The Civil War of the Body: Archival, Ruined, and Spectral Time in Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness

Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness (2025) marks a significant evolution in the author’s literary trajectory, foregrounding bodily precarity as a site of temporal resistance. This paper examines how the novel reconfigures neurodivergence, dementia, and addiction not as manifestations of social decline, but as alternative temporal experiences that disrupt capitalist chronologies of productivity. Drawing upon Crip Time theory and Derridean hauntology, the study argues that protagonists Sony, Grazina, and Hai collectively construct a “temporal sanctuary,” a shared experiential space that resists the linear, efficiency-driven rhythms of late-capitalism. Through a triadic framework of Archival, Ruined, and Spectral Time, the analysis demonstrates how these characters navigate historical trauma and corporate labor through cognitive and affective suspension. By synthesizing disability studies with a critique of neoliberal chrononormativity, the paper contends that Vuong challenges the cultural equation of chronological coherence with social functionality. Ultimately, the novel redefines survival as a relational practice grounded in shared temporal dislocation, proposing an alternative ethical framework where meaning emerges from the collective inhabitation of fractured time.