Mush time: Communality and the temporal rhythms of family life

Abstract

In this short piece, I respond to the invitation to write differently about families, relationships and societies by drawing out an anecdotal approach to theorising family time. The anecdote I use highlights the temporal dimensions of family life, and the ways that time can be 'mushed', resisting the rhythms of late-capitalist domestic life. By 'mushing' time, 'the 'kids' in the anecdote propose an alternative undifferentiated experience of communality, which links with wider generational concerns with how communality may only emerge when narratives of national progress are countered, and attention is turned to 'mush'.