Masters Thesis

Queering time: the futurity of Jose Esteban Munoz in Monae's Dirty Computer

In Janelle Monae's long-form music video Dirty Computer, set in the near future, humans who differ from prescribed social norms are being arrested, branded "dirty computers," forced into compulsory heterosexuality and subjected to a cleansing process that deletes their memories. Monae plays one of these "dirty computers" that has been captured, but is actively resisting her erasure by projecting alternative timelines, possible futures along with the memories of her past on the playback screen for the technicians to see. By reading the projection of these alternative futures as potentialities, things that are present but don't actually exist in the present tense, we begin to see the futurity of Jose Esteban Munoz's enacted through the queering of time. I refer to these projections as emergences, potentialities that rise up and take physical form. This exploration is written in fragments, leaving space for multiple readings and crafted to remain open and exposed to the future.

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