Conclusion

Abstract

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and Woolf brings to our attention the differential distribution of time: “we have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are according to statistics, at present in existence and that, allowing that some had help, takes time.”¹ A complex pattern of diverse priorities, rhythms, and time scales expresses not only “the tension and strain between competing ways of ordering and living lives”² but also the differential distribution of roles and expenditure associated with those roles. Time is the organizing motif for Julia Kristeva’s essay “Women’s Time.” Situating the problem of women in Europe within an inquiry on time, a time that the feminist movement both inherits and modifies, Kristeva argues that “the feminine” is too often associated with the space of generation and production rather than with the time of becoming and history. Thus, for Elizabeth Grosz, the attempt to reconsider our concept of time will lead to new concepts of nature, culture, and subjectivity.