Others’ Time, Time as the Other: Sami Berdugo and the Time of Immigration

Sami Berdugo’s poetics exposes a unique concept of time. It is a time that can be described as rhizomatic. Unlike space, time can be described as rhizomatic not merely in terms of its divergence into multiple paths but also in terms of being arrested, floating with no apparent progress in any direction. Berdugo’s time is not the linear time we are accustomed to think in but rather, to borrow Bakhtin’s term, a chronotope: it is more a fusion of spacetime or body-in-space than a linear progress. This essay describes immigrants’ time as the Other, the time that cannot be properlymeasured, the time that refuses advancement. It is also the great Other threatening the immigrants themselves and their sense of freedom.