Paper short abstract:

A fractal orientation to time enables an alternative exploration of fractured, distorted and fragmentary temporalities, in addition to recursive and self-similar time. This paper considers temporalities of heroin addiction as fractal, applying an interdisciplinary perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on both mathematical and anthropological understandings of fractality, this paper explores alternative perspectives of time as it relates to heroin addiction in Scotland. Following a collaborative project with both mathematicians and anthropologists, this paper attempts to ethnographically illustrate temporalities which confound typical conceptualisations of linearity, and which can be better understood as fractal. Senses of linear time are disrupted for heroin users through intensive poly-substance use, an increasing trend in Scotland, as both time and memory become fragmented beyond coherence or re-assemblage. Distortedness and complexity being common descriptors applied to mathematical fractals, time shattered into uncountable and un-interpretable fragments similarly connotes fracture, dissonance and distortion. This paper applies the fractal model of Cantor's Dust in an analysis of infinitely small and complex 'particles' of time arising through some forms of intoxication. Wider temporal experiences of heroin users, furthermore, echo concepts of fractal recursion, in which an image recurs infinitely inside of itself. For those pursuing recovery through abstinence, for instance, as fieldwork conversations with some suggested, imaginings of the future are tempered by past experiences of returning to heroin. Embedded, therefore, within idealised fantasies of futures absent of substance use - and all else that recovery could entail - were memories of past frustrated attempts, a pattern which often further disrupted abstinence. Fractals therefore comprise an alternative lens with which to explore complex, fractious, distorted and self-similar temporalities.