Theorizing "the Present"

 

Week 2 - 9/5/2019

“Turning to the current conjuncture might require us to think about the different temporalities (the histories, trajectories and rhythms) that come to combine in the present...we need to think of the conjuncture as a point where different temporalities--and more specifically, the tensions, antagonisms and contradictions which they carry--begin to come together” (p. 342)

- John Clarke, “Of Crises and Conjunctures”, p. 342

 

Summary

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What does it mean to be recognized as existing in time?

rethinking temporality

  • Judith Halberstam. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. Ch. 1 “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies,” pp. 1-21. NYU Press.

What is the present-ness of the present?

The Crisis (again)

What do these questions mean for our ability to identity forms of resistance, disruption, and the possibility  for alternatives?

Contemporary Struggles

 

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Recap

We started our discussion of the present by imagining a 2019 time capsule. Consider its discovery in 50 years, we each drew or described items that might help communicate our current conditions and struggles. After sharing this deeply personal contribution aloud, we discussed what we mean by the present, and worked on language to the engage in a conjunctural analysis, moving past historical materialism and epochal analysis. Our community partners joined us for the latter half of the class, sharing their work and opening space to understand our collective struggle and work at hand.

 

Quotes from Class Notes

  • Futurisms: give us a space to imagine a creativity of PoC without framing the experiences of PoC exclusively as deficits. It creates a space of hope, power and generation. 

  • How do we grapple with the points of connection between multiple temporalities? 

  • The notion of linear time, is an imposition on all of us “having to exist in the same way and same space”. Marching into this modern future 

  • “Past” as located in a particular space, but what if it becomes, a realistic space for the future? (and a happy, productive, content future that isn’t intrinsically located in the place of the USA) 

  • The future as something to be mined, as a practice that needs to happen in the present in order to validate / justify what we are doing. BUT we must perpetually defer the realization of our future potential, in order to avoid disrupting the hegemonic powers of the moment. 

  • Capitalism, imposes a time that Capitalism feels/views as inevitable - do the/a/some reading, because they take time! 

  • If your writing isn’t accessible it is not radical

 
 
2019, TheoriesKrystal Strong2019, Theories