Ep. 42 – Queer Inhumanisms

In this week’s episode, Emily, B and Rachel dig into GLQ‘s special issue, “Queer Inhumanisms,” edited by Mel Y. Chen and Dana Luciano. We begin by discussing the editors’ introduction to the issue, entitled “Has the Queer Ever Been Human?” followed by Jeanne Vaccaro‘s piece, “Feelings and Fractals: Woolly Ecologies of Transgender Matter,” and conclude with Karen Barad‘s “TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings.” Our myriad topics of discussion include parsing the contributions to queer theory of scholarship on animacies, post-humanism, and animal studies, what we can learn from quantum physics about the way we conceptualize (or fail to conceptualize) the human and the subject, and the sticky role of language in creating and hindering new ways of thinking queerness. Listen in as we delve through this rich set of texts!

Remember to support us on Patreon to help offset/reimburse the cost of our fancy new microphone, which we have named Lacan. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Thanks to Leah Dion and to B for the music. Get the mp3 here.

Links!

• Read all the articles on GLQ’s site at Duke University Press
• Chen’s book, Animacies
• Our episode on Animacies
• Butler’s “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender”
• Connolly on New Materialism
• Feminist Theory Keynote: Karen Barad, “Re-membering the Future, Re(con)figuring the Past: Temporality, Materiality, and Justice-to-Come“

 

Ep. 34 – Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

Join Rachel, Emily, and B as they delve into Maggie Nelson‘s memoir The Argonauts. As they discuss the power of the memoir genre as a tool for thinking critically about social life, they explore its political potential. How can the memoir, like poetry and other ‘forms’ of writing, allow for the kinds of destabilizing ‘epistemic unruliness’ that familiar forms of academic discourses disallow? If the memoir is thinking, and thinking-politically, what kinds of everyday experiences can be politicized and theorized? Listen as they consider Nelson’s contemplations of the queerness of pregnancy; the function and status of canonical philosophers in the memoir; and the general problem/inadequacy of words.

Thanks to listener @angellemke for suggesting The Argonauts.  Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. Thanks to Leah Dion and to B for the music.

 

Links!

• Maggie Nelson at CalArts and Wave Books
• The Argonauts at Graywolf Press
• Reviews of The Argonauts at the NY Times, NPR, and Salon
• “Writing as Performance: An Interview with Maggie Nelson”, a video from Superstition Review
• Catherine Opie exhibit archive at the Guggenheim
• What are Argonauts, you ask? PBS has an answer.

 

 

Ep. 33 – Kara Keeling, The Witch’s Flight

Emily, John, and B take on cinema theory at the intersection of critical race theory in this installment of Always Already, discussing Kara Keeling’s book Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, The Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense. How does the concept and figure of the “black femme” create the conditions for the possibility of rethinking race, gender, and sexuality–or common sense? But, conversely, what conditions the creation of the black femme in cinematic space that make the normative white and capitalist subject safe? Using Deleuze as a creative font, Keeling offers us a glimpse into “the cinematic” in order to untangle how a radical repositioning of our thinking can offer new ways of understanding common sense. Along the way we also talk about the figure of the witch, Afro-pessimism and Black optimism, racial capitalism, the importance of affectivity and the sensor-motor complex, rationality, and Keeling’s interventions into critical theory.

Don’t miss out on advice on how to deal with family members during the holidays disrespecting your romantic partner, and dream analysis for a nightmarish dream featuring accidental killing.

Thanks to listener Hanna for suggesting the Keeling text.  Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. NEW intro music, “Static Loops”, from our friend Leah, with the old standby music from B as our outro music. Stick around all the way until the end for the full version of another of Leah’s original songs, “Swim Swim Swim”.

Links:

• Keeling’s website at USC; follow Keeling on Twitter
• The Witch’s Flight at Duke University Press
• Holly Mayne reviews The Witch’s Flight at Black Camera
• Sydnee Thompson on the black queer femme, at Black Girl Dangerous
• Video of Keeling on “Black Futures” at the Between Nothingness and Infinity: Ontologies of Blackness symposium at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, July 2015
• Our previous episodes on Afro-pessimism and Black Optimism and on Wilderson’s Red White and Black
• Keeling writes of a “soundtrack” that could accompany the book, where “each chapter corresponds with a song” (6); we put together a Spotify playlist of Keeling’s soundtrack

 

 

Ep. 20 – Mel Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect

On this week’s episode, we discuss two chapters from Mel Chen’s Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. We ask what Chen’s main project is throughout the segments we read, pondering the meaning of sociality, toxicity and animacy, and the critical ambivalence generated by the work. We also talk briefly about the use of affect theory in the book, as it combines with broader themes related to environmentalism, queer theory (its institutionalization, re-animation, de-animation and various lexical uses), and cognitive linguistics. We conclude, as always, by giving advice to our dear listeners, in this case advice on writing an abstract to submit to a conference.

Thank you to wallsaremean for suggesting we read this text! Requests for texts for us to discuss? Advice questions for us to answer on the show? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by B and by Rocco & Lizzie.

Further links…

• Mel Chen on the Faculty Research Panel at the Gender and Women’s Studies 20th Anniversary Conference (YouTube)
• Reviews of Animacies at Disability Studies Quarterly, The Hemispheric Institute, and Reviews in Cultural Theory

 

Ep. 18 – C. Riley Snorton and Jin Haritaworn on Trans Necropolitics

In this episode of Always Already, John and B explore the meaning (and afterlife) of the deaths of trans women of color at home and abroad through through “Trans Necropolitics: A Transnational Reflection on Violence, Death, and the Trans of Color Afterlife” by C. Riley Snorton and Jim Haritaworn. In tackling the larger conceptual framework of necropolitics and biopower, the duo unpack what an ‘afterlife’ does in its circulation amongst competing homonormative and transnormative discourses. How do trans of color lives and deaths come to stand in not for their particular moments, but a more generalized notion of social violence? In that way, do their narratives service larger, homogenizing and thus obviating forces in neoliberalism, gentrification, and LGBTQI community activism? How can the concept of the archive (as both inclusive and exclusive) come to represent our cultural memory, the fund of our social knowledge?

Of course, My Tumblr Friend from Canada invites us to think about a utopian future where power is distributed, affect theory and mental health, and, critically, what breed of dog we perceive ourselves and each other to be.

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Advice questions for the show? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Like our Facebook page. Get the mp3 of the episode here. RSS feed here. This episode’s music by B and by Jordan Cass.

Links!

• C. Riley Snorton’s page at Cornell and Twitter; Jin Haritaworn’s page at York
• At Routledge: The Transgender Studies Reader (e.d. Stryker and Whittle), The Transgender Studies Reader 2 (e.d. Stryker and Aizura), and Queer Necropolitics (e.d Haritaworn, Kuntsman, and Poscocco)
• C. Riley Snorton on “The Glass Closet” at Pomona College
• Jin Haritaworn on “Queer Others and Hateful Others“