Fallen Between Times: The Time Regimes of Absence – A Review of the Article by Uri Katz and Keren Shalev Green

The article discusses the issue of time in the context of absence. Time is a factor that creates order and gives meaning to human life. Everything in human life has its own time, and first and foremost, time can be divided into a time of life and a time of death. However, situations of uncertainty disrupt the sense of order, and consequently also the perception of time. In situations of absence, time and uncertainty are mixed with each other from the moment the person is absent, and this confusion affects the way the family interprets the past, its scenarios for the present, and its hypotheses about the future. Absence causes the division between life and death to blur, and even the "time to die" is unclear. In the present article, the authors argue that family members of absentees actively, dynamically, and continuously construct their perceptions of time regarding absence, and these perceptions are mixed with the perception of the absentee as alive, dead, or neither. The authors conducted interviews with families of missing persons, joined search expeditions, and attempted to closely examine the narrative construction processes of the families of the missing persons regarding their absence.

The authors describe that the families were forced to dismantle and restructure their assumptions regarding the fate of the missing person, as well as their perceptions regarding their basic concepts of time. They propose three possible models of perceptions of time in relation to the fate of the missing persons:

1. Parallel time: The assumption is that the missing persons are still alive, and therefore linear time as we experience it remains relevant to them, although it is hidden from view, and therefore parallel to our time.
2. Estimated time of death: The assumption is that the missing persons are dead, and therefore linear time has come to an end for them, but the time of death is unknown.
3. Fixed time: It is created from the construction of absence as a category in itself, which is located in the space between life and death. The missing person is in an unknown intermediate space, outside of linear time, where time is frozen.

While the first two categories rely on a binary division between life and death, the last category is a subversive and innovative category. It is permanent, but it is characterized by uncertainty and lack of knowledge. In the fixed time regime, the construction of absence as an ontological category requires family members to violate the binary distinction between life and death. When neither option (life or death) seems logical enough, absence becomes a category in itself. In this time regime, when absence becomes permanent, the search for the missing person may no longer seem logical, and instead of asking "Where is he?" we begin to ask "What are we looking for?" or "Should we stop looking?" As time passes, absence as a category in itself stabilizes, and outcomes that might be considered positive under the parallel time regime become irrelevant, or even horrifying (e.g., a knock on the door after many years of absence). This is because the fixed time allows families to continue living their lives, and its violation (as in the form of a knock on the door) will send them back to other time regimes, in which life may not be possible.

In conclusion, the authors argue that missing people are not fully alive but not fully dead either, creating an in-between space of uncertainty. Their research suggests that uncertainty threatens the assumptions of linear time, and thus alternative time regimes are created. The authors emphasize that the models are flexible and dynamic, and even within the “estimated time of death” model, uncertainty remains about the time of death and the manner of death, so that the scenario is constantly changing. Finally, the authors wish to suggest that contrary to common claims that time freezes for the families of the missing, in fact their lives do not stop, and family members continue to actively understand the nature of their waiting for their loved ones.