A Severed Sense of Time: Diasporic Double Consciousness and Alternative History in Ling Ma’s Severance

Abstract

Ling Ma’s novel Severance details Chinese-American narrator Candace Chen’s experiences of an imaginary fungal virus’s initial spread and the aftermath of its devastation. Causing its victims to mindlessly repeat actions as their bodies decay, Shen Fever represents the endless labour and distractions necessary for the continuation of capitalism and its short-term bias. Key to understanding the time we live in is understanding our perception of time and the forces that manipulate it. Analyzing Candace’s unique sense of temporality through the lens of double consciousness and alongside the concepts of alternate history and slow violence, I argue that Candace’s position as a pregnant woman and member of the Chinese diaspora places her in a space of multiple temporalities that are already severed, allowing the novel to function as a pseudo-alternate history that reveals how the warped temporality of capitalism negates possibilities for change.