Inhyar (Breakdown): Poethics of Dissonance and Disorder in Feminist and Queer Arab* Art

On behalf of the Cultural Research and Practice Lab, Dalia Davoudi and Shayla Lawz invite you to a talk by Shirine Saad on the Poethics of Dissonance and Disorder in Feminist and Queer Arab* Art.

Poethics of decolonial resistance are a potent attack on Western systems of knowledge and power, a deployment of anarchic tactics targeting all dominant forms. In a decolonial, feminist, queer global solidarity movement, glitch, noise and failure echo the terror of necropolitics, recycle remnants from the wreckage, and alchemize waste into “other ways of knowing and doing, existing otherwise” (Denise Ferreira da Silva), demanding the return of everything. The breakdown is a feminist, queer tool of rebellion and experimentation, a new rhythm of life amidst total violence.

We will look at various forms of resistance in interdisciplinary feminist and queer cultural movements from the Arab* world and diaspora to trace the interconnected maps of struggle and insurgence infiltrating empire, articulating demands from the frontlines of the uprisings, deploying the cyborg poet and “queer ballistic body” (Jasbir Puar) as a disassemblage, a movement of disorder and upheaval.

These poethics mess up lethal Western ontology, phenomenology, metaphysics, and epistemologies, upsetting time and space in a reclaiming of alternative cycles and ecologies after the end of the world. As technodystopias ravage the living, the poet and martyr stands on the edge, chanting, steadfast and defiant, forever rooted into the land.