Working Criteria [Issue #5]

The theme of the upcoming issue is:

DEAD FUTURES

Selections will be made based on the following criteria:

a) Theme-appropriate yet thematically over-arching
b) Self-reflexive
c) Critical of metaphor, especially in the case of inter/transdisciplinary concepts
and generally,
d) Rigorous
e) Strange…/Subversive…./Destabilizing…

"In time we will demand the impossible in order to wrestle, from it that which is possible, In time the streets will claim me without apology, In time I will be right to say that there are no stories... in the riots only the ghosts of other stories." *

Critical essays will make up the majority of the issue.

We are especially attuned to contributions with these features:

SPECULATIVE

HAUNTOLOGICAL

NOSTALGIC

What motivates this publication you ask? Influenced by schizoanalysis as a method of subverting progressive liberal politics, its language, and its academics, we aim to incite others who suffer forced assimilation of their alterities into expressing their singularity transversally.

We looked to past conceptions of melancholia. Now we are looking to the future, by way of the past. A future that was, but is no longer, or what Bifo Berardi calls the “post-future.”

Our post-Covid world has lost futures––both idyllic and dystopic. These futures are now “dead” yet haunt us … the aesthetics of the future now intonate a nostalgia for the past. What were our futuristic expectations in February of 2020?

This issue has suggested reading for all potential contributors. Attached are three short readings that need not be directly referred to in your work. It can be a point of inspiration, not reference. We are currently accepting submissions.

We are looking for essays, visual, and multi-media submissions. Accepted submissions will generate a $20 gratuity to the collaborator. Collaborators as always receive 2 complimentary copies.

These are the texts:

Mark Fisher’s “What is Hauntology?”

Deleuze’s “Immanence: A Life” from Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life

Byung-Chul Han’s “The Tiredness Virus”

*Homi K. Bhabi’s “DissemiNation” in Nation and Narration

"Transversality is a dimension that strives to overcome two impasses… [and] tends to be realized when maximum communication is brought about between different levels and above all in terms of different direction."

Félix Guattari, Psychanalyse et transversalité (1972)

If you have any comments or questions or would like to collaborate, please email us at transversals.journal@gmail.com. We are based in Buffalo, NY and Binghamton, NY.