Open AccessQueer Provisionality: Mapping the Generative Failures of the Transborder Immigrant Tool
Author(s) -
Alison Reed
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
lateral
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2469-4053
DOI - 10.25158/l4.1.4
Subject(s) - politics , queer , immigration , sociology , social movement , conservatism , launched , phone , aesthetics , media studies , political science , gender studies , law , engineering , art , linguistics , philosophy , electrical engineering
Alison Reed investigates the border- and boundary-crossing performance of Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0’sTransBorder Immigrant Tool (TBT), an incomplete cell phone program that offers GPS, guidance, and poetry to those attempting to cross into the United States across the Mexico/US border. Reed suggests a provocation-based performance of “queer provisionality,” revealing the aesthetics of oppressive power structures by juxtaposing them to social utopias. Interrogating the national neoliberal project of both US liberalism and US conservatism, Reed’s essay is also a transcription of the performances launched around TBT, the social and political machinery set into motion by Electronic Disturbance Theater’s failed utopian project.