The Sound & the Surplus: Speculation as a Radical Mode of Resistance
Location
King Building 127
Document Type
Presentation
Start Date
4-27-2019 1:00 PM
End Date
4-27-2019 2:20 PM
Abstract
Speculation is a futurist practice of looking outwards in which the subject turns to other realities in the face of a crushing here-and-now. It is from this premise, which draws from José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia (2009) and Fred Moten’s In the Break (2003), that I set out to understand how experiential, literary, and artistic speculation acts as a rejection of the capitalist and colonial structures of this world. Through a conversation with the aforementioned theorists, as well as other queer, posthumanist, and radical black thinkers, this project will analyze three different instances of speculation. First, a queer nightclub in New York which enacts a glitch between temporalities; next, a Dominican sci fi novel by Rita Indiana that shows how remixing queers time and narrative structure; and finally, a video art piece where artist Mickalene Thomas subverts the imperial male gaze, cutting into normative power and creating a break from which speculation can arise. Through these artistic forms of speculation, which by no means exhaust speculative potential, I argue that the act of imagining other worlds by subjects historically excluded from the category of the Human is a radical refusal of the established order, and an embrace of the spaces between so as to find happiness and self-determination.
Keywords:
Speculation; Utopia; Party; Dance; Queer; Posthumanism; Anticolonial; Afrofuturism; Black radicalism
Recommended Citation
Doyle, Emma B.B., "The Sound & the Surplus: Speculation as a Radical Mode of Resistance" (04/27/19). Senior Symposium. 2.
https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/seniorsymp/2019/panel_07/2
Major
Comparative Literature
Advisor(s)
Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Hispanic Studies
Project Mentor(s)
Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Hispanic Studies
April 2019
The Sound & the Surplus: Speculation as a Radical Mode of Resistance
King Building 127
Speculation is a futurist practice of looking outwards in which the subject turns to other realities in the face of a crushing here-and-now. It is from this premise, which draws from José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia (2009) and Fred Moten’s In the Break (2003), that I set out to understand how experiential, literary, and artistic speculation acts as a rejection of the capitalist and colonial structures of this world. Through a conversation with the aforementioned theorists, as well as other queer, posthumanist, and radical black thinkers, this project will analyze three different instances of speculation. First, a queer nightclub in New York which enacts a glitch between temporalities; next, a Dominican sci fi novel by Rita Indiana that shows how remixing queers time and narrative structure; and finally, a video art piece where artist Mickalene Thomas subverts the imperial male gaze, cutting into normative power and creating a break from which speculation can arise. Through these artistic forms of speculation, which by no means exhaust speculative potential, I argue that the act of imagining other worlds by subjects historically excluded from the category of the Human is a radical refusal of the established order, and an embrace of the spaces between so as to find happiness and self-determination.
Notes
Session III, Panel 7 - Artistic | Resistance
Moderator: Gina Pérez, Professor of Comparative American Studies