Troubling Time(s)

This volume examines how narratives across literature, film, and (museal) art challenge and reshape our understanding of time during crises. The contributors explore temporal disruptions in personal, societal, and environmental contexts, revealing how storytelling can critique dominant temporalities and inspire transformation. The volume begins by revisiting past and future scenarios, from dystopian visions shaping collective futures to narratives reconciling contested histories. Section two examines personal struggles and societal upheavals, highlighting how propaganda, performance, and comedy address moments of crisis. Subsequent chapters explore narrative strategies that review linear notions of time, from exhibitions and novels to travelogues. Sections three and four uncover resilience in crises, reflecting on nostalgia, biodiversity loss, and cultural upheaval as sources of care and creativity. The anthology concludes with focus on the Anthropocene, where speculative fiction, climate narratives, and the ethics of gardening propose cyclical, slowed temporal experiences as alternatives to modernity’s linear time. With its interdisciplinary approach, Troubling Time(s) highlights narratives’ ability to question prevailing temporalities and reimagine the past, present, and potential future(s). This collection is therefore essential for those interested in cultural studies, narrative theory, and the intersections of time and crisis. CONTENTS DEBORAH DE MUIJNCK (JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN) Introduction: The Transformative Power of Literature in Challenging Eras: Time, Trouble, and Hope for the Future 1 I. REVISITING PAST AND FUTURE SCENARIOS: AGENCY AND POLITICAL POWER IN (RE-)CONFIGURATIONS OF TEMPORALITY ELISABETH HERRMANN (UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK) Future in Crisis or What Comes after Dystopia 13 MIRIAM THALER (UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA PORTUGUESA, LISBON) Troubling Remembered Time: Grada Kilomba’s O Barco (2021) as Counter-Monument and Ritual Challenging Portuguese Colonial Memory 37 MERYEM CHOUKRI (UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK) Queer Women of Colour Creating Archives for the Future: “Wir waren, wir sind, wir werden sein … at home” 51 JUULIA JAULIMO (UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI) The Confused Conscience: Temporal Paradoxes and Narrating Holocaust in Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (1991) 71 II. NARRATIONS OF PERSONAL STRUGGLE IN TIMES OF CRISIS GERO VON ROEDERN (UNIVERSITY OF GRAZ) (Self-)Motivation through Time and Crisis? Reading Letters from 1936 and 1942 85 NATAŠA MURATOVA (UNIVERSITY OF STOCKHOLM) The Past Is Present in Bo Burnham’s Inside 99 III. PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVE STRATEGIES IN DEALING WITH EXPERIENCES OF TIME DURING TROUBLE CLARA VERRI (UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI) ‘Being-in-Time’ or the Other Face of Resonance in Knausgård’s and Houellebecq’s Novels 115 SANNA-MARI NIEMI (UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI) Representations of Disrupted and Troubled Times during Mental Health Crisis in Helsinki City Museum’s Exhibition Broken – a Shattered Mind (2022) 131 SILVIA CASAZZA (JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN) “Einen Tag lang außer der Zeit”: Ambros Adelwarth and the Experience of Time in the Travelogue 149 IV. FORMS OF THE GOOD LIFE IN TIMES OF CRISES AND THE BRIGHT SIDE OF NOSTALGIA ANNETTE SIMONIS (JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN) Forms of the Good Life in Times of Crisis – The Rise of an Ecological Awareness and the Depiction of Biodiversity Loss in 21st-Century European Narratives 167 RIIKKA ROSSI (UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI) Cognitive Poetics of Positive Nostalgia: The Emotional Effects of Miniaturisation in Light of Two Finnish Case Studies 185 KIRSTEN VON HAGEN (JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN) “New courses of the stock exchange can already call the whole existence into question”: Time, Fashion, and Social Change in the Mirror of Three French Novels of the 19th Century 199 V. COPING WITH TROUBLED TIME IN THE ANTHROPOCENE MATTEO GALLO STAMPINO (UNIVERSITY OF BERGAMO) Finding Hope in Guilt: Elina Hirvonen’s When Time Runs Out and Its Significance for the Anthropocene 221 ANNA TABOURATZIDIS (JUSTUS LIEBIG UNIVERSITY GIESSEN) Politicising Temporalities: Divergent and Incommensurable Time Regimes in the 21st Century 237 STEFANO ROZZONI (UNIVERSITY OF BERGAMO) “Small Pleasures Must Correct Great Tragedies”: How Can Gardening Respond to the Anthropocene? 251 Contributors 265