary person and friends who are a trans system in conjunction with scholarship on Mad, trans, queer, and crip times to discuss the nuance of trans dissociative time as not only distressing and normalizing, but also a site ripe with possibilities for resistance to the sanism embedded in compulsory, normative linear temporalities.
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