Trans-Temporal Intimacy, or, Negating Time as We Know It

This article is an exploration of “trans-temporal intimacy” as a methodology, a sensibility, and a desire. Trans-temporal intimacy could be understood as a closeness, a proximity, an intimate engagement, a generative connection across time, and enacting this through epistemologies of sensuality, sexuality, affect and touch. Drawing on critical theorizations of time alongside queer, feminist understandings of affect, intimacy, and touch, I seek to uncover the radical potential of being intimate across temporal distinction. How might forming such relationships, in our research and beyond, encourage us to remain antagonistic towards hegemonic temporal regimes? If we treated temporality as another categorization that benefits the regimes of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism which control us, then how might we go about dismantling its dividing character? Inspired by my relationship with the sonic archive of disappeared singer-songwriter Connie Converse, I aim to achieve this trans-temporal intimacy through the act of listening and being with sound. By responding to feminist articulations of embodiment and the erotic, I argue that the practice of listening offers a more radical sensory basis for critical archival engagement. Ultimately, this allows greater access to the radical forms of sociality and kinship made available through sound, including those which dissolve the notion of the individual self.