Paper short abstract:

This paper questions the various and conflicting temporal strategies of managing uncertainty in a Swiss psychiatric hospital, by distinguishing discursive axes and positionalities within its institutional network.

Paper long abstract:

This paper questions the various and conflicting temporal strategies of managing uncertainty in a Swiss mental psychiatric in which I did a seven months fieldwork, by distinguishing discursive axes and positionalities within its institutional network. Anthropology literature towards the temporal directionality driving human action evokes the idea of a potential that is yet to be realized, a vision that provides direction (e.g. Gammeltoft 2013). Uncertainty and doubt, however, constitute important parts of experiential directionality; their study is not only central to understand the subjective experiential temporalities of social actors, but also to better grasp how they navigate their social environments (Pelkmans 2013). Subjective attitude towards the future is an essential part of the everyday lives of psychiatric patients - see for example Frantzen 2019, who understands depression as a "chronopathology" -, but uncertainty is also foundational in everyday social interactions in mental health hospitals, as testified by the recurring vocabulary of risk reduction that is prevalent in these environments. In the Swiss hospital X, the different ways of dealing with uncertainty, distinguished through several discursive axes, are inscribed in conflicting and hierarchical rhythms and timescapes (Bear 2016); they impact health practitioners as well as patients' subjectivities and bodies, viewed as dialectic and unfinished products of discursive regimes (Wade, 2004).