Abstract

Time Lines, Folded Time, and Discourse Analysis: Continuities of Maternal Imagination. Focusing on a discourse-oriented history of knowledge, this article deals with the relation between continuity and time. It will discuss concepts of linear and homogenous time and problematize a one-sided focus on discontinuity and rupture in discourse analyses. After examining notions of continuity, discontinuity, and temporality in the work of Michel Foucault, I will ask how continuous elements can be theorized both as instruments and objects of research, without adopting a linear concept of time. Thus, Michel Serres' concept of folded time will be presented, because it implies a multiple, heterogenous and non-linear temporality and entails both continuous and discontinuous entities. Thereby relations of power should be considered as factors influencing the shape of the folding. In this way, folded time can serve as a useful tool for discourse analysis, enabling to examine specific and local continuities that vary in different discursive formations. To give an example, I will briefly turn to the concept of women's imagination in pregnancy. According to most historical analyses, this concept declined in the middle of the 18th century and persisted afterwards only as an outdated remainder in folk knowledge. Nevertheless, a closer examination reveals that knowledge on imagination was actively produced in medical advice literature and some scientific discourses until the first decades of the 20th century. This demonstrates that an overemphasis both on rupture and on the timeline of academic medicine might conceal continuous elements and the folded time of specific knowledge formations