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ABSTRACT This article examines what becomes possible for interpretive literacy research when time is treated not as a neutral backdrop but as a central problematic. We argue that research does not merely trace temporal sequences; it actively creates temporalities that shape what becomes sensible, thinkable, and sayable within literacy studies. Drawing on Deleuze's distinction between the movement‐image, in which time is represented as linear, progressive, and cohering, and the time‐image, in which time is layered, simultaneous, and durational, we consider how temporal logics organize interpretive practice. Speculation is central to our method: we use it to imagine alternative temporal relations and to open inquiries that do not presume narrative direction, culmination, or improvement. Applying Deleuze's concepts of durations and opsigns/sonsigns to a familiar literacy episode from Heath's (1982) work as a generative point of departure, we offer a speculative retellings through the time‐image to play with how different temporal constructions bring forth different contours of experience and relation. We propose that treating temporality as an active force and lingering in the speculative “temporal middle” invites researchers to rethink what literacy research can do, for whom, and on what timescale. Knowing humanity, we suggest, is less a destination than a shifting constellation of durations through which the time‐image continually moves thought otherwise.
Boldt et al. (Sun,) studied this question.