Masters Thesis

Queer world making in the present: re-imagining hope as a modality of being

Queer World Making in the Present argues against both queer theorists who reject hope as anti-critical and also those who see utopian futurity as hope's only domain. I draw on women's letters to Goludev, a Kumaoni god of justice, to claim that the letters are ephemeral documents of daily resistance as well as evidence of a queer act - a "doing" of hope. I analyze Zhangke's fiction film Still Life (2006) and demonstrate that it proposes a vision of queer temporality where one can live in the present even while challenging the linearity of chronological time and the promissory pull of the future. Mary Zournazi's book, Hope: New Philosophies of Change, and its relation to 16th December Kranti, an anti-rape movement in India, illustrates that hope exists outside of the binary of optimism and pessimism, failure and success. 16th December Kranti offers us a vision of hope that exceeds personal desires to create a collectivity born of generosity. This project argues for the centrality of hope in a queer world making for the present.

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