The Confines of Time – On the Ebbing Away of Futures in Sierra Leone and Palestine

Lotte Buch Segal, associate professor of anthropology, has co-authored the article 'The Confines of Time – On the Ebbing Away of Futures in Sierra Leone and Palestine'.

The article contributes to an understanding of the existential character of confinement by directing attention to the interlinked concepts of tiredness and foreboding. Through juxtaposition and analysis of material gathered among people whose lives are lived under compromised circumstances in Sierra Leone and Palestine the authors illuminate the way time – not only space – confines. Theiranalytical concern is with the way in which futures are anticipated by people confined in space and time, where conditions of possibility are materially and sometimes corporeally suffocating. To anticipate fragile futures, or to mourn futures terminated early is exhausting. Tiredness, from this perspective, is a ubiquitous and overwhelming sentiment suffusing what it means to live in confining sites. It is an expression of foreboding understood as a ‘being towards death’ (Stevenson, 2014).

Andrew M. Jefferson & Lotte Buch Segal,  The Confines of Time – On the Ebbing Away of Futures in Sierra Leone and Palestine, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Volume 84, Issue 1, January 2019.