In the dominant “climate change” imaginary, this phenomenon is distant and abstracted from our experiences of weather and the environment in the privileged West. Moreover, climate change discourse is saturated mostly in either neoliberal progress narratives of controlling the future or sustainability narratives of saving the past. Both largely obfuscate our implication therein. This paper proposes a different climate change imaginary. We draw on feminist new materialist theories—in particular those of Stacy Alaimo, Claire Colebrook, and Karen Barad—to describe our relationship (...) to climate change as one of “weathering.” We propose the temporal frame of “thick time”—a transcorporeal stretching between present, future, and past—in order to reimagine our bodies as archives of climate and as making future climates possible. In doing so, we can rethink the temporal narratives of climate change discourse and develop a feminist ethos of responsivity toward climatic phenomena. This project reminds us that we are not masters of the climate, nor are we just spatially “in” it. As weather-bodies, we are thick with climatic intra-actions; we are makers of climate-time. Together we are weathering the world. (shrink)

Rachel Loewen Walker's original study of Deleuze's theory of temporality critically expands our understanding of non-linear time through engagement with queer theory and new feminist materialisms. Walker draws on the notion of non-linear time in Deleuze's work to advance a conception of 'the living present' as a critical juncture through which new meanings and activism in the fields of feminism, environment, and queerness may be realised. Using literary texts by Jeanette Winterson, and philosophical texts by Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, (...) Walker reflects on monomythic stories about gender, sexuality, and identity in the context of rapid climate change, and posthumanist politics to tread new ground for Deleuzian studies of time. Speaking to and from feminist, queer, environmental, trans, and crip political movements, Walker uses Deleuze to argue for a 'lived present' which is both mutable and embodied. Such characteristics are presented as essential components in the construction of meaning that is not bound by a static present, past or future. Queer and Deleuzian Temporalities pinpoints the importance of feminist and queer theory to a critical re-evaluation of time. Through a wide-ranging analysis we are able to see how everyone is embedded within rather than outside of time, opening up the possibility for imagining and realising alternate futures both for ourselves and the environment. (shrink)

New York City has a long history of gentrification, well demonstrated by the strategies of “revitalization” and “re-development” that have occurred in Harlem throughout the last century. Less well known is the historical, political, and social context surrounding New York’s Pier 45, also known as the Christopher Street Pier. As a historically-known gathering spot for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, the Christopher Street Pier gained recognition for harbouring what could be described as a queer public . However, recent processes (...) of gentrification have changed Pier 45 into the Hudson River Park, ostensibly privatizing the site. With reference to Braidotti’s nomadic subject, this paper explores the Christopher Street Pier as a representation of queer geographies. Further, it argues that the re-appropriation of the once queer public space of Pier 45 exposes a municipal agenda of surveillance in relation to sexualized and racialized identities. Through reference to the activist practices of FIERCE, a local NGO, I show how the nomadic subjectivities of queer youth open up a discussion of ethical responsibility and point toward strategic movements of resistance in the face of gentrification in New York’s West Village. (shrink)