Queer and Deleuzian Temporalities: Toward a Living Present

217 Pages·2021·13.326 MB·English

by  Rachel Loewen Walker

Queer and Deleuzian Temporalities
ii
Queer and Deleuzian Temporalities

Toward a Living Present
Rachel Loewen Walker
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are
trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Rachel Loewen Walker, 2022
Rachel Loewen Walker has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. ix–xii constitute an
extension of this copyright page.
Cover image: Abstract background (© traffic_analyzer / Getty Images)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but
can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Loewen Walker, Rachel., author.
Title: Queer and Deleuzian Temporalities : Toward a Living Present / Rachel Loewen Walker.
Description: London, UK ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021026057 (print) | LCCN 2021026058 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781350184343 (hb) | ISBN 9781350184350 (epdf) | ISBN 9781350184367 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995. | Time. | Queer Theory. | Feminist Criticism.
Classification: LCC B2430.D454 W354 2021 (print) | LCC B2430.D454 (ebook) |
DDC 306.7601–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026057
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026058
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-8434-3
ePDF: 978-1-3501-8435-0
eBook: 978-1-3501-8436-7
Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember.
Lies 2: Time is a straight line.
Lies 3: The difference between the past and the future is that one has happened
while the other has not.
Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time.
Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word “finite” (the world, the
universe, experience, ourselves …)
Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon.
Lies 7: Reality is truth.
—Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
The future is literally right here and now and consequently there is no time
to waste.
—Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman Knowledge
vi
Contents

List of Figures viii
Acknowledgments ix
Preface: The Monomyth xiii
Introduction 1
1 Telling Time: From Deleuze to Heraclitus and from Queer Theory
to Indigenous Ways of Knowing 17
2 The Living Present: A Co-Creative Conversation between Deleuze
and Winterson 37
3 Quantum Materialism: Bringing Time and Matter Together in a
Feminist Future 65
4 “An Erratic and Uneasy Becoming”: Queering Time, Reworking
the Past 89
5 Thick Time: Echoes of the Anthropocene 117
6 An Ethics of Entanglement 139
Notes 155
References 177
Index 191
Figures
I.1 Thick time 3
2.1 Pebble diffraction 40
3.1 1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics 66
4.1 The thick time of coming out 106
5.1 Human evolution 118
5.2 Tentative phylogenetic schemes for hominid evolution 119
Acknowledgments

In a journey that is about the entanglement of bodies and theories in the making
of time, I find myself wanting to thank hundreds of coconspirators who have
intervened along the way. I have had many divergent communities of practice
around me as I completed this manuscript during the last four years, including
colleagues from the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Alberta, the
nonprofit sector of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and a national community of
2SLGBTQ leaders and service providers in Canada.
I am especially grateful to the members of the Deleuze and feminist reading
groups who always brought text to life, life to text—Danielle Peers and Lindsay
Eales, our collaborative queer imaginings forever changed the conversation, and
Yasmin Sari, you have always brought a breath of fresh air, in spirit and ideas.
To my women’s and gender studies mentors, colleagues, and friends, especially
Joan Borsa and Marie Lovrod, thank you for decades of support backward and
forward. And thank you to the distinct and international group of new feminist
materialist scholars that rippled through my life with impeccable timing,
especially Astrida Neimanis for contributing to my thinking and writing around
climate and accountability, Peta Hinton for limitless brainstorming that inspires
me to this day, and the many others who shaped this important time in my
intellectual growth, which helped to shape many of the chapters ahead.
Thank you to the community of support at OUTSaskatoon during my time
as the executive director (2013–20) and while I precariously balanced leadership
responsibilities and writing deadlines. Being entrusted as a community leader in
this way is the greatest honor of my life thus far. It taught me as much about the
temporality of social justice as it did about the timing of letting go.
To those who lent their expertise directly to the manuscript: Elena del Rio,
Cressida Heyes, and Jan Jagodzinski, thank you all for incisive feedback paired
with enthusiastic support. Claire Colebrook, thank you for questions and critique
that always stretch me well beyond the text. It has been a gift to read your work for
the duration of my academic career and I am honored that you took the time to
read mine. And to my graduate supervisor, turned dear friend, Marie-Eve Morin:
thank you for your sharp and ingenious mind, for regularly understanding my
work better than I did, and for sharing meals and laughter alongside deep dives