A confusion of tenses: Health screening and time

Abstract

The article seeks to contribute to a re-evaluation of the role played by the contemporary health screen by exploring its relation to tense and time. Mobilizing data around operational aspects of screening for type 2 diabetes (T2D) alongside more general historical and conceptual perspectives, it challenges implicit assumptions that the screen represents either a momentary ‘cut’ in a longer process or a singular event with its own durational integrity. In contrast, the article argues, two distinct kinds of temporally related processes merge within any given screening episode. On one hand a rich heterogeneity of durations – physiological, technical, social, experiential – is involved. Yet this multiplicity is afforded unity and coherence insofar as the screen becomes a ‘thick’ site of intersection or fusion between the three major tenses. Drawing on aspects of the thought of Bergson and Deleuze as well as Mol’s notion of ‘ontological politics’, the article reconceptualizes the screen as a ‘leaky receptacle’ for temporal complexity and teases out pragmatic implications of such a re-envisioning.