ACS Virtual Lecture Series talk by Sean Johnson Andrews (Columbia College Chicago), titled ‘The Rearticulation of Hegemonic Safe Space: Emotional Subjects, Hashtag Activism, and The Revolt of the Disinterpellated’, September 22nd, 2022.

https://archive.org/details/andrews-rearticulation-of-hegemonic-safe-space

This talk draws from a longer work in progress, which develops a theoretical framework of subjectivity in an attempt to better conceptualize the waves of online social movements that have transformed U.S. cultural politics over the last decade: #BLM, #MeToo, #MarchForOurLives, not to mention the rise of the #altright and others. By putting James Martell’s recent work on “misinterpellation,” which builds off of Althusser’s original notion of “interpellation,” in conversation with Judith Butler, José Esteban Muñoz, Karen and Barbara Fields, and Stuart Hall, this framework synthesizes key elements of Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Cultural Studies, to better highlight the function of trauma and repression in the contemporary social formation, the way our “denotative casting” implies the subjectivities and identities we are forced to perform, and the way that contemporary social movements are attempting to rearticulate what I am calling “hegemonic safe space.” Hegemonic safe space captures the emotional and affective dimensions of the very political and social fact that a straight, white, cis-gendered male like the speaker is not only especially insulated from the everyday triggers and traumas of this society, but that insulation effectively relies upon the unearned labors of deference on the part of those “disinterpellated” into non-preferred categories of subjectivity. On the other hand, as Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò points out, the “Elite Capture” of identity politics – and their sometimes superficial weaponization on social media – make simply inverting this deference a strategic error. The talk will end by considering several emergent strategies in light of this framework. As we rearticulate hegemonic safe space we must support the care to repair the traumas that have been central to its operation, but also find the elements of shared oppression and solidarity that will make these efforts sustainable.