This dissertation theorizes the synthesis of solidarities around queer embodied performativities as a mode of making-resistant the everyday experiences of exploitation under transnational capitalism. These solidarities, I argue, are cultivated around the affective, embodied experiences of what José Esteban Muñoz terms "queer time," which I extend to denote the ephemeral, experiential sensations of being "out of sync" with the structures and norms of capital-space-time power assemblages. I theorize "emulsion" as a heuristic for envisioning synthetic solidarities as making space and time for the importantly distinct experiences of queer spatio-temporalities of those at the various intersections of marginalized/minoritized identities to coagulate and coalesce into something new – at once remaining beautifully fragmented and becoming grotesquely amalgamated beyond distinction. I suggest that such trans-spatial/temporal/material solidarities, formed via antinormative performativities and the curation of "revolting archives," existent and not-yet-formed alike, can and indeed already do resist the totalizing and unplaceable ether of increasingly transnational capitalism across scales. This dissertation takes form and transdisciplinarity to be a part of the praxis/theory of cultivating such synthetic solidarities that confound the structures of capital-space-time. As such, I (gender)fuck with genre, and format throughout, interweaving theoretical and autotheoretical writing with prose, poetics, and altered text to create a visceral sense of disruption of spatiotemporality in not only content, but the affective experience of reading the piece itself. This dissertation thus moves across disciplines via a theoretical constellation of critical scholarship including affect theory, queer theory, (neo)Marxist theory, Black feminist theory, post- and de-colonial theory, disability theory, and transnational feminism. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this dissertation, I attend to two primary concerns: first, the ways in which the power structures of transnational capitalism are fundamentally affective in nature, such that they act unevenly on and are accordingly felt/sensed/experienced unevenly by embodied subjects through processes of exploitation, subjugation, and marginalization necessary to maintain and perpetuate capitalist structures; and secondly, the ways in which emergent movements attempting to resist structures of global capitalism/the effects thereof have failed to do so, in that the most marginalized have been continuously, violently excluded from those same movements which (cl)aim to include them, or be in solidarity with them, all under some unilateral and exclusionary notion of "we/us." This dissertation works with a curated collection affect theory, queer theory, auto-theory (neo)Marxist theory, Black feminist theory, post- and de-colonial theory, disability theory, and transnational feminism to theorize transnational capitalism as always already affective and embodied, an important dimension of global power structures that has been left largely unaddressed in global politics/international studies. I argue that global capitalism itself is comprised of linear capital-space-time power assemblages which act to exploit embodied subjects – disproportionately acting on/experienced by historically marginalized and minoritized bodies – across scale, space, and time in order to maintain itself and ensure its perpetuation into futurity. I take particular interest in the affective/sensed, everyday, varied lived experiences of nonlinearity by subjugated bodies – theorized in this project as an expanded notion of "queer time" as conceived of by José Esteban Muñoz – by the most marginalized under those structures, and further argue using playfulness with form and the heuristic of emulsification that those affective experiences of queer spatiotemporalities can be taken up as that around which meaningful, resistant solidarities under global capitalism can be synthesized.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/118072 |
Date | 20 February 2024 |
Creators | Tepper, Madison Jeanette |
Contributors | Political Science, Caraccioli, Mauro J., Labuski, Christine, Baldwin, Andrea N., Commer, Carolyn, Britt, Brian M. |
Publisher | Virginia Tech |
Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Dissertation |
Format | ETD, application/pdf |
Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
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