Abstracts
Abstract
The child-future join is pervasive in childhood studies and popular culture. Instead of disavowing the relation, I consider what might be generated if we “stay with the trouble” of its cocomposition in the making of worlds. To do so, I turn to a zombie child named Melanie from The Girl with All the Gifts to grapple with how the end of the world might not be a cause for mourning, how fiery landscapes can allow for species regeneration, and how viruses might incite counternarratives of community amid contagion.
Keywords:
- child figures,
- speculative fiction,
- anti-Blackness,
- apocalypse,
- survival,
- virus,
- regeneration,
- fire
Appendices
Bibliography
- Alkebulan, P. (2012). Survival pending revolution: The history of the Black Panther Party. University of Alabama Press.
- Baldwin, A. (2016). Premediation and white affect: Climate change and migration in critical perspective. Transactions, 41, 78–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12106
- Barnsley, V. (2010). The child/the future. Feminist Theory, 11(3), 323–30. https://philpapers.org/rec/BARRAT-21
- Benjamin, R. (2016). Racial fictions, biological facts: Expanding the sociological imagination through speculative methods. Catalyst, 2(2), 1–28. https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/28798
- Benjamin, R. (2018, July 16). Black afterlives matter: Cultivating kinfulness as reproductive justice. Boston Review. http://bostonreview.net/race/ruha–benjamin–black–afterlives–matter
- Bernstein, R. (2011). Racial innocence: Performing American childhood from slavery to civil rights. NYU Press.
- Brown, S. (2017, July 25). The Girl With All the Gifts is a nightmare for white supremacy. RaceBaitR. https://racebaitr.com/2017/07/25/girl-gifts-nightmare-white-supremacy/
- Carey, M. R. (2014). The girl with all the gifts [ePUB]. Orbit.
- CBC Kids News. (2020, April 9). Justin Trudeau saying “speaking moistly” is so cringey it spawned a viral remix. https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/justin-trudeau-speaking-moistly-is-so-cringey-it-spawned-a-viral-remix
- Cecire, N. (2015). Environmental innocence and slow violence. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 43(1&2), 164–180. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43958483
- Chakravorty, M. (2020, July 19). Science fiction explores the interconnectedness revealed by the coronavirus pandemic. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/science-fiction-explores-the-interconnectedness-revealed-by-the-coronavirus-pandemic-139021
- Clooney, G. (2020, June 1). America’s greatest pandemic is anti-Black racism. The Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/george-clooney-on-the-murder-of-george-floyd-americas-greatest-pandemic-is-anti-black-racism
- Colebrook, C. (2017, November 6). Fragility, globalism, and the end of the world [Video file]. Presentation at the Shulman Lectures in Science and the Humanities, Yale University, Princeton, NJ, November 6. https://youtu.be/_lOQpyu84WA
- Colebrook, C. (2019). The future in the Anthropocene: Extinction and the imagination. In A. Johns-Putra (Ed.), Climate and literature (pp. 263–280). Cambridge University Press.
- Dancy, T. E. (2014). The adultification of Black boys. In K. J. Fasching-Varner, R. E. Reynolds, K. A. Albert, & L. Martin (Eds.), Trayvon Martin, race, and American justice: Teaching race and ethnicity (pp. 49–55). Sense.
- Dillon, G. (Ed.). (2012). Walking the clouds: An anthology of Indigenous science fiction. The University of Arizona Press.
- Dimaline, C. (2017). The marrow thieves. Cormorant Books.
- Dumas, M., & Nelson, J. (2016). (Re)imagining Black boyhood: Toward a critical framework for educational research. Harvard Educational Review, 86, 27–47. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.17763/0017-8055.86.1.27
- Eriksen, C., & Ballard, S. (2020). Alliances in the Anthropocene: Fire, plants, and people. Springer Nature.
- Flynn, A. (2020, April 27). What are the viral pedagogies fit for these times of COVID-19 {Microblog]? Common Worlds Research Collective. http://commonworlds.net/what-are-the-viral-pedagogies-fit-for-these-times-of-covid-19/
- Gay, R. (2020, May 30). Remember, no one is coming to save us. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/trump-george-floyd-coronavirus.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
- Gergen, M., Smith, S., & Vasudevan, P. (2018). Earth beyond repair: Race and apocalypse in collective imagination. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818756079
- Guterres, A. [@antonioguterres]. (2020, May 7). #COVID19 does not care who we are, where we live, or what we believe [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/antonioguterres/status/1258613180030431233?s=20
- Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Routledge.
- Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
- Hartman, S. (2016). The belly of the world: A note on Black women’s labors. Souls, 18(1), 166–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/10999949.2016.1162596
- Hill, K. (2013, June 25). The fungus that reduced humanity to the last of us [Blog]. Scientific American. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/the-fungus-that-reduced-humanity-to-the-last-of-us/
- Hurley, J., & Jemisin, N. K. (2018). An apocalypse is a relative thing: An interview with N. K. Jemisin. ASAP/Journal, 3(3), 467–477. https://doi.org/10.1353/asa.2018.0035
- Imarisha, W., & Maree, B. A. (Eds.). (2015). Octavia’s brood: Science fiction stories from social justice movements. AK Press.
- IMDb (Internet Movie Database). (2016). The girl with all the gifts: Did you know? IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/
- James, J. (2013). Concerning violence: Frantz Fanon’s rebel intellectual in search of a black cyborg. South Atlantic Quarterly, 112(1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-1891233
- Jemisin, N. K. (2015). The fifth season. Orbit.
- Joo, H–J. (2018). Race, disaster, and the waiting room of history. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 38(1), 72–90. http://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818774046
- King, T. L. (2019). The Black shoals: Offshore formations of Black and Native studies. Duke University Press.
- Kirksey, S. E., Shapiro, N., & Brodine, M. (2013). Hope in blasted landscapes. Social Science Information, 52(2), 228–256. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0539018413479468
- Kupferman D., & Gibbons, A. (Eds.). (2019). Childhood, science fiction, and pedagogy: Children ex machina. Springer.
- Kraftl, P. (2020). After childhood: Re-thinking environment, materiality, and media in children’s lives. Routledge
- Ladson-Billings, G. (2011). Boyz to men? Teaching to restore Black boys’ childhood. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 14, 7–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.531977
- McCarthy, C. (Producer), & Carey, M. (Writer). (2016). The girl with all the gifts [Film]. BFI.
- McDevitt, N. (2020, May 14). COVID-19 Q&A: Sandra Hyde on the rise of racism during pandemic. McGill Reporter. https://reporter.mcgill.ca/covid-19-qa-sandra-hyde-on-the-rise-of-racism-during-pandemic/
- Mitchell, A., & Chaudhury, A. (2020). Worlding beyond “the” “end” of “the world”: White apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms. International Relations, 34(3), 309–332. https://doi.org/10.11770047117820948936
- Morrison, A. (2016, November 15). Black Lives Matter Global Network’s statement of the election of Donald Trump. https://www.mic.com/articles/159496/exclusive-black-lives-matter-issues-a-statement-on-trump-s-election#.5zuNat29p
- Nyong’o, T. (2015). Little monsters: Race, sovereignty, and queer inhumanism in Beasts of the Southern Wild. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2–3), 249–272. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2843335
- Okorafor, N. (2011). Who fears death. Penguin.
- Plumwood, V. (2008). Shadow places and the politics of dwelling. Australian Humanities Review, 44, 139–150. http://doi.org/10.22459/AHR.44.2008
- Povinelli, E. (2013, January 14). Potentiation and extinguishment [Video file]. Presentation at London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=1701
- Povinelli, E. (2014). The four figures of the Anthropocene. Plenary presentation at Anthropocene Feminism conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, MI, April 10.
- Povinelli, E. (2016). Geontologies: A requiem to late liberalism. Duke University Press.
- Pyne, S. (2015). Fire age. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/how-humans-made-fire-and-fire-made-us-human
- Pyne, S. (2019, November). The planet is burning. Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/the-planet-is-burning-around-us-is-it-time-to-declare-the-pyrocene
- Racebending.com. (2011, February 23). What is “racebending”? https://racebending.tumblr.com/what-is-racebending
- Reddit AMA & Carey, M. R. (2016). The Reddit AMA (Ask me anything) session. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4koz6p/hi_reddit_im_author_mrcarey_ask_me_anything/
- Schwetz, K. (2020, March 18). Apocalyptic fiction helps us deal with the anxiety of the coronavirus pandemic. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/apocalyptic-fiction-helps-us-deal-with-the-anxiety-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-133682
- Sellers, M. (2013). Young children becoming curriculum: Deleuze, Te Whāriki, and curricular understandings. Routledge.
- Shadow Places Network. (n.d.). A manifesto for shadow places. https://www.shadowplaces.net/manifesto
- Sharpe, C. (2016). In the wake: On Blackness and being. Duke University Press.
- Sheldon, R. (2016). The child to come: Life after the human catastrophe. University of Minnesota.
- Shotwell, A. (2020, May 5). The virus is a relation [Blog]. Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action. https://uppingtheanti.org/blog/entry/the-virus-is-a-relation
- Smith, A. (2010). Queer theory and Native studies: The heteronormativity of settler colonialism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 42–68. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/372444
- Swanson, H. A., Bubandt, N., & Tsing, A. L. (2015). Less than one but more than many: Anthropocene as science fiction and scholarship-in-the-making. Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 6, 149–166. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2015.060109
- Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the natures of childhood. Routledge.
- Taylor, A. (2017). Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene. Environmental Education Research, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2017.1325452
- Taylor, A. (2020). Wildfire provocations: Re-igniting conservations about ‘shadow places and the politics of dwelling’ across ravaged settler colonized lands. Keynote presentation at Responding to Ecological Challenges with/in Contemporary Childhoods: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Climate Pedagogies, Western University, London, ON, February 2.
- Tennant, Z. (2020, April 9). “Our stories give us a lot of guidance”: Daniel Heath Justice on why Indigenous literatures matter. Unreserved. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/why-stories-matter-now-more-than-ever-1.5526331/our-stories-give-us-a-lot-of-guidance-daniel-heath-justice-on-why-indigenous-literatures-matter-1.5527999
- Theriault, Y. (2020, March 19). Margaret Atwood, Waubgeshig Rice and Daniel Kalla share their pandemic reading lists. As It Happens. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.5502954/margaret-atwood-waubgeshig-rice-and-daniel-kalla-share-their-pandemic-reading-lists-1.5502962
- Tsing, A. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalistic ruins. Princeton University Press.
- Tuck, E, & Yang, W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630
- Vargas, J. C., & James, J. (2013). Refusing blackness-as-victimization: Trayvon Martin and the Black cyborgs. In J. Jones & G. Yancy (Eds.), Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical contexts and contemporary manifestations of racial dynamics (pp. 193–205). Lexington Books.
- Vint, S. (2013). Abject posthumanism: Neoliberalism, biopolitics, and zombies. In M. Levina & D. T. Bui (Eds.), Monster culture in the 21st century: A reader (pp. 134–146). Bloomsbury.
- Wade, A. G. (2017). ‘New genres of being human’: World making through viral blackness. The Black Scholar, 47(3), 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2017.1330108
- Wald, P. (2008). Contagious: Cultures, carriers, and the outbreak narrative. Duke University Press.
- Weheliye, A. (2014). Habeas viscus: Racializing assemblages, biopolitics, and Black feminist theories of the human. Duke University Press.
- Weisberger, M. (2017, March 3). Meet a new kind of zombie in the film the girl with all the gifts. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/58096–zombie–science–girl–with–all–the–gifts–movie.html
- Weisman, A. (2007). The world without us. St Martins.
- Wendle, J. (2016, April 18). Animals rule Chernobyl three decades after nuclear disaster. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/
- Wilderson, F. B., III. (2010). Red, white & Black: Cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms. Duke University Press.
- Wilderson, F. B., III. (2015). Afro-pessimism and the end of redemption. Humanities Futures. Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University. https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/afro-pessimism-end-redemption/
- Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
- Yusoff, K. (2016). Anthropogenesis: Origins and endings in the Anthropocene. Theory, Culture & Society, 33(2), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.11770263276415581021
- Zalasiewicz, J. (2008). The earth after us: What legacy will humans leave in the rocks? Oxford University Press.
- Ziyad, H. (2017a). Playing “outside” in the dark: Blackness in a postwhite world. Critical Ethnic Studies, 3(1), 143–161. https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.3.1.0143
- Ziyad, H. (2017b, July 19). The girl with all the gifts and Black girls destroying the world to save themselves. Black Youth Project. http://blackyouthproject.com/girl–gifts–black–girls–destroying–world–save/