Embodying transnational queer Black and Brown utopia in alternative QTPOC nightlife spaces

This focus explores queer Black and Brown feminist and utopian politics as imagined in modern-day alternative nightlife spaces. This is done through case studies of the QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Colour) nightlife spaces of Queertopia by the Other Village People in Johannesburg, Misery Party and Pxssy Palace in London, and Papi Juice and BK Boihood in New York. These cities are particularly lifted up as spaces of Black and Brown resistance to white dominance and racial capital, even within LGBTQIA+ spaces that implicitly or explicitly do not cater to Black and Brown queers. Through these examinations, it is argued that queer feminists of colour are embodying queer utopia through parties that centre healing, mental health, ancestral faith practices, queer Black and Brown music and dance traditions, and spaces for activists and cultural workers to gather beyond mainstream bars and nightlife. By linking these practices to transnational resistance to racial capitalism and cisheterophobia, and by particularly catering to queer people of colour involved in social movement, resistance, and cultural organising work, these parties exist as experiments in Black and Brown transnational feminist practice. This article examines the bonds that organisers and attendees of these parties build with each other across borders, both in physical nightlife spaces as well as in digital spaces conducted during COVID-19 lockdowns that explicitly brought queer people of colour together to dance and dream transnationally. It ultimately argues that these nightlife spaces are practices of imagining the possibility of utopias where queer people of colour thrive beyond borders.

Embodying transnational queer Black and Brown utopia in alternative QTPOC nightlife spaces

This focus explores queer Black and Brown feminist and utopian politics as imagined in modern-day alternative nightlife spaces. This is done through case studies of the QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Colour) nightlife spaces of Queertopia by the Other Village People in Johannesburg, Misery Party and Pxssy Palace in London, and Papi Juice and BK Boihood in New York. These cities are particularly lifted up as spaces of Black and Brown resistance to white dominance and racial capital, even within LGBTQIA+ spaces that implicitly or explicitly do not cater to Black and Brown queers. Through these examinations, it is argued that queer feminists of colour are embodying queer utopia through parties that centre healing, mental health, ancestral faith practices, queer Black and Brown music and dance traditions, and spaces for activists and cultural workers to gather beyond mainstream bars and nightlife. By linking these practices to transnational resistance to racial capitalism and cisheterophobia, and by particularly catering to queer people of colour involved in social movement, resistance, and cultural organising work, these parties exist as experiments in Black and Brown transnational feminist practice. This article examines the bonds that organisers and attendees of these parties build with each other across borders, both in physical nightlife spaces as well as in digital spaces conducted during COVID-19 lockdowns that explicitly brought queer people of colour together to dance and dream transnationally. It ultimately argues that these nightlife spaces are practices of imagining the possibility of utopias where queer people of colour thrive beyond borders. © 2023 M. Bhardwaj.

Pandemic Lived Experience, Crip Utopias, and Dismodernist Revolutions: For a More-Than-Social Model of Disability

At its height, the Covid-19 pandemic dispersed across society a perception of bodyminded contingency that ushered in modes of "building community” that were unimaginable in pre-pandemic times, alongside an intensification of health and social inequalities. From the start, disabled people intervened on social media to stress the considerable extent to which the pre-pandemic knowledge derived from their lived experience, disability theory, and disability rights' organising could contribute both to the critique of how in pandemic times people were made differentially disposable and to the creation of new relationalities, mostly online, around the principle of accessibility. This article explores how a critical perspective rooted in the lived experience of disability builds on these interventions to excavate the role played by the lived experience of bodyminded contingency and vulnerability during the pandemic in generating a radical transformation of modes of living (together). First, it will suggest that this radical transformation powerfully resonated with the politics of accessibility associated with disability politics. It will do so by delineating the critical significance of commentary produced during the pandemic by disability theorists and activists, as well as the relationship between the perception of widespread bodyminded contingency and vulnerability and the development of "crip utopias of accessibility” and "dismodernist revo-lutions” during the pandemic. It will then locate this experiential spread of bodyminded contingency and vulnerability at the core of pandemic infrastructural sensibilities. I will conclude by reflecting on its relevance for the development of a "more-than-social” model of disability which attends to the crip world-making power of disability as fundamentally entangling the social and the biological. © 2023.

Pandemic – Utopia – Bioethics

Although it does not seem so at first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic did not make any fundamental changes, both in terms of the socio-economic framework of our actions and in terms of moral action. The reason for this lies primarily in the neglect of the utopian approach, which turned out to be necessary for looking at the socio-economic relations in the sphere of morality. Bioethics can provide a framework for such an in-depth moral questioning. I start this paper with the presentation of the attitude toward the pandemic, which remains within the parameters the inalterability of the world dogma. I then briefly ponder the notion of utopia and the concept of ‘degrowth’, the latter being an exemplary utopian approach to the human relationship toward the environment. Since the destructive attitude toward nature is the main cause of pandemic outbreaks, and both issues are of interest to bioethics, the latter should consider the attitude towards pandemics in a utopian way, primarily because the human destructiveness towards life stems primarily from the current socio-economic system. A characteristic of non-utopian thinking is that it neglects the reasons for the occurrence of certain moral conflicts, thus enabling it to be constantly perpetuated. As I try to show in the last part of the paper, the pluri-perspective methodology of integrative bioethics provides the tools to thwart this perpetuation. © 2022 University of Rijeka, Faculty of Medicine. All rights reserved.

Envisioning the futures of cultural tourism.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the future of tourism is a much-debated topic both in academic and non-academic circles with commentators expounding contrasting perspectives. This conceptual paper contributes to such debates and aims at envisioning plausible futures of cultural tourism, in particular. For that purpose, we first discuss cultural tourism trends and the future scenarios available in the literature. Then, we articulate three cultural tourism visions of the decades to come: a utopian, a dystopian and a heterotopian vision. Finally, we conclude that the heterotopian vision provides the most nuanced interpretation of the future of cultural tourism and we discuss the potential ramifications of such a vision.

Metaphysics of Company Towns: Space vs Time

The study examines the spatio-temporal model of "company town" and the peculiarity of Russian mono-settlements chronotope. In the context of the change of phases of the post-industrial era and transindustrialism, the features of the "continuum" as a space-time transition are considered. Taking into account the acceleration set by the coronavirus pandemic, the necessary change in the paradigm of attitude to company towns is correlated: from outdated - existing to progressive-realistic. The author emphasizes the importance of the evolution of productive forces, coupled with the city spatial development, while maintaining social organization, creating opportunities for economic independence, encouraging private initiative, real protection of rights and property, and the consistent development of real self-government.

El Sonidero de la Azotea: Performance, Utopia and Affects in Times of Confinement

The sonidero, a landmark in the Mexican festive landscape, represents both the mobile sound system and its owner and creator. This article examines the case of El Sonidero de la Azotea and the way in which it adapted to the restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It does this with a view to theorizing about the place of the utopian and the affective in contemporary physical and virtual performance. © 2022, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Colombia. All rights reserved.

El Sonidero de la Azotea: performance, utopía y afectos en tiempos de confinamiento

El sonidero, punto de referencia en el paisaje festivo mexicano, designa tanto al sistema de sonido ambulante como a su propietario y creador. Este artículo examina el caso de El Sonidero de la Azotea y la manera como se adaptó a las restricciones impuestas en respuesta a la pandemia del COVID-19, con el fin de teorizar sobre el lugar de lo utópico y de lo afectivo en la performance contemporánea física y virtual.Alternate : The sonidero, a landmark in the Mexican festive landscape, represents both the mobile sound system and its owner and creator. This article examines the case of El Sonidero de la Azotea and the way in which it adapted to the restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It does this with a view to theorizing about the place of the utopian and the affective in contemporary physical and virtual performance.Alternate : O sonidero, ponto de referência na paisagem festiva mexicana, designa tanto o sistema de som ambulante quanto seu proprietário e criador. Neste artigo, é analisado o caso do Sonidero de la Azotea e a maneira como ele se adaptou às restrições impostas em resposta à pandemia ocasionada pela covid-19, a fim de teorizar sobre o lugar do utópico e do afetivo na performance contemporânea física e virtual.

Diffusion of the utopias. The academy and the media in times of pandemic

At the end of the 20th century, the disappearance of the great utopias occurs. Crises are favorable moments to imagine better worlds. Social scientists and humanists - because of their knowledge of reality and its possibilities for change - are privileged to visualize the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity for change and transfer the orientation of change to all of society. This is a transcendental translation for the consolidation of utopia in the social imaginary. This work explores the rehabilitation of utopia in the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic's start by academics. Doing this identifies, classifies, and analyzes the specific proposals that these thinkers have published in the press to move towards a happy world. We note that the pandemic has not managed to rehabilitate the utopia and that the community's proposals for change are fragmented. We consider that this fragmentation is a symptom of micro-stories, which implies a shift towards micro-routes. However, medium-range utopias proliferate in which messages appear insistently and, in that sense, may be reflected in the social imaginary.

Peace education in times of Covid-19: Rethinking other kind of logic from the imagination, fantasy, creativity and utopia

This article aims to reflect on the challenges of peace education in times of Covid-19 global pandemic from a positive perspective, understood as a new opportunity for education to consider the teaching of how to make peace from our daily experiences;and in this way, humanity can forge a more peaceful future. In this task, the use of imagination, fantasy and creativity as educational resources will be revalued (Rodari 1976, 1995;Lederach 2007;Herrero and Vázquez 2018;Herrero 2019;García-González 2019). Likewise, utopia is proposed as that unknown horizon, still to come, that will show us, in the face of so many doubts and uncertainties, those possible scenarios which will motivate us to continue working for cultures of peace. This reflection starts from the Reconstructive-Empowering Peace Education approach that I have been proposing in my research as a member of the Interuniversity Institute of Social Development and Peace. © 2021 Departamento de Literatura Española-Universidad de Sevilla. All rights reserved.

Vanishing mediators in public health during COVID-19.

Public health interventions during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic aim to ensure that the lessons learned of the crises can prevent historical recurrences. Such interventions can mean vanishing mediators that must cater to a post-pandemic structure. Learning from large-scale political and scientific histories or advances-emancipatory projects, pandemic histories and vaccine developments-as well as individual agencies-physical activity and exercise-at the moment become crucial in rethinking and enacting utopian possibilities.

Solidarity in the Time of COVID-19?

This article critically examines how solidarity has been enacted in the first 2 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly, but not exclusively, from a United Kingdom perspective.1 Solidaristic strategies are framed in two ways: aspirations to overcome COVID-19 (utopian anthropocentric solidarity); and those that are illusory, incompatible, contradictory, and disrupting of solidaristic ideals (heterotopian solidarity). Solidarity can also be understood more widely from a biocentric perspective (solidarity with all life). In the context of COVID-19 a lack of biocentric solidarity points to a probable cause of the pandemic; where COVID-19, harmless in bats, jumped species as a consequence of closer contact with humans. Solidarity, therefore, is not only expressed in a fight against a viral "enemy" but is also a reminder of human activity that has upset balances within ecosystems.