Category: essays

Toward a Minor Monster: becoming-monstrous in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jennette Winterson’s Frankisstein.

Introducing The Minor Monster.   Throughout the history of the Western literary canon, queerness and queer literature have been consistently rendered non-functional participants in what philosopher Judith Butler calls the “heterosexual matrix” (12). Queerness has been ossified as monstrous and defined only by its Otherness to the said matrix. Consequently, for queer subjects to circumnavigate these … Continue reading Toward a Minor Monster: becoming-monstrous in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jennette Winterson’s Frankisstein. →

“How can narrative embody life in words?” Tracing Derrida, Love, Beauty, and Afropessimism in Toni Morrison’s Jazz.

In black feminist scholar Saidiya Hartman’s seminal 2008 essay, “Venus in Two Acts”, she raises the pertinent question, “[h]ow can narrative embody life in words” (3). She follows on to question, “[h]ow does one listen to the groans and cries, the undecipherable songs, the cackle of fire in the cane field […] and then assign … Continue reading “How can narrative embody life in words?” Tracing Derrida, Love, Beauty, and Afropessimism in Toni Morrison’s Jazz. →

Excitable differends: Finding New Temporal Idioms from the Genres of Discourse in Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby.

This paper begins by discussing the limitations of two contrasting schools of thought in queer theory: the antisocial and antiutopian turn of Lee Edelman and the more optimistic theories of Jose Esteban Muñoz. By this, both theorists explore how the queer body can and cannot be orientated towards non and heteronormative temporalities. However, this paper aims to uncover the lack of how the queer body can be phrased towards brighter futures and tomorrows. I propose the formation of a new hermeneutic, termed excitable-differends, through the collation of Jean-François Lyotard’s 1983 The Differend and Judith Butler’s 1997 Excitable Speech. I focus on the genres of discourse in Torrey Peters’ 2018 novel Detransition, Baby and how Peters’ fiction alerts us to excitable-differends present in fiction and the real world. Through this, Peters’ novel demonstrates how the formation of new temporal idioms disrupts heteronormative conceptions of temporalities and “bear[s] witness to the [excitable-] differend” (Lyotard xiii). This paper demonstrates how a return to Lyotard and Butler can fill the aforementioned lack in how the queer body is phrased towards brighter futures. 

Towards the Postcapitalist Intellectual: Forming a Climate Vanguard through Violent and Radical Protest.

This paper begins with a simple accusation: that the public intellectual has abandoned the streets and activism in favour of comfy armchairs and apolitical stances. Further still, this paper explores the innate contradictions of multinational climate change agreements like the 2015 Paris Agreement; I instead argue for the necessity of a radical and violent response to the failure of the Fossil Economy to solve its problem. It proposes the concept of "postcapitalist intellectuals" as both writers and active participants in a climate vanguard. This concept is explored by examining the historical failures of leftist revolutions: France, May 1968; Allende's Chile, 1973; and most importantly, the present and looming climate catastrophe. To evaluate these failures, this essay synthesises Jean-François Lyotard’s 1974 Libidinal Economy and Mark Fisher’s unpublished theories from “Acid Communism” and Postcapitalist Desire. These texts inform the formation of the “postcapitalist intellectual”.

Bearing witness to the wake-differend’s of slavery.

How can one tell the story that can't be told, which must be told? M. NourbeSe Phillip's seminal poetry collection Zong! seeks to answer this pertinent question. Her answer through 'not telling'. This essay proposes a collation of the works of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard's The Differend with Christina Sharpe's In The Wake to bear witness to stories that cannot be told; by bearing witness to the wake-differend.