Critical Conversations: A Measure of Time in a COVID World
“Time is someone”. And so Merleau-Ponty invites us to discover how our experience and measure of time is always connected to our consciousness of self and our relationships with others. Between ruminations on the phenomenology of time and COVID bound psychological research, to mapping how time features in social life and their implications on various communities, this conversation between Dr Chin Chuan Fei and Associate Professor Tracey Skelton invites us to explore unexpected ways to understand or measure how time passes, that may signal towards a new order of social relations in the years to come.
CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS
Conventional Western-centric conceptions of narration and time tend towards the linear: personal lifestyles conform to social schedules, the notion of history relegated to key players, stories unfolding across a traditional arc of climax and conclusion. Across philosophy, art, films and historicity, Critical Conversations 2021 is an inquiry that lingers on the questions: who and what frames time? And how do we understand alternate conceptions of time? Here, the politics, contexts and anxieties that arise from grasping at time find space in discourse, and is where lesser-known narratives and ordinary people are given agency to make sense of time.
Audience Reviews
“A very empathetic analysis of time that helped me understand that we all experience time differently according to our circumstances”
Profiles
Dr Chin Chuan Fei
Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, FASS, NUS
Dr Chin Chuan Fei is a philosopher at the Department of Philosophy and a counsellor in training. He leads a popular cross-faculty module on everyday ethics in Singapore. His latest research focuses on self-compassion in sexual minorities. During the recent pandemic, he completed a 10-month counselling practicum at a psychiatric rehabilitation home.
Assoc. Prof. Tracey Skelton
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, FASS, NUS
Associate Professor Tracey Skelton is an inter-disciplinary geographer who focuses on social justice issues in relation to gender, race / ethnicity, sexuality and disability through social, political, feminist and cultural lenses. She is the editor for the journal Children’s Geographies (Taylor and Francis), and is also the editor-in-chief for Geographies of Children and Young People (Springer). Her most recent research project was funded by a SSHRCC grant focusing on young people and employment in Singapore and Canada.