Queer futures – expanding the knowledge base of futures studies
摘要截稿:
全文截稿: 2024-10-30
影响因子: 2.769
期刊难度:
CCF分类: 无
Overview
Guest editors
Ludwig WehFraunhofer IMW Center for International Management and Knowledge Economics, Leipzig, Germanyludwig.weh@imw.fraunhofer.de
Dr. Jayne FleenerNorth Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USAfleener@ncsu.edu
Special issue information:
Practices of queering, weirding, making strange are advancing prior efforts of the futures field to expand its knowledge base towards more diverse epistemologies and methodologies. Besides solidifying the theoretical substantiation of the field in ongoing discourse, queer futures and queer futuring yield alternative ways of future-making and invite the inclusion of wider status groups both in the futures community and as addressees and clients of its research and consulting services.
In this sense, the motivation for this special issue roots in the traditionally contested nature of futures knowledge and builds on recent discourse about the development of the futures field:
Trans: in the 2022 Anticipation Conference, committee member Cynthia Selin reiterated her argument for transdisciplinary, trans-sectoral, transtemporal, transformative, transgressive and transformational field-building efforts with permeable boundaries and adaptive and inclusive mindsets.
Weird: preposterous and postnormal futures exploring weird worlds to come – among others, Dator (2022), Sardar & Sweeney (2016) and Sweeney (2017) have diagnosed ‘global weirding’ and encouraged futurists to work on the unthinkable, continuously stretching their scopes beyond the presently conceivable “where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent” (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993, 744).
Strange: Defamiliarizing social processes, habitual perception and ways of thinking, critical and speculative design methods employ ‘making strange’ for disruptive thinking and envisioning of radically new solutions (Bell et al., 2005). Similar concepts have been adopted in critical futures studies as estrangement, uncanniness or uncommon futures.
Queer: Fleener & Coble (2022, 1) introduce queer futuring as a way of critical futures research “to decolonize, delegitimize and disrupt hegemonic and categorical thinking and social structures”, while Brooks et al. (2021) emphasize the liberating character of queer futures work with reference to marginalized knowledges upheld in queer and non-White/non-Western communities.
‘Queerness’ as a noun refers in this context to the nonconformity of people and their images of the future with respect to dominant status groups and their normative worldviews: “[q]ueerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring […] beyond the quagmire of the present” (Muñoz, 2019, 1). ‘Queer’ as an adjective denotes queer futures as related images which challenge the epistemologies, positionalities and cultural values inherent to predominant images of the future. ‘Queering’ as a verb highlights the performativity of queer futuring or ‘doing queerness’ as an emerging form of critical futures-thinking and -making.
In this sense, queering the future challenges normativity of any kind and the basis on which categories are constructed (Star, 2002) in future-related knowledge production. Aligning with the theme of the 2023 World Futures Studies Federation conference on ‘Exploring Liminalities’, queer futures are probing limitations, boundaries, margins and liminalities of futures studies. As an ongoing discourse and negotiation process, queer futuring explores hybrid and continuous pathways between established futures practices and ‘not-yet’ known and materialized ways of researching the future (Adam, 2008; Bell & Olick, 1989; Muñoz, 2019; Slaughter, 1998).
This special issue invites queer and non-queer scholars alike to reflect, but not limit their contributions to these points of interest:
Practices of queering, weirding, making strange in future-related knowledge production: project examples, frameworks, case studies, experiences and perspectives.
Queering established methodologies: applicability and benefits of emerging methods which are transforming, reframing, transcending critical, speculative, utopian thinking towards material-discursive engagements with alternative futures as embodied, entangled practices (Barad, 2015).
Expanding the knowledge base of futures studies: imaginations, anticipations, speculations about ‘not-here, not-yet’ ways of researching the future.
Queer ways of knowing and the nexus between queer theory and futures epistemology (Fleener, 2022; Muñoz, 2019; Yekani et al., 2016).
Alternative, such as queer-feminist perspectives on time, temporality and the performative materiality of future-related knowledge (Loewen Walker, 2014; Sardar 2021), and their implications for future(s) research as ‘future building’ activity (Gergen, 2015; Masini, 2006).
Inclusion and representation of queer status groups in futures studies and foresight.
Inclusion of marginalized groups and ways of knowing in futures studies, with particular attention to the sensitive relationship between historically dominant worldviews as in Western academic futures studies and disadvantaged knowledges as in Black, African, Queer, Feminist, Crip or Indigenous Futures (Brooks et al., 2021; Kafer, 2013; López & Coello, 2020; van Veen & Anderson, 2019).
Vulnerabilities, experiences of trauma, loss and grief informing queer futuring as in contested futures or counter-futures (Eshun, 2003).
Intercultural awareness and dialogue, intergenerational justice and post- / more-than-human reflexivity in futures studies.
Role of the self / futurists’ identities as fluid and ephemeral vantage point(s) and their relationality, reciprocity, becoming-with considered pasts-presents-futures (Dator, 2022).
Normativity, responsibility and ethics of care in futures research and practices (Adam & Groves, 2011; Fuller & Loogma, 2009).
Potentials and challenges of a further expanding and diversifying futures field in its structures, networks, communities, as well as its ways of knowing and (good) practices, communication and publication channels, outreach, external perception and field-/discipline-building efforts.