Against All Authority May 14, 2017
Posted by Summerspeaker in Ageism, Anarchism, Feminism, Queer politics.add a comment
¡Sin excepciones! No exceptions. Regardless of sentimentality, freedom means unmaking parental authority along with all other social hierarchies. The nuclear family serves as a practical and conceptual basis for oppression. I remain drawn to Shulamith Firestone’s thought in part because of how ey identified this dynamic.
Superhero Comics Are Reactionary Bullshit October 4, 2012
Posted by Summerspeaker in Ageism, Science Fiction, Transhumanism.1 comment so far
I were it were otherwise. I type this with The Amazing Spider-Man yet lingering in my mind, but the claim applies to most if not all of the genre. I wouldn’t have thought Hollywood could surpass sixties comics in this department, but they managed to make the Spider-Man story even more politically pernicious than in its origins. That’s an impressive feat. So much for the progress narrative! While some folks who steal from convenience stores might indeed murder your uncle if ey gets in the way, many/most wouldn’t. By conditioning fear of criminals alongside respect for bourgeois property and the police, the film supports the worst horrors of modernity. It additionally portrays transhumanist goals within the well-worn trope of the mad scientist. I won’t even go into the heteronormativity. Yuck. These folks and people like Alvaro are the real superheroes. Do any comics have trans/queer leads who fight cops/straights instead of criminals?
Death to All Authority Includes Parents and Scientists September 4, 2012
Posted by Summerspeaker in Ageism, Anarchism, Queer politics, Transhumanism.7 comments
This recent post and comment thread on cryonics over at Dale’s blog starkly illustrates how invested queer and feminist academics can be in disciplinary credentials, respectability, seriousness, and ageism. Molecular biologist Athena Andreadis positions eirself as an expert capable dispensing truth and dispelling the myths of the frozen-head cult. Tellingly, ey denigrates eir transhumanist opponents by invoking the universally idealized yet despised figure of the child. According to both Dale and Athena, being a kid precludes one from a seat at the table of rationality. For example, Athena has “little stomach for watching adults pee themselves in public and proudly point at the stain” and no desire “to arm-wrestle with a tantrumizing five-year old.” Read through Shulamith Firestone’s lucid critique of childhood as a category of systematic oppression, such rhetoric amounts to hate speech. In practice I struggle alongside folks with politics akin to Dale’s – and worse – on a regular basis, but my brand of queer anarchism rejects the pernicious hierarchies they support. Our dreams are ultimately incompatible. Scholars may not be the wisest target at these stage of the game – though they are one of my favorites, given my position in the Imperial Academy – but we’ll have to come for them sooner or later.
Queering the Singularity 