The ‘Meanwhile’ as Counter-Time: Non-Linear Temporality and the Re-imagination of the Future in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker
Lassana Kanté
Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines,
Ecole Doctorale-Arts, Cultures et Civilisations, PhD Student, Sénégal
anasnal271@gmail.com
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-6138-2835
Abstract
Meanwhile is a concept developed by Lauren Berlant to explain ‘a space of suspension wanting, and unfinished becoming.’ In opposition to linear progress or Teleological resolutions, this space represents a zone of indeterminate transition where historical trauma, colonial residues, and displacement converge with times of fragile agency and emotional endurance. The present paper examines the way Caribbean women writers, Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat, use narrative structuration, questioning the time in The Autobiography of My Mother and The Dew Breaker. Through close readings, the present paper seeks to explore the way Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat refuse to linear temporality associated with healing, nation-building, and emancipation. In this paper, we seek to explore the way both novels resist the linear temporalities related to healing, historicity, and emancipation. This is an exploration of the disruption of linear time and the postcolonial conceptions of time. It is an analysis of postcolonial temporality theory. Findings suggest that the concept ‘meanwhile’ works in a temporal disconnection and rupture.
Keywords: colonial, linear progress, Meanwhile, teleological resolutions, temporality, Trauma
How to Cite this Paper :
Kanté, L.(2026). The ‘Meanwhile’ as Counter-Time: Non-Linear Temporality and the Re-imagination of the Future in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker. Atras Journal, 7(1), 217-228.
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