By Steven Beardsley
I finished Benjamin’s manifesto rather quickly, so I decided to read Hindi’s poetry for my own work. I felt that being able to “dance” with both of them was both an inspiring but also really important for me as I’ve been grappling with how to not only imagine otherwise (something I’ve been doing my whole life) but how to imagine otherwise with my colleagues, friends, students, family, etc. I felt an especially deep connection both to Benjamin’s radical refusal of a eugenic imaginary as well as her attention to doing so through feminist technoscience and technofuturity through Black and Indigenous futurisms. I was also inspired by Hindi’s reflections on the violent act of reporting and the limits of language but also the refusal to use metaphors in creative writing that elide racial difference as well as the violent erasure of Palestinian Americans and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In other words, it was a beautiful experience and gave me a lot of ideas for both what I hope to continue doing and what I hope to share with my students, colleagues, friends, and family.
Title: Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin; Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. by Noor Hindi
Hours read: 3