Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Beyond Recognition
If we question the self as a self-determining subject that uses others as the occasion to
constituteitselfthroughself-reflection,thenwemightdevelopalternativestoconfession
and self-reflexivity as a means to dismantle white supremacy and settler colonialism.
Queer and indigenous futurities provide some possible directions because they question
the assumption that the goal of oppressed groups is to become recognized or to be be-
stowedhumanitywithinthecurrentsocialorder.Rather,thisworksuggeststhatourpro-
ject may be to disrupt the order itself. For instance, queer theorist Lee Edelman (2004)
contends futurity acts as a guarantor of the current oppressive social order that articu-
lates the Child as the anchor for reproductive futurity.
For politics, however radical the means by which specific constituencies attempt to
produce a more desirable social order, remains, at its core, conservative insofar is it
works to affirm a structure, to
authenticate
social order, which intends to transmit to the
future in the form of its inner Child. That Child remains the perpetual horizon of every
acknowledged politics, the fantasmic beneficiary of every political intervention. (2-3)
He contends that “queerness takes the side of those
not
fighting for the children …
the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of re-
productive futurism” (3). Of course there has been much critique, particularly queer of
color critique ofEdelman's call for“no future” as vacating any possibilities forsocial or
political transformation as well as being premised on a disavowed whiteness whose fu-
turity is not under threat (Munoz 2007). However, it may be possible to view his call as
beinglessaboutacallagainstfuturityandmoreaboutacalltoendthesocialorder.That
is,theproblemwefaceinstrugglingforsocialtransformationisthatwedosowithinthe
terms set by the current system. Consequently, our calls for a better future are necessar-
ily limited to the terms predetermined by the present. Hence a call for “no future” may
be described more accurately as a call to the end of our very grid of intelligibility that
does not allow us to conceptualize “another world” because to do so would simply be
another rearticulation of the current world. Thus it follows that under this analysis, one
wouldregardallpoliticalprogramswithsuspicion:“Politicalprogramsareprogrammed
to reify difference and thus to secure in the form of the future, the order of the same
”(Edelman 2004, 151).
Kara Keeling's (2009) work, while sharing much of this analysis, provides another
approach toward the symbolic order. A call for a “no future” or a complete end to polit-
ical programs tends to situate the “outside” of the social order as its opposite. That is,
when we try to imagine ourselves outside the current system, we often imagine it to be
the complete opposite of the current system. For instance, many Native activist and in-
tellectual projects often call for “decolonization.” While decolonization is an important
project for denaturalizing and thus dismantling the structures and logics of settler colo-
