Who decides on time? Mad Time as a disruptor of normative research politics and practices

Front Sociol. 2025 Apr 17;10:1559616. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1559616. eCollection 2025.

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing recognition of the epistemic injustice perpetrated against individuals deemed mad, leading to a push for the inclusion of their voices in research and academia. Nevertheless, despite being predominantly enacted as progressive, the inclusion of individuals deemed mad within research practices and spaces often fails to disrupt the ways in which methodology is conceptualized and practiced, contributing to the ongoing psychiatrization and exclusion of Mad practices and, more broadly, failing to produce alternatives to carceral responses to madness. In this article, I consider both the potential for methodology to produce temporal violence as well as the potential of Mad Time to disrupt normative and often sanist research practices. To achieve this, I weave together theorizing on Mad Time, post-qualitative inquiry, the experiences of peer support workers, and my own temporal conflicts in attempting to madden research within academia. I propose three ways in which Mad Time may provoke alternative methodological practices that move us closer to epistemic justice: rethinking the concept of data, embracing stumbling, circling, scrambling (becoming), and valuing variations in pace. I conclude by reflecting on the possible implications that thinking with Mad Time might hold for both research and activism, both within and outside of academia.

PMID:40314018 | PMC:PMC12044529 | DOI:10.3389/fsoc.2025.1559616