The Hopeful Reader

Episode 6 : Affect and the city 

In this episode we explore how space can be queered through fiction; through continuously recreating the affective dimensions of queer space, can fiction problematise the attempted containment, erasure or supposedly ‘temporary’ nature of queerness in public spaces? Inspired by works such as Call Me by Your Name, Young Mungo and Nevada, this episode considers the centrality of memories and past affective resonances to the materiality of space, as well as how existing in an affective bind between the anticipation of an ending and the promise of a (spatial) ‘otherwise’ shapes the rhythms and directions of queer mobility. 

References:

Aciman, A. (2017) Call me by your name. Bloomsbury: Atlantic Books.

Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. (2022) “Forms and Scenes of Attachment: A Cultural Geography of Promises”, Dialogues in Human Geography (online early).

Azzouz, A. and Catterall, P. (2021) Queering Public Space, Arup. [online] Available at: https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/queering-public-space 

Binnie, I. (2022) Nevada. London: Picador. 

Edelman, L. (2004) No future: Queer theory and the death drive. Durham: Duke University Press.

Kelaita, P. (2022) Tracks to gay elsewheres: cultural attachment and spatial imaginaries. cultural geographies 29(4), 531-545

Middleton, J. (2022) The walkable city: Dimensions of walking and overlapping walks of life. London: Routledge.

Results Day 2024 by @sammoirsmith available at: Samuel Moir-Smith (@sammoirsmith) • Instagram photos and videos

Stuart, D. (2023) Young Mungo. London: Picador. 

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Cyborg promises 

The possible pathways of the present digitally mediated moment are now shaped by the algorithms that govern our everyday lives - algorithms that are often imbued with oppressive technocapitalist values. If we are to broaden the potentiality of the present in radically transformative ways, do we need to relinquish digital tech entirely? Maybe…and yet, this is seemingly impossible in our cyborgian existence. In this episode we explore the promises that keep us attached to digital devices. Inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Ghost in the Machine’, we discuss how ‘hyper-relevant’ personalised online worlds enabled by intense surveillance keep us tied to the digital technologies that are both making everyday life into a crisis, and making it more bearable…

References: 

Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. (2022). Forms and Scenes of Attachment: A Cultural Geography of Promises. Dialogues in Human Geography, 13 (3), pp. 392-409.

Anderson, B. (2023). Media Promises: On Attachment and Detachment with Berlant. Media Theory, 7 (2), pp. 209–224. Available at: https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/580

Bucher, T. (2018). If…Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Darmody, A. & Zwick, D. (2020). Manipulate to Empower: Hyper-Relevance and the Contradictions of Marketing in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Big Data and Society. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720904112

Drage, E. & McInerney, K. (2024). The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. London: Bloomsbury.

Haraway, D. (1985) A cyborg manifesto. 

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press

Pedwell, C. (2022). Speculative Machines and Us: More-than-Human Intuition and the Algorithmic Condition. Cultural Studies, 38 (2), pp.188– 218.

Pedwell, C. (2023a). Intuition as a ‘Trained Thing’: Sensing, Thinking, and Speculating in Computational Cultures. Subjectivity, 30, pp. 348-372.

Winterson, J. (2024). The Night Side of the River. London: Jonathan Cape.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books Ltd.

Zwick, D. & Knott, J. D. (2009). Manufacturing Customers: The Database as New Means of Production. Journal of Consumer Culture, 9 (2).

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This episode is inspired by the novel, Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn (2020) - the protagonist’s experience of alexithymia enables us to see the world at a slant, disrupting normative affective genres in ways that open up the possibility of new forms of relationality…but at what cost? Using this book as a guide, we delve into Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore how hoping for an otherwise might keep us held in situations that are both life-threatening and life sustaining.

References:

Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. (2022) “Forms and Scenes of Attachment: A Cultural Geography of Promises”, Dialogues in Human Geography (online early).

Anderson, B. (2023) “Media Promises: On Attachment and Detachment with Berlant.” Media Theory, 7(2), 209–224. Retrieved from https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/580

Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Berlant, L. (2023) 'Poisonality' in The Affect Theory Reader 2 (eds Pedwell, C., Seigworth, G.J.), Durham: Duke University Press.

Berlant, L. (2022) The Inconvenience of Other People. Durham: Duke University Press. 

Lacey, C. (2021) Pew. London: Granta.

Sendra, P. & Sennett, R. (2022) Designing Disorder: experiments and disruptions in the city. London: Verso. 

Tartt, D. (1993) The Secret History 

Winterson, J. (1992) Written on the Body. London: Vintage International. 

Won-Pyung, S. (2020) Almond. Glasgow: Harper Collins.

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Past lives, perfect days? We heard you like film bros...

Sometimes, we might feel unbearably caught between the regret of a seemingly lost past and the future we (think we should) strive for - in this episode we reframe this space as 'the elliptical present', a place of possibility, somewhere to playfully experiment with alternative ways of life. "Now is now, next time is next time" - inspired by the movies 'Past Lives' and 'Perfect Days', we reflect upon how we might keep on living in this elliptical 'now' amidst the oppressive structures that organise our everyday lives and imagined futures. In a world that propels us towards the future, how might looking back - a glance to the past - keep open the possibility of going astray...

References: 

Past Lives (2023) - Directed by Celine Song

Perfect Days (2023) - Directed by Wim Wenders

Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. et al. (2023) “Encountering Berlant part one: Concepts otherwise”, The Geographical Journal, 189: 117–142.

Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Berlant, L. (2022) The Inconvenience of Other People. Durham: Duke University Press. 

Cope, W. (2023) 'The Orange' in The Orange and other poems. London: Faber & Faber.

Oliver, M. (2016) Upstream: Selected Essays. London: Penguin Press. 

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Waluigi boards, Virginia's Wolf and fields of corn...The erasure of queer lives in dominant written history works to streamline the potentiality of the present moment, in turn, straightening the possible futures we might imagine. And so, in queering linear temporality, we explore how works of fiction can enable queer ghosts - those erased histories - to broaden the imaginative possibilities of the present-futurity. In this episode we head back to Virginia Woolf's London in the 1920s and perambulate Mark Hyatt's soho in the 60s in search of queer ghosts, reading as a way to commune with those who have lived, loved and walked ;) outside of normativity.

References:

Ahmed S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press.

Anderson B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(2), 77–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005

Gordon, A. (1997) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Houlbrook, M. (2006) Queer London: Perils and pleasures in the sexual metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Hyatt, M. (2023) Love, Leda. London: Peninsula Press. 

Ingold, T. (2007, 2016) Lines. Abingdon: Routledge Classics

Ingold, T. (2015) The Life of Lines. Abingdon: Routledge

Jones, A. (2013) A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Munt, S (1995) 'The Lesbian Flaneur' in Mapping Desire. London: Routledge

Muñoz, J. E. (2009) Cruising Utopia: the then and there of queer futurity. New York: NYU Press.

Parlett, J. (2022) The poetics of cruising: queer visual culture from Whitman to Grindr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Turner, M. (2003) Backward Glances: Cruising the queer streets of New York and London. London: Reaktion Books.

Woolf, V. (1925) Mrs Dalloway. London: Bloomsbury. 

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Welcome to The Hopeful Reader Podcast! In this introductory episode Eve and Finola discuss how works of fiction can act as a source of creative moral and political vision - a portal to another world. The Hopeful Reader views fiction as a way to create and inhabit alternative world imaginaries from within the confines of normativity. This episode delves into the importance of imagination as well as thinking about fiction as a method of ‘slow refusal’.  

References: 

Anderson, B. (2006) ‘Becoming and being hopeful: towards a theory of affect’ Society and Space. 24(5)

Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. North Carolina: Duke University Press. 

Berlant, L. (2021) On the Inconvenience of Other People. North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Benjamin, R. (2024) Imagination: A manifesto. New York: WW Norton & Co. 

Bown, A. (2022) Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships. London: Pluto Press.

Timperley, C. (2024) ‘Be Here Now: Feminist futures as present’ Feminist Review. 136(1). 

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