Embodiment – Kaytlin Vanderhorst

Embodiment, in terms of time, is the experience of interacting with time through means of the human self that holds both body and mind together. Embodied time acknowledges the physical presence of a vessel that occupies space, the system within the vessel that creates and holds thoughts about itself, and the sense of time that is felt as a product of the body-mind interconnectedness and collective human narratives from the past to the present which mold future temporal experiences.

These narratives can often originate from national, religious, and/or cultural traditions, informing the shape humans give to their personal stories of self and meaning over time. Thus, it seems that embodiment solely centralizes the “self” as a point of reference through which time is experienced, making humans subjective subjects of time, rejecting the discarnate, though more fathomable and digestible, notion of time where humans are thought of as objective observers of time.

Embodied time also accounts for how the human experience of the passage of time is dependent on the perception of present time for each individual. It relies on previous experiences for which people build a relation to in order to build and attach self and meaning to time. This conceptualization relates to the sensorimotor system influencing the human tendency to consider the future as something in front of and the past as something behind the body-mind self.

From a phenomenological perspective — the branch of philosophy concerned with study of consciousness in relation to experience— human consciousness revolves around the discovery of time, self, and meaning. Embodiment is therefore the manifestation of time, manipulated by the agency of the mind and the body, that forms human existence.

Freeman, Elizabeth. Beside You in Time: Sense Methods and Queer Sociabilities in the American Nineteenth Century. Duke University Press, 2019. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smmfz.