Unworlding: Atopia, Dystopia, Queertopia
How do we unmake the structures, ideologies, modes of thought, epistemologies and ways of seeing that, in a Euro-American tradition, we currently call “world”? What is the world? Who is the world? Who must necessarily be excluded in order for worlds to exist, to thrive, and possibly to die? We will explore the making, unmaking, and dismantling of worlds, and the relation between aesthetic practice and un/worlding. This talk pursues questions of negativity and a/dystopia, Blackness, queerness, transness and ontology, desire and its itineraries. We will work with texts that open onto a-topic spaces and others in which worlds collapse and fall apart. In the aftermath of collapse, what constitutes identity, alterity and potentiality?
Mandatory reading:
- Halberstam, Jack. 2018. Unbuilding Gender. Trans* Anarchitectures In and Beyond the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Places (Cambridge, Mass.), No. 2018. doi:10.22269/181003, https://placesjournal.org/article/unbuilding-gender/#0 (last access: 25. Juli 2024).
- Halberstam, Jack. 2024. Collapse, Demolition and Queer Landscapes. Scottish Literary Review 16, Nr. 1: 45–57. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/243/article/930911/pdf.
- Hayward, Eva. 2008. More Lessons from a Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, Nr. 3–4: 64–85. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/255359 (last access: 25. Juli 2024).
