Surviving the Future

Recent writing from radical queer activism and revolutionary queer theory forms the core of this anthology. Set against a new pandemic and a wave of worldwide uprisings, its contributors move away from stories of liberal optimism and build networks of resistance and mutual care instead. The essays argue for a combative approach to queer survival in a future that remains unstable. They begin from abolition: of prisons, of policing, of the state, of identity itself, and of a racist, cisheteronormative social order. Rather than seek admission into a system that treats them as disposable, the writers refuse it.

The book contrasts this with mainstream media, which offers a narrow and predictable picture of queer representation, recently centered on trans visibility. The contributors set that picture aside and imagine collective liberation, telling other stories, building alternate worlds, and rejecting the inheritances of racial capitalism, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism. Topics include Black queer life during COVID-19 and uprising, assimilation and pinkwashing in settler colonial projects, subversive and deviant forms of representation, and the building of anarchist trans and queer infrastructures, among other subjects.

The collection, credited to Shuli Branson, gathers the work of Zuri Arman, Ryan Becker, Wriply Marie Bennet, Raxtus Bracken, Scott Branson, Beth Bruch, Scott Chalupa, Yold Yolande Delius, aems dinunzio, Zaria El-Fil, emet ezell, Amalia Golomb-Leavitt, Che Gossett, Raven Hudson, Jonesy and Jaime Knight, Cassius Kelly, Sandra Y.L. Korn, Stasha Lampert, Toshio Meronek, Yasmin Nair, Mimi Thi Nguyen, E Ornelas, Darian Razdar, Bry Reed, Adrian Shanker, Kitty Stryker, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Jamie Theophilos, and Rebecca Valeriano-Flores.