by Sole Anatrone & Julia Heim
With this article we invite the reader to participate in our multimediatic conversation about collaboration as a queer practice. We map out the ways working together can be generative through an elaboration of the queer theoretics of collaboration as a moving, living evolving archive. Through the example of our translation of Smagliature, a book written by several transnational transfeminist groups, we show how collective scholarly work done outside the university calls into question established practices and frameworks of academic legitimacy. We question the notion of individual idea-ownership as base currency for stability in the academic sphere, pushing back against pre-established normative, patriarchal lines of legitimacy that privilege certain modes of resource access and work production. The article makes use of the notions of queer kinship (Freeman), queer use (Ahmed), queer temporalities (Muñoz), queer assemblage (Puar), queer diffraction (Barad/Haraway) as a way to render visible the queer genealogy through which we position ourselves, and with which we actively collaborate, creating a transtemporal queer community of ideas. We discuss how this kind of collective space-building finds safety in the shadows of academia and helps to support marginalized voices in institutions of higher learning. The conversation also explores the potential for this particular moment within the United States—where we find ourselves at the intersection of pandemic shut downs and Black Lives Matter momentum—to open a fissure within the walls of academic visibility and legitimacy. We argue that current discussions about access to resources, and teaching and learning expectations, bring to light the implicit and explicit biases in our current academic value systems. Collaboration—as intellectual and professional work, and as a necessary component of affective care networks—has been particularly important in the face of these transformative events; our inter-university pedagogical initiatives and inclusivity workshops are examples of this kind of connectedness. When we make things together we become disruptive forces in our institutions; we are Deleuzian destructive desire machines with the power to create knowledge and affective communities at the same time. Through a self-reflexive interrogation of the practices that have come to shape our professional, political and personal positions and experiences, this dialogue serves as both a living biographical archive and call to action.