Description
Book SynopsisIn
Poetic Operations artist and theorist micha cárdenas considers contemporary digital media, artwork, and poetry in order to articulate trans of color strategies for safety and survival. Drawing on decolonial theory, women of color feminism, media theory, and queer of color critique, cárdenas develops a method she calls algorithmic analysis. Understanding algorithms as sets of instructions designed to perform specific tasks (like a recipe), she breaks them into their component parts, called operations. By focusing on these operations, cárdenas identifies how trans and gender-non-conforming artists, especially artists of color, rewrite algorithms to counter violence and develop strategies for liberation. In her analyses of Giuseppe Campuzano''s holographic art, Esdras Parra''s and Kai Cheng Thom''s poetry, Mattie Brice''s digital games, Janelle Monáe''s music videos, and her own artistic practice, cárdenas shows how algorithmic analysis provide
Trade Review“In this beautifully written book, micha cárdenas directs us to look at how the algorithm, as analytic and praxis, holds the possibility of trans of color survival. Deftly moving across numerous geographies, texts, and fields of inquiry,
Poetic Operations is a bold contribution to trans of color studies.” -- C. Riley Snorton, author of * Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity *
“micha cárdenas’s powerful new work extends intersectionality as a mode for understanding the relationships between race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other axes of power, oppression, and resistance. Doing important theoretical and analytical work in its analysis of trans of color media arts practice,
Poetic Operations will be useful for those working in media studies, digital studies, trans studies, and art history, as well as anyone interested in interrogating power.” -- Sasha Costanza-Chock, author of * Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need *
"
Poetic Operations is arguably the first major academic work to deal with the subject matter in such detail. How cárdenas uses the term will likely become the standard by which other engagements with the term are measured.” -- Sofie Vlaad * Journal of Critical Race Inquiry *
“Importantly, this book models theory developed from and for trans of color existence and models how scholars must critically reflect on how our theories have ramifications for people’s lives. . . .
Poetic Operations provides methods for analysis and design that invite exciting and innovative projects that engage in decolonial trans of color survival and celebration.” -- Shano (Hongyuan) Liang and Michael Anthony DeAnda * Lateral *
“cárdenas explores digital media, speculative design and technology, performance and visual arts, coding, activism, theory, games, and poetry across the geographies of the Americas and beyond, along with a deep self-reflective engagement with her own practice-based projects. . . . Centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx trans and travesti voices,
PoeticOperations offers critical approaches to deploy digital technologies for decolonial futures.” -- Nishant Upadhyay * American Quarterly *
"
Poetic Operations is a clear, well-written, and creative first- and third-person account of trans of color existence in written, digital, and performed avenues of praxis. Ultimately, cárdenas provides a useful model of algorithms, exposing this tool as a survival method used by trans people for centuries and how it continues to prevent violence and provide safety and security for contemporary communities everywhere." -- Riana Slyter * Women's Studies in Communication *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Algorithmic Analysis 1
1. Trans of Color Poetics 26
2. The Decolonial Cut 43
3. The Shift 72
4. The Experience of Shifting 96
5. The Stitch 129
Conclusion. Visionary Trans of Color Futures 167
Notes 179
Bibliography 203
Index 213
