Literature and comics are each in their own specific ways ‘temporal arts’, unfolding sequences of action, collapsing or contrasting story time and discourse time, and representing temporal sequences in narrative or visual-spatial ways. Both media can deviate from chronological time and work with flashbacks and flashforwards, fragmentation, thus evoking, for instance, the layering of time and simultaneity. When representing experiences of ‘otherness’ due to illness and/or disability, perceptions of time that deviate from normal chronometry gain center stage: In the face of unexpected physical or psychic changes, subjective time may stretch or contract, bring one’s past and present into aggressive collision or cast a spotlight on mortality itself.

This workshop (which took place as an online conference) focuses on the ways in which literature and comics represent the specific sense of time that comes along with corporeal experiences. How do the two media show or tell such ‘extraordinary’ time and what are their aesthetic, individual and sociopolitical repercussions?