Introduction
Time is one of the most fundamental organising forces of human life (Zerubavel 1987). While the standardised clock is only one among many chronometers (Sharma 2014), in the context of work, clock time remains the dominant temporal regime, as it can be measured and thus easily controlled. This linear and segmented time, geared toward productivity, is increasingly intensified by digital technologies and capitalist production logic (Sharma 2014; Wajcman 2019), entrenched in contemporary institutions and social practices that emphasise efficiency, growth and acceleration (Freeman 2010; Milojević 2008; Vostál 2016). The dominant Western conception of time as linear, grounded in calendar-based organisation and Christian cosmologies, forms a key organising principle of modern social life (Zerubavel 1987), aligned with modern narratives of linear development and progress that have historically served to justify colonial expansion, domination over nature and the subjugation of non-Western peoples and worldviews (Milojević 2008).
Paid work has become a pivotal factor in shaping everyday human experiences, organised around the moral ideals of self-discipline, efficiency and individual responsibility (Bryson 2007), framing productivity as both a personal duty and a measure of human worth (Mladenov 2017). These ideals position time management—and the pressures associated with its perceived scarcity—not as a structural issue, but as a personal challenge, obscuring the systemic inequalities embedded in temporal regimes (Kotýnková Krotká 2024; Sharma 2014). As Sharma (2014) emphasises, the dominant temporal logic of linearity, acceleration and productivity fails to recognise temporal multiplicity. People whose lived experiences—particularly those shaped by disability, queerness, colonisation and racialisation (Bryson 2007; Freeman 2010; Kafer 2013)—deviate from normative temporal expectations are nevertheless compelled to adapt to them to access employment, social services and forms of recognition within societies.
The deviation from normative temporal expectations, however, reveals more than just the struggles and oppression that disabled people face (Cepeda 2021; Georgiadou and Damianidou 2025; Jammaers and Williams 2021; Rodgers et al. 2023; Williams et al. 2025). Although the negative consequences of normative temporalities predominate, this article explores positive, alternative ways of thinking and living informed by Kafer’s (2013) critical concept of crip time and grounded in the temporal practices of disabled people in Czechia. Disability thus becomes an opportunity to challenge and transform the hegemonic temporal logic, chrononormativity (Freeman 2010), which underpins productivism as a mechanism that reduces people to mere resources for productive output (Mladenov 2017). Consequently, we argue for reimagining temporality in more relational, entangled and care-oriented ways (cf. Kafer 2013; Sharma 2014), which open space for inclusive and sustainable modes of working and living that accommodate diverse body-minds (Price 2011; Price 2021).
After presenting the existing research on disability, temporality and work, along with the analytical concepts and the context of time and disability within post-socialist countries, the article outlines its methodology, followed by the analysis, which is structured into three sections. The first section examines how the productivity-oriented temporality of work is disrupted by crip time, focusing on moments where the system temporarily accommodates individual needs without resulting in structural change. The second section explores the emancipatory potential of crip time to reimagine futurity, along with critically reflecting on the opportune circumstances for such new imaginaries. The final section considers the collective nature of crip time, through which the dominant ideals of productivism and labour can be challenged.
Disability, Temporality and Work
Much of the existing literature on disability and work focuses on structural and spatial barriers, while neglecting the role of time and temporality in shaping exclusion. For instance, Hall and Wilton (2011) emphasise how disabling work environments reinforce systemic inequalities; Bend and Priola (2023) illustrate how sheltered employment settings can perpetuate marginalisation rather than alleviate it; and Remnant et al. (2024) examine how disabled scholars are excluded within performance-driven, neoliberal university systems. Nash (2024) explores how neurodivergent employees struggle to meet normative expectations around self-presentation and work performance, and Østerud (2023) highlights how disabled employees are often seen as culturally incompatible with the ‘ideal worker’ norm. While these studies demonstrate how the workplace remains a deeply exclusionary space for disabled people, they rarely address time as an axis of inequality.
Only in recent years has the temporal dimension of disability received growing attention (Osman and Kotýnková Krotká 2025; Samuels and Freeman 2021; Sheppard 2020; Levy and Young 2020; Ljuslinder, Ellis and Vikström 2020). Several researchers have highlighted exclusionary temporal practices in the workplace. Specifically, Soldatic (2013) critiques how neoliberal workfare regimes impose rigid schedules that restrict disabled people’s access to services and support. Cepeda (2021) reveals how the linear temporal structures of academia conflict with her own embodied experience of non-linear crip time as a scholar living with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Rodgers et al. (2023) similarly show how disabled academics face systemic exclusion due to time-based productivity pressures. Jammaers and Williams (2021) examine how the competing demands of work, health and caregiving leave disabled workers with little space for rest or leisure. Georgiadou and Damianidou (2025) investigate how ableist assumptions about time and productivity oppress disabled workers, and Williams et al. (2025) explore the intersection between paid employment and the lived experience of endometriosis.
This study contributes to this limited yet growing body of research. However, rather than focusing solely on the harms produced by current temporal regimes, it explores how alternative temporalities can challenge and reconfigure dominant modes of work.
Chrononormativity, Labour and Crip Time
To trace the dissonances between normative temporalities and crip time, we draw on Freeman’s (2010) concept of chrononormativity, which shows how temporal norms are shaped by a Western, linear, future-oriented understanding of time. Social life is organised around shared temporal milestones, such as the ‘right’ time for education, work, and retirement, framing them as individual trajectories even though they are collectively shared and produced. Chrononormativity coordinates multiple temporalities, aligning schedules, plans, and activities to optimise the production of both goods and bodies (Freeman 2010).
In capitalist societies, work is typically defined as paid employment closely linked to participation in the labour market. Part-time, casual or flexible work arrangements, which may be more suitable for those who care for others in their ‘free time’ and on a ‘voluntary basis’, are still regarded as less valuable (Milojević 2008, p. 339). This disparity is particularly evident in the lives of people with disabilities, who may require more assistance with daily activities and more time to care for themselves.
At this point, scholars such as Alison Kafer (2013) and Margaret Price (2024) refer to the concept of crip time as a critical lens through which normative temporality can be challenged. Crip time highlights the tension between disability, time and progress, as well as the disconnection between temporal and socioeconomic expectations and the lived realities of disabled people. While chrononormativity expects smooth and linear progress, the experience of living in crip time is marked by disruptions and irregularities (Kafer 2013). Crip time, therefore, embraces non-normative temporal perspectives on lifespan and holds the potential to reimagine temporal organisation with a greater focus on care, rather than valuing bodies based on their ability to participate in the labour market (Price 2021; Samuels and Freeman 2021).
Disability and the Labour Market in Post-socialist Central Europe
This study is set in Czechia, a post-socialist Central European country where neoliberal reforms have reshaped economic, social and temporal structures. Since the 1990s, neoliberal restructuring—privatisation, deregulation, austerity and welfare retrenchment—has portrayed welfare as fostering dependency and even as a dangerous return to socialism (Ferge 1997; Mladenov and Petri 2020; Mladenov 2015). Apart from three cases, post-socialist EU members (including Czechia) allocate markedly smaller shares of their GDP to social protection than states in Western Europe with longer and more established capitalist histories (Eurostat 2016).
Although the link between work and productivism is rooted in the Protestant ethic of Western capitalist societies, as Weber (1930) famously argued, underscoring the moral significance of work (Mladenov 2017), it extends beyond capitalism to state-socialist and post-socialist regimes. While capitalism ideologically emphasises individual freedom, private property and autonomy, socialism declares equality, public ownership and collective welfare (Mladenov 2017). Despite these differences, both ideologies consider work essential to human identity, economic progress and social cohesion, but also regard it as a potential source of social exclusion (Zaviršek 2014).
The post-socialist transformation amplified the role of work and productivity; it also tightened temporal discipline, aiming to erase the socialist-era ‘idleness’ through linear, intensified, high-paced time. These shifts made neoliberal productivity demands even more pronounced than in long-standing capitalist states (Chelcea 2015; Chelcea and Druță 2016). Neoliberal reforms promoted the discourse of the ‘enterprising self’, requiring individuals to be flexible, self-disciplined and personally accountable for their successes and failures (Dunn 2004).
Neoliberal temporalities directly intersect with productivist logics. Building on Giddens—who specifies productivism as ‘an ethos in which work, in the sense of paid employment, […] defines whether or not individuals feel worthwhile and socially valued’ (Giddens 1994, quoted in Mladenov 2017, p. 2)—Mladenov (2017, p. 2) describes the concept as a mechanism that reduces people to mere resources for productive output. A capacity to work, and therefore a person’s value, is shaped by normative temporalities that dictate expected productivity and the tempo and rhythm of time use (Freeman 2010; Kafer 2013; Mladenov 2017). Mladenov (2017) emphasises the profound influence of productivism on societal understandings of disability and on the development of related policies in the post-socialist region.
People whose productivity is questioned are stigmatised and marginalised—socially, culturally and materially—as disability pensions and related support are framed not as matters of social justice or autonomy but as compensation for an assumed inability to work (Mladenov 2017; Zaviršek 2014). This productivist logic is reinforced by post-socialist rehabilitation, which emphasises self-improvement and personal discipline while sidelining collective or left-wing approaches, thereby strengthening the view of disability as an individual shortcoming rather than a socially produced exclusion (Kolářová 2025). Within this framework, systems such as that of Czechia continue to maintain a medical model of disability rather than acknowledging the broader societal factors that shape exclusion (Porkertová 2021).
Within the Czech system, people officially recognised as disabled may apply for a disability pension, but the process is lengthy and complex. Eligibility is assessed by a medical examiner who must confirm a long-term reduction in the capacity to work. Companies with more than 25 employees are required to ensure that 4% of their workforce consists of disabled workers, yet many rely on substitute measures or pay a levy instead of hiring directly. The employment rate remains at about 30% (Úřad vlády České republiky 2020), and entering the open labour market is difficult. As a result, disabled people often rely on personal strategies to adapt to workplace norms instead of benefiting from systematic, collective changes. However, similar practices can be found worldwide; as Kafer (2013, p. 4) notes, despite decades of disability activism and the rise of disability studies in the United States, disability is still often seen as a personal issue to be overcome through individual determination.
Methodology
The data come from qualitative research investigating temporalities in the everyday lives of people with disabilities. Between 2023 and 2024, our research team conducted 19 semi-structured interviews, ranging in duration from 78 to 195 minutes, with disabled individuals, recruited primarily through snowball sampling (Seale 1998) within our personal networks. Drawing on McRuer (2006) and Kafer (2013), we adopt a broad approach to defining disability that includes impairments and illnesses, aligning with the term ‘crip’, which resists rigid definitions and emphasises the relational nature of disability. Building on Latour’s (2005) notion that phenomena emerge through associations within heterogeneous networks, the analysis highlights situations in which specific temporal marginalisation and resistance emerge. Given that positive manifestations of crip time were relatively rare in contrast to the pervasive pressures of normative temporalities, we draw primarily on the narratives of the research participants Lisa (assistant professor), Dora (assistant professor), Rudolf (researcher), Eva (physiotherapist), Zita (lecturer and podcaster), and Klaudie (social worker).
‘Disability’ and ‘crip’ are used as both analytical and political concepts. Although all participants consented to research using the terms ‘crip’ and ‘disability’, some did not strongly identify with these labels. However, we follow Kafer’s (2013, p. 14) view that ‘rethinking our cultural assumptions about disability and imagining our disability futures differently will benefit all of us, regardless of our identities’. We alternate between the term ‘people with disabilities’, the official term in Czechia, and ‘disabled people’, a term that underscores how disabling practices shape bodily and experiential realities (Shildrick 2009).
Although a formal diagnosis was not required for participation, all participants had been officially diagnosed. We mention this not to reinforce the medical model of disability, but because diagnoses contribute to the creation of ‘disability assemblages’ (Goodley, Lawthom and Runswick 2014), connecting individuals to biomedical systems as well as influencing negotiations around work accommodations (Foster 2007; Zaviršek 2014) and access to social benefits and disability adjustments.
Interviews were conducted at times and locations chosen by the participants. Before each interview, participants were informed about the study’s purpose and the voluntary nature of their participation. While institutional approval was not required under the funder’s conditions, the research team adhered to the principles of processual ethics, emphasising the importance of addressing ethical issues as they emerge throughout the research process (Rice et al., 2018). The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and anonymised. They were carried out in Czech, and selected excerpts were translated into English.
We used qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti 9) to analyse the data, which helped organise and transform the interviews into analytical material. As we read the interviews, we coded them, which led to the identification of specific themes. Some codes were theory-driven (e.g., ‘chrononormativity’, ‘body-mind’, ‘spatiotemporal’), whereas others arose through open coding (e.g., ‘organising time’, ‘strategies’, ‘flexible work’). These codes then served as a foundation to explore the ‘alternative temporalities’ that disabled people create to resist chrononormativity in the workplace.
Results
‘She suggested I shouldn’t work’: plasticity within the system
The temporal dimension, interwoven with broader socioeconomic and institutional relations, deepens the dissonance between specific work requirements and the lived realities of people with disabilities. For instance, the academics in our study are responsible not only for teaching but also for managing research grants, which have specific temporality: they need to be planned at least a few months, sometimes even years, in advance, and they typically span three to five years. During this period, it is necessary to collect data, analyse it and publish the findings. All these steps follow a given sequence and require precise planning and coordination within the research team. Assistant professor Lisa, 42, is a successful scholar who adheres to, or even surpasses, the ‘academic timetable’ (as described by Strike and Taylor 2009), making her name a valuable asset in grant applications. A few years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and after being in remission for some time, the cancer returned. Lisa reflected on this:
I got really stuck. I remember we had this project at work that required my involvement (…). The mere thought of planning for the year 2025? I told myself, ‘I might not even be here by then.’ I was truly in such a crisis that I wasn’t able to plan anything, not even a month ahead, at all. I was completely in the dark. And it deeply bothered me to even think about it, because the fear of what was to come was so overwhelming that my mind just couldn’t handle it.
Lisa’s crip time was not goal-oriented, expectation-oriented and future-oriented (see Freeman 2010). The ‘past/present/future became jumbled, inchoate’ (Kafer 2013, p. 37), while the temporality of her workplace required structured planning and the promised progress of research projects. There are three academics in our study, and all agree that the pressure to meet grant-related obligations was particularly intense due to severe penalties for non-compliance. This worsened their health, underscoring the constitutive power of work in the construction of disability (cf. Bailey 2021; Lahelma et al. 2012).
The situations described above appear rather grim, with little room for change in a system deeply entrenched in the premise of adhering to the schedules and temporal demands of productivism (cf. Mladenov 2017). However, to the participants’ surprise, the reality proved less dire than expected. Reflecting on her experience, Lisa says that although ‘the whole time, it seemed like the job wouldn’t wait, it did’. Dora, 40, an assistant professor living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder who had experienced a physical and mental breakdown, also had a positive experience. She explained that the head of her department suggested she should not work, proposing a sabbatical that she was not yet officially eligible for, so she would not struggle financially. In doing so, the head ‘bent the clock’ (see Kafer 2013, p. 27) of the sabbatical to meet Dora’s needs, which indicates a certain plasticity in the chrononormative order.
Rudolf, 54, worked as a biologist and researcher at a university hospital. A few years ago, he began experiencing severe mental difficulties, which immensely interfered with his job. However, it turned out the situation was not as hopeless as it seemed. Rudolf recounts his first hospitalisation in a psychiatric clinic:
I was in such a deep depression, so severe, that I forgot to apologise to my boss for not coming to work the next day. We were supposed to have a meeting where I was one of the key people, and I just didn’t show up, didn’t even remember it, you know, in that depression. He, being the head of the clinic, found out that I was hospitalised (…) and he treated me very kindly. He said, ‘Rudolf, you probably forgot to come to the meeting today, but I know you’re hospitalised. Take it easy. It’s fine. We’ll discuss everything later, and you’ll continue working.’ (…) Everyone was nice to me, both the managers and the colleagues, and they all helped me.
Despite the immense pressure of research grants and the significant responsibility of key individuals in charge, the otherwise straightforward and tightly structured temporality of research did not prevent a moment of respite. There was still room for reassuring words like those uttered by Rudolf’s boss: ‘Take it easy. It’s fine.’ It was not only the academics in our study who had positive experiences with their managers. Since December 2021, Eva, 28, a physiotherapist with a promising career in a hospital, has been dealing with tinnitus, which she describes as a distinct ‘metallic’ sound in her ears. This condition disrupts her sleep, making it challenging for her to work full 8-hour days. She was surprised by the supportive attitude of the managers, saying, ‘They went out of their way for me, which is normally not done. I was there for a week and then not there for a week, which is unheard of for a graduate.’
It might seem that for all of them their situations were rather optimistic and resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. However, the broader socioeconomic relations cannot be put aside. The cracks in the system were only temporary, and, aware of this, Eva left the hospital and joined a private clinic, where she could coordinate and reduce her shifts without special accommodations. She did not want ‘further adjustments’, as medical school graduates are typically expected to work long hours. Rudolf was allowed to finish his grants, but he needed some time off afterwards. He was stressed out by doing research, as ‘it’s really tough, constantly trying to raise funds, dealing with people, and always being on edge about whether you’ll be able to meet the requirements’. Although ultimately seen as linear and reported once every few years, academic work is composed of many uncertainties, irregularities and failures (ironically, characterising disability), which Rudolf could not coordinate with his needs. Following his doctor’s recommendation, he applied for a disability pension and left his job in August 2020.
In Dora’s case, the sabbatical solution was only temporary as it exploited a loophole in the higher education system, which is governed by the neoliberal logic of ‘production, efficiency, and competition’ (Cepeda 2021, p. 310; Vohlídalová and Linková 2017). Remnant et al. (2024, p. 39), describing the situation in the United Kingdom, note that under ‘the increasingly dominant market institutional logic (…) the clear majority of disabled academics refuse to declare a disability.’ Price et al. (2017) report similar numbers from the United States, stating that only 13% of academics with mental disabilities seek formal accommodations. Although no comparable research has been conducted at Czech universities, it can be assumed that the numbers are similar or even lower. The academics in this study did not request formal accommodations either. Czech educational institutions have established support centres for students with disabilities; however, such support is still not widespread among teachers and researchers. The lack of institutional and financial support, combined with the uncertain reliance on their managers’ personal kindness, was not sustainable in the long run.
These cracks, loopholes and acts of kindness do not undermine the current chrononormative organisation of work. Rather, they stem from its plasticity, which allows for the temporary accommodation of individual needs—and it is this very plasticity that actually enables the system to keep running.
‘In a way, it’s a step back, but at the same time, it’s also a step forward’: reimagining future work temporalities
There was, however, one exception that shook the system to its core. Rudolf quit his job during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the exceptional cases in which crip time affected society as a whole (Samuels and Freeman 2021). Although the pandemic was another uncertainty that brought many negative consequences, especially for people with disabilities, it also shook the sense of what was normal. Rudolf explains:
I was actually going through depression in 2019. Then COVID came. And I don’t mean to glorify it in any way, of course, COVID was a disaster, but seeing that it was completely normal for people to lose their jobs was eye-opening, you know, realising that things end, get disrupted, and need to be addressed, right? So, this societal downturn, where everything seemed to fall apart, actually gave me a lot of psychological relief. I have to be honest about that. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, it’s not that big a deal.’ I wasn’t the only one in the world looking for a new job. And that’s incredibly calming because it made me realise that it’s normal to move on and find a new job if you can’t continue in your current one.
In chrononormativity, ‘individual bodies are synchronised not only with one another but also with larger temporal schemae experience belonging itself as natural’ (Freeman 2010, p. 4). Rudolf had internalised the scheme so profoundly that it was difficult to stray from it before the onset of the pandemic. Chrononormativity is criticised not only as a regulatory practice of working regimes but also as a social assumption about the proper sequence and timing of life stages (Freeman 2010). In 2019, Rudolf had already reached the age of 50, and as numerous studies confirm (e.g. Riach and Rich 2010), older job seekers often face difficulties finding employment due to age discrimination, especially when seeking jobs outside their field (Baert et al. 2016). Rudolf’s disability put him into an even more complicated situation.
However, the pandemic brought about a breakdown in chrononormativity, which coordinates production (Freeman 2010). Many people lost their jobs, and the cohesion of society eroded. This erosion also breached the notion of what is considered normal, making the ends, disruptions and new beginnings Rudolf speaks of suddenly imaginable. The entire society fell into crip time (Samuels and Freeman, 2021), opening alternative conceptions of time and subverting socioeconomic structures (Price 2021). However, as Samuels and Freeman (2021, p. 249) note, ‘breaking is not a choice but a necessity’, which was also true for the restructuring of society during the pandemic.
Necessity, nevertheless, can become an opportunity to challenge an otherwise unsatisfactory situation. In Czechia, where many people work long hours under conditions that do not meet their needs, the willingness to push back or leave a job tends to be low due to a combination of low wages, weak social security funds and a reluctance to relocate for work, reinforced by the dominant discourse of self-responsibility, which frames individuals as solely accountable for securing their livelihoods and shaping their own fate (Dunn 2004; Chelcea 2015; Kolářová 2025; Mladenov 2015; Mladenov and Petri 2020). This inherently reflects post-socialist productivism, which ties personal worth to continuous productivity and fosters the internalisation of demanding work norms (Mladenov 2017; Kolářová 2025). As a result, these conditions are often reinforced and reproduced over time as employers and managers recognise that they face little resistance or consequences for imposing them.
For people with disabilities, the drive to change these conditions and act with greater courage often comes from the fact that their situation is simply no longer sustainable. This was also the case for Eva, whose tinnitus pushed her into leaving the hospital. She says, ‘I always knew I wanted to do it eventually. But this time, everything just lined up. An opportunity came up, so I decided to go for it.’ She clarifies this further:
The decision to leave the hospital was actually an obvious choice for me, mainly because I don’t have to be in the clinic eight hours a day—which, as I’ve said before, just isn’t really doable for me. But at the same time, I’m not completely giving up on the idea of having my own centre—that option is still on the table (…). In a way, it’s a step back, but at the same time, it’s also a step forward, toward more flexibility. So, it feels a bit conflicted.
Thus, she complicates the assumption of a linear career trajectory, in which working in a hospital is seen as the most straightforward route to eventually establishing one’s own centre. Rather than closing the door on professional ambition, Eva’s path reflects a reimagining of when and how such goals might be realised—allowing for a future that unfolds on different terms. What might be seen as a ‘step back’ in conventional terms can be understood as a reorientation under crip time—one that privileges sustainability, bodily needs and flexibility over linear progress.
This was also the case for Lisa, who did not want to give up her dreams either but rather reimagined how to incorporate them into her crip time. She explains this:
I don’t want to lose my ambition. I don’t want to end up feeling indifferent about it, or like I don’t care about being good at my job. It’s more that I just need to feel okay in it. And that’s really hard to achieve. But I think that being at [the department] helps because there are people who genuinely believe that work isn’t the most important thing in life.
Like Eva, Lisa is not stepping away from ambition, but relocating it within crip time—a temporal framework in which success is not linear, speed is not a virtue and feeling ‘okay’ at work is not a compromise, but a necessary condition. Thus, she resists normative understandings of ambition and progress that frame professional development as a linear path requiring constant acceleration (Vostál 2016). Her stance resonates with the politics of crip futurity (Kafer 2013), which reimagines futures not oriented towards productivity or a cure, but towards access, interdependence, and the possibility of living well. At the same time, Lisa identifies her current department as a rare space where those alternative values are upheld, and where work is recognised as meaningful and valuable but is not considered ‘the most important thing in life’. This reflects the collective dimension of crip time, in which futures are not merely individual but are produced through shared ethical commitments.
Nevertheless, due to the relational nature of temporalities, favourable conditions are often necessary for crip time to unfold and transform from something burdensome into something positive. Lisa narrates her experience of reassessing her role at a university and the role of the university in her life as follows:
I believe it’s mainly about recognising that the pressure isn’t just external. I feel it internally as well. Of course, I’d love to secure impressive grants, receive excellent evaluations, have my work published and achieve a position of seniority in academia. It would definitely be flattering. But perhaps my priorities have shifted, making it easier for me now to let go of and decline these opportunities. I understand that these are things I should aspire to, but I just won’t pursue them. It’s because I’m operating on a different temporality now. (…) I don’t feel like working on any projects because there are those three years that cut life down so quickly. And I don’t want to project my life. I need more.
Samuels (2017) says that ‘when disabled folks talk about crip time, sometimes (…) we mean something more beautiful and forgiving’. Price (2011) specifies this by referring to a ‘flexible approach to normative time frames’ (Price 2011, p. 62). To be able to withstand the pressure, Lisa applied for a disability pension, reduced her workload and ‘set a limit to the work’. This allowed her to decline tasks officially; it also freed her from her internal expectations of what she should accomplish. However, not everyone is given the same option. Lisa refers to the disability pension amount as a ‘pittance’, and without her husband’s high income, she would not be able to provide for her family with a part-time job and disability benefits alone. Thus, the emancipatory potential of crip time remains closely tied to socio-material conditions, emerging within temporalities that are always relational, interdependent and uneven (Sharma 2014).
‘I strictly forbid my staff to do any extra work’: the collective nature of crip time
Living in crip time offers a critical perspective through which normative temporalities can be challenged. Zita, 27, works as a lecturer and podcaster, which involves numerous meetings and frequent travel to diverse locations. Since birth, she has lived with essential tremor, a progressive condition primarily characterised by shaking in her limbs. With varying degrees of intensity, it also affects other parts of her body. Zita’s trembling body has not only required her to carefully schedule her activities, negotiate her demands and devise tactics to conceal the irregularities of her body, but has also driven her to critically question the system. She reflects on this:
It feels like it really takes you out of the rat race—the life we’re living in, the system we’ve just come to accept as the way things are. So, actually, at the moment when one can no longer fit into it, or it is more and more difficult for them, I believe it becomes more important to start questioning the system, to look for norms we can critically examine. It’s about realising that things could be different, potentially in ways that could benefit more people.
She further explains that she sees many similarities between her situation and that of queer people who do not fit into traditional categories either, which has fostered in her a sense of ‘compassion, empathy, and relationality’ (cf. Samuels and Freeman 2021, p. 251) not only within but also beyond disabled communities. Kafer (2021), Price (2021) and Samuels (2017) point out that crip time is paradoxically both restrictive and liberating. ‘Strategies for surviving the normative violences of capitalist time’ go hand in hand with ‘strategies for inventing new models of work, sociability, and being’ (Samuels and Freeman, 2021, p. 249).
Crip time thus allows for revisions of these socioeconomic relations regarding work environment, care and productivism. Zita recalls a situation where a big celebration was planned for their podcast’s anniversary:
It was a big deal. Over a hundred people were supposed to come, months of preparation, everything was ready. And on that day, I just, … it wasn’t about the tremor, but I had a really bad health issue. A few years back, it would have been unimaginable for me to cancel it. But now, I just cancelled it, thinking that it’s also about a different perception of time. Sometimes, things just get cancelled because we can’t predict how our bodies will feel at that moment. And there were people who wrote to me saying they admired me for cancelling it, saying they would have just loaded up on pills and gone anyway. To me, it became completely incomprehensible, like, it just got cancelled, so what?
Zita’s crip experience opened alternative conceptions of time (Price 2021), making what was once unthinkable possible while also leading her to question things she previously took for granted. She reframed her relationship to the linearity of time-planning for work productivity and the social expectations associated with it. In reference to Foucault, Milojević (2008) emphasises that the prevailing hegemonic knowledge can be resisted as ‘the process of normalization is never complete’ (Milojević 2008, p. 335). In the same vein, Samuels (2017) observes that embracing crip time has let her define her own ‘normal’. Although disability is still predominantly viewed as a personal issue, necessitating individual strategies to meet normative needs (Foster 2007; Jammaers and Williams 2021; Kafer 2013; Sheppard 2020), disability and able-bodiedness intersect (Goodley 2013; Shildrick 2012), impacting diverse lives. Zita’s decision challenged the linear assumptions about events, making the cancellation possible and imaginable not only for her but also for others, many of whom admired her decision.
The broader consequences of the emancipatory potential of crip time are also evident in Klaudie’s (36) case, a woman living with type 1 diabetes. She worked part-time and believed that adhering to working hours was of the utmost importance. As a social worker in a non-governmental organisation (NGO), she was accustomed to the fact that people in this sector are often overburdened.
NGOs tend to overuse their employees because they lack sufficient funds. This isn’t right; it’s just exploitation, and the nonprofit sector shouldn’t become accustomed to having people who are willing to go above and beyond, even on their own time. It’s not okay, and eventually, it takes its toll. I used to be all action-oriented and eager to do everything too. But not anymore. Given my experience, I strongly advocate for this stance and strictly forbid my staff to do any extra work.
As someone in a leadership position, Klaudie was able to set boundaries not only for herself but also for others. Given that disabled people in full-time employment must dedicate a significant portion of their free time to self-care—especially bodily care—to maintain physical functionality (Jammaers and Williams 2021), this practice challenges conventional work norms, highlights the often-overlooked interdependence of care and labour and reveals temporality as a relational practice. Although chrononormativity is seen as linear, bodies are often perceived as stable, making time seem incorporeal. This perspective prioritises the steady production of goods and services while overlooking long-term consequences. However, Klaudie, who frequently monitors her fluctuating blood sugar levels—which indicate how the strain affects her body and organs over time—is fully aware of the temporal aspect of her disease, which ultimately ‘takes its toll’. By bringing her crip experience to her job, she disturbed the idea of productivism (Mladenov 2017) and reasserted the aspect of care, which is often devalued (Milojević 2008)—paradoxically, even in NGOs dedicated to the care of others.
Conclusion: towards crip futurity?
The production of both goods and bodies is sustained by temporal norms and expectations—chrononormativity—grounded in principles of linearity, future orientation and standardisation that facilitate coordination and efficiency (Freeman 2010). Consequently, and hardly surprisingly, economic activity is configured as a collective task shaped by institutional, discursive, material-infrastructural, market and policy arrangements (cf. Freeman 2010). Yet responsibility for fulfilling this task is individualised and organised around moral ideals of self-discipline (Bryson 2007), casting human worth as tightly bound to the capacity to be economically productive (Mladenov 2017).
This imperative intensifies wherever economic activity and production are at stake, which applies both to post-socialist contexts and to people with disabilities. The post-socialist repudiation of socialist ideas (regardless of their actual implementation) came with the dismissal of collective welfare and equality, prompting a desire to ‘catch up with the West’ and economic progress as central goals (Chelcea 2015; Chelcea and Druță 2016). Disability is assessed through work capacity (Úřad vlády České Republiky 2020), and disability pensions are understood not as a matter of social justice but as compensation for reduced ability to work (Mladenov 2017; Zaviršek 2014).
In post-socialist contexts, accelerated productivity and tightened temporal discipline highlight temporalities not only as reflections of inequality but also as forces that actively constitute it. The imperative to comply with chrononormativity and productivism is therefore even more pressing, whereas the possibilities for addressing these pressures at a systemic level remain limited. Disability and post-socialism together function as a magnifying glass that exposes the logics of capitalist time ordering—not because they rest on different principles, but because those principles appear in particularly intensified and visible form. The clashes between temporal and socioeconomic expectations and lived realities become even more unsustainable than in states with a more extended capitalist history, calling for change.
In this study, we focused on such changes, driven by the positive and generative aspects of crip time, which offers a counterpoint to chrononormativity and productivism by inventing alternative ways of organising temporalities at work. Although emerging from necessity rather than choice (cf. Samuels and Freeman 2021) and grounded in personal rather than systemic practices, crip time, as emphasised by the relational model (Goodley, Lawthom and Runswick 2014; Kafer 2013), highlights both its potential to induce more profound change and the necessity of acknowledging its limits.
Our research reveals cracks in the system that allow for ‘bending the clock’ (see Kafer 2013, p. 27) to meet needs that deviate from temporal expectations. However, these cracks and exceptions foreground the plasticity of chrononormativity—its capacity to temporarily absorb deviations without transforming its core logic. Furthermore, they depend on the goodwill of people in managerial positions and have proved unsustainable. Although the literature often presents chrononormativity and flexibility as opposites (Kafer, 2013; Samuels, 2017; Samuels and Freeman, 2021), our research indicates that a certain degree of flexibility is an integral part of chrononormativity. While offering temporary relief, this very flexibility enables the system to persist.
This, nevertheless, does not imply that crip time consists only of small, temporary windows for alternative ways of working and living. The temporal logic of linearity and future orientation is fundamentally unsettled, giving rise to new, nonlinear and fluid imaginaries and futurities that centre care and the corporeality of time. Our participants demonstrated that stepping away from normative timelines does not entail a loss of ambition; rather, intervening in and reshaping institutional rhythms actively disrupts the taken-for-granted link between productivity, ‘right’ timing and value. As disability and able-bodiedness intersect (Shildrick 2012; Goodley 2013), seemingly small-scale and personal practices of crip time generate new imaginaries not only for disabled people but also for others, respecting diverse needs and showing how futures, temporalities and labour can be reconfigured in more relational, caring and respectful ways.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the participants who devoted their time, energy, and openness to sharing their stories with us. We also appreciate the insightful comments from our colleagues and the anonymous reviewers, which helped shape the article into its current form.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.
Author Contributions
Both authors contributed equally to the study conception and design, data collection, qualitative analysis, interpretation of the findings, and writing of the manuscript.