Hello and welcome to volume 2 of Critical(In)Coherencies , produced by the I- 4C collective from ASU’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. In this zine, members of the I-4C collective share their radical thoughts, expressed through poetry, art, short stories, and performance. Each year, I-4C selects a theme around which we might shape our research and teaching efforts. The theme for this volume is “Elsew/here.” This wonderful project would not have reached this stage without the work of our radical comrades, and we’re overjoyed to share this work with community.
Wehopeyoulovethiscollectionasmuchaswedo.
In solidarity, Drew, Lore, and the I-4C Collective
Wemustestablishapracticeofrhetoricthatagitatestowardcreatinga space for us all to become “cognitive revolutionaries” by relinquishing skepticismduringthereasoningprocess,sowemightbecomevulnerable tothevoicesofothers.
Lotransdesdeelsur,portanto,esunasuertedegenealogíasparticulares ysituadasquesirvencomopuntodepartidaparaexaminarglobalmente laspolíticas,prácticasyepistemologíasdelxssujetxstransentendiendo susconexionessin,conello,borrarlasdiferencias.Unamiradatransdesde elsurpromueveunaseriedearticulacionespedagógicasqueseorganizan en“trescamposdeacciónyproduccióndeconocimiento:elpráctico,el epistemológico y el político” (Domínguez et. al.), que nos invitan a cuestionar y resistir la expansión de ideologías heteronormativas pragmáticas que buscan la asimilación minoritaria y/o la exclusión totalitariaapartirdeposturasconservadorasprovenientesdelaextrema derechaylosfeminismostransexcluyentes.
The Anti-Colonial Death Studies Collective
Icallonqueertheorists to recontaminatesex,performance,andcritical erotic/a.Makeitdirty.Makeamess.Shareitwithsomeone.Younever know who else might like it. If what Corey and Nakayama write, “academicdiscourseisrevolutionary,”holdstrue,thenwemustrevelinour shit.
Michael Tristano Jr.
Noor Ghazal Aswad
Writing to Myself After a Fallen Empire
Aryan Jain
What does it mean to crumble?
Is it the collapse of walls, the unraveling of society’s fabric, or the disappearance of truth?
A liberated land appears, where saguaro cacti mark territories, not empire borders.
Migration transcends borders; it is sacred. Equally sacred are connections to people, ecosystems, and ancestors. Roots are sought in a crumbled empire India? South Asia? The origins blur, yet roots feel more grounded.
Does the end of liberalism mean the end of oppression? No.
REALITY RIGHT NOW IS A SETTLER PROJECTION. HOW DO WE TRANSCEND THAT???
Dignity, righteousness, an undying flame of community care emerge. Land is nurtured, taking care of the land is community care, and trusting the community over the system is paramount.
Borders defined by empires dissolve, no longer preventing migration, disconnecting, and displacing peoples.
Flags represent Indigenous peoples, not colonial legacies. Overlapping territories exist; land is land.
No smog dulling the horizon, instead, a sky painted in hues beyond the grasp of our current age soft lavenders melting into deep, celestial blues. No choking pollution, only the crisp, sweet breath of nature, each inhale filling the lungs with the scent of fresh community harvest.
Networks of souls extracted into dark clouds, absorbed back into a dew-kissed earth.
The towers have crumbled, their shadows no longer stretching across the land.
No skyscrapers piercing the horizon, only the earth reaching up through art that spills across the ground, vibrant and pulsing with life. Every brushstroke, every carved line, a testament to a living and sacred world.
Lush jungles, not the sterile sprawl of concrete; vines reclaiming their space–unshackling the land, rubble from fallen empires entangled in green.
Animals roam freely, their paths weaving through the remnants of what once was.
In this world, everything is alive, revered, and connected in a dance of mutual respect and care. no longer a resource to be exploited, but a sacred being to be nurtured and honored.
This reflection comes from a plane traveling to an imperialist university embedded in the empire.
The land below, continuously extracted, marred by urbanization, development, gentrification, violent theft, and absence of connection (to nature). No regard for concentration camps built on ancestors. Nausea and rage surge, a desire to destroy it all, to see it burn. The heart aches, burning with rage and sorrow, edging towards madness.
This project remains unfinished; the revolution is eternal.
Jenna Hanchey
Vessels
Stephany Rojas Hidalgo
Blink, Blink, Blink. there are blinding lights. I was moved here…recently?
made immortal from a mixture: PET 78.8%; PC 12%; HDPE 9.2% I was made to be of use, hopefully.
there are more like me, others… from the same formula, they sit on shelves: next to me, above me, below me, across from me. we are all waiting for something: to claim and discard us. I…we are moved
empty and discarded, I lie at the bottom of a dark hole, forgotten…I wait…we wait with nothing to hold. overtime more gather, tossed away. we age in ways that discolor and warp. I wait…we wait, eyes closed to the dark.
Blink, Blink, Blink. something above is removed. that blinding light reflects through us. I…we are moved, again.
on a mountain of undying vessels when was the last time we felt new?
Find the word in the puzzle. Words can go in any direction. Words can share letters as they cross over each other.
ACTIVISM ALLIANCE ANTICAPITALISM
BRAVERY COALITION DEFEND
DIVERSITY EMPATHY EMPOWER
EQUITY FREEDOM HOPE
INCLUSION JOY JUSTICE
LANDBACK
Settler Colonial Contexts and E ducation: Palestine and the Great Basin
Blake Harms
Hello. I have found that a productive part of anti-colonial education in the classroom and other educational spaces involves situating the settler colonial history of a region, the school where students are learning, and immediate global exigencies which are politically connected. For this short zine, I’ll briefly outline and define settler colonialism and, second, provide an overview of how settler colonialism in the Great Basin is interconnected with the ongoing settler colonial genocide of the Palestinian people. Not only does this situate education as a settler colonial function of these violent political projects transnationally, but it also invites students into the historic movement for a Free Palestine and Landback movements against the occupying schools they move through. Many other scholars have been doing this transnational work connecting the Israeli state control of Palestine and the U.S. Southwest also. I would recommend the essay a Future of Walls or Liberation by ASU Historian Alex Avina (I’ve included an excerpt in the footnotes).1
Overall as you engage this entry, please use care as these are very violent histories.
Settler colonialism is an ongoing socio-historical structure characterized by a “permanent invasion” (Na’Puti, 2020, p. 11) that distinguishes itself from other forms of colonialism through the settler’s intent to establish permanent residence and sovereignty over the land, resulting in the erasure of Indigenous populations. This form of colonialism is deeply intertwined with broader colonial, imperial, and global capitalist systems, and it shapes nationbuilding projects in specific regions like the Great Basin (Blackhawk, 2006; Wolfe, 1999), as well as in larger transnational contexts such as the formation of Israel and the global systems of African slavery (Pappe, 2006; Beckett, 2014). Scholars such as Rowe and Tuck (2016), Veracini, (2010), and Wolfe (2006) have explored the dialectical relations
that constitute settler colonialism, emphasizing its unique focus on land dispossession and the erasure of Indigenous presence. As settler colonial studies enter a third decade of acceptance within academia, scholars have incorporated interdisciplinary approaches, examining, for example, the cultural production of settler colonialism and its ongoing impact on various subjectivities, including migrants and Indigenous peoples (Na’Puti, 2020; Rowe & Tuck, 2017). Decolonization within this framework necessitates a reexamination of the ethical and political commitments in scholarly work, urging a move beyond metaphorical decolonization toward transnational political praxis (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Below, I offer historic examples from two regions of the U.S. and how deeply intertwined they are with Israeli settler colonialism.
One fundamental aspect of settler colonial movements is the ideological formations that grow to justify land seizures, which is true of the Zionist ideology motivating both Mormon and Israeli settlers. On October 24, 1841, Orson Hyde, an apostle in the Mormon church, traveled to Palestine, climbed a hill outside Jerusalem, and dedicated (a Mormon priesthood ritual) the land of Palestine for the gathering of the Jewish people and the establishment of Zion.2 Hyde's prayer ritual sought divine favor for the return of the Jewish people to their “ancestral homeland” and the eventual building of a temple in Jerusalem, aligning with the Latterday Saint belief in the restoration of Israel in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. This cultural production became one of the founding performances that perpetuated the Zionist ideology used to energize the settler colonialism of the Great Basin and beyond including the building of the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center on stole Palestinian land after the six day war in 1967.3 In the history of the Mormons who colonized the Great Basin, Zion represents both a spiritual ideal of purity and the physical land to create a society of believers. This ideology was used to colonize the region and to create a global vision where the church was responsible for gathering scattered Israel. Initially failed zionists settlements like Jackson County, Missouri, Zion morphed to symbolize the church's global mission to build communities of believers and adopt them into the “Tribes of Israel.”4
Through a series of conflicts that moved Mormon settlers into the Great Basin, the Mormon settlers began to build a Utah Zion by committing their own genocide of the Indigenous peoples, particularly the Timpanoges Ute people, and cooperated with the U.S. military to produce other genocides, including the Northwest Band of the Shoshone in Northern Utah.5 The settler colonialism around Utah Lake is a particularly enraging illustration that parallels the Israeli Zionist violence.
The Numic peoples had lived in the Great Basin for thousands of years, developing political economies around the ways they produced food. A particular network of Indigenous groups took the Numic name FishEaters, Lake People, or the Timpanogos named for the river and lakes where their fishing culture and economy flourished. These people lived year-round near Utah Lake, which was unique given that most other Numic Indigenous peoples of the region seasonally migrated for their food economies and were so named. So coveted were these lands that within the first years of Mormon settlers' entrance into the region, the Timpanogos struggled against assimilation and extermination by order of Brigham Young and carried out by Mormon settlers. An estimated 102 were killed, beheaded, and shipped to Washington for research. Groups of surviving kin (mostly women and children) were impressed into Mormon household slavery, where many resisted, ran away, as well as many died. Many other Numic Ute Indigenous people, after this war of extermination, mass converted to the Mormon faith as a means of survival (over 100). Despite the Zionist ideology that initially motivated Mormon settlers to befriend and convert the Indigenous people, who were believed by settlers to be of Jewish ancestry as written in the Book of Mormon, the lands proved to be too coveted. Indigenous resistantance continued as settlements and agrarian economies developed through movement into reservation legal systems with the U.S. federal government. The Zionist ideology adapted responsively, and the genocide was framed as God’s work and anti-government movements developed.
As the remaining thousands of Indigenous people were displaced by the Federal and State governments during the reservation era, these lands became privatized and developed as the settler economy shifted from agrarian to other forms of capitalism away from even the Zionist white communitarian economy which the Zionists had idealized. Today, the Utah Lake region continues to be vital to the development of the settler political economy. In the present, settler land developers have built massive condo housing projects on the banks of Utah lake as illustrated below. Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University are built on these lands secured by this settler colonial genocide.6
Notes
1. Included Here is an excerpt from the essay. Aviña, A. (2023, December 19). A future of walls or liberation. Foreign Exchanges:
Since the 1970s, the export of Israeli weapons, technologies, counterinsurgency doctrines, and military advisers to many Latin American countries has resulted in the bloody maintenance of brutal oligarchic regimes in the face of popular challenge from below. “Palestine is Israel’s workshop,” writes journalist Antony Loewenstein in his new, must read book ThePalestineLaboratory , “a laboratory for the most precise and successful methods of domination.” The commercialization and export of those methods of domination developed and tested on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories found willing buyers in Cold War Latin America. They still do, including the “Colossus of the North” and its penchant for Israeli border wall technology and police training.
2. Orson Hyde, A Voice from Jerusalem: A History of the Apostolic Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints to Jerusalem in the Year 1841 (Liverpool: R. James, 1842), 36-37.
3. Blair G. Van Dyke and LaMar C. Berrett, “In the Footsteps of Orson Hyde: Subsequent Dedications of the Holy Land,” BYU Studies, vol. 47, no. 1 (2008), 57–93.
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “The Tenth Article of Faith,” ChurchofJesusChrist.org, accessed July 30, 2024, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music/songs/the-tenth-article-of-faith?lang=eng.
5. Darren Parry, The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History (Salt Lake City: By Common Consent Press, 2019).
6. This history was adapted from Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) pp 67-77.
References
Beckert, S. (2014). Empireofcotton:AGlobalhistory . Knopf Blackhawk, N. (2006). Violence over the land: Indians and empires in the early American West. Harvard University Press. Na’Puti, T. (2020). Disrupting settler colonialism and the hidden curriculum of empire: Indigenous futurities and narratives of survivance in Guam. Journal of Communication and Critical/CulturalStudies,17(1), 7-22. Pappe, I. (2006). TheethniccleansingofPalestine . Oneworld Publications. Rowe, A. C., & Tuck, E. (2016). Settler colonialism and cultural studies: Ongoing settlement, cultural production, and resistance. CulturalStudiesóCriticalMethodologies,16(1), 3-13. Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education&Society,1(1), 1-40. Veracini, L. (2010). Settlercolonialism:Atheoreticaloverview . Palgrave MacMillan. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journalofgenocideresearch , 8(4), 387-409.
Settler real estate on Timpanogos Ute land
Photo credit: Blake Harms
School of Memory
Ame Min-Venditti
I groan, trying to fall back asleep.
Yet the chickens did nothing to deserve being withheld their morning feed.
Soon, the chill foggy air meets my face like a wet kiss as I attend to my task.
I spy lanterns bobbing across the tree-covered hills, as other early risers stagger through pre-class chores.
We gather in the lodge, congregating for food and transportation class.
“Today’s lesson brings us back 100 years…” As we listened close-eyed, attentive to the story, a crackle crescendos, fleeing birds screech, charred stench wafts.
Our pulses rise with the temperature, the wildfire raging all around.
Remember.
There’s something off about the flower girl
Lore/tta LeMaster
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be invited to things like weddings. Oh! And baby showers! Oh, oh, oh! And gender reveal parties, of course.
Sike! No, no-no. I kid. I’m fortunate to have allies in my life. Allies who are very demure, to not waste
Séance, yes. Wedding, no. That is, unless you’re looking to book a flower girl!
And not just one of those regular ol’ flower girls. You know those “toddlers” left to wander around the aisle. (morelike“amateurs,” No, I offer a unique set of skills for those queers looking to assimilate into an unchanged straight culture.
Do you have a homophobic uncle?
Allow me to prance down the aisle to a song of your design only to end up across his lap, a long-stemmed white rose clenched between my teeth extending up and toward his terrified face.
Do you have a transphobic mother?
Allow me to roll around the floor To a stage of your design only to end up across her feet, writhing on the ground a demonic possession reaching up and toward her mortified face.
With each catastrophic romp through the hate-filled family you and your gay spouse will appear normal, natural, neutral if not necessary to family stability.
Allow me to help you fit in to a culture that would rather the faggots and trannies were dead.
Call Now!
Operators are standing by.
Humanize (Y)our Data
Dacheng Zhang
The word “data” – let alone “coding” – in qualitative research might sound somewhat condescending. In the highly digitalized environment of intellectual productions, lived experiences and stories get flattened into numbered codes, categories, and themes. While structure is important, what is often missing from the process of hermeneutical analysis is the deep, reflexive and patient immersion of oneself both the physical body and the thinking into piles of personal accounts “exposed” on the computer screen. I humbly suggest that we “sit with” the “thing” we collect with an organic sense of rhythm, spirituality, and openness to resist neoliberal, capitalistic, and colonial practices of academic consumption and extraction. Said differently, we should see ourselves as co-participants in the social justice-related work we do and treat the data we utilize as bridges to a radical future rather than as commodities that grant publications and/or tenure.
On the next page I offer a snapshot of how I attempted to sit with myself to seek a sense of rhythm, spirituality, and openness through 400+ pages of interview accounts. The rhythm part resonates with a refusal to be a starving academic. I asked myself: what could I do to ground myself and engage in the analysis without rushing to the findings stage by copying/pasting the interview quotes? I grabbed some paper and wrote down “Community-Driven Participatory Artmaking” in the center as an entry point for delineating what stood out in my initial thinking after hours of reading. The moment I started writing down the key ideas stemming from the transcripts, a sense of warmth returned as if I was returning to the conversations with the artists who took part in my dissertation work. The simple act of writing spiritually “jazzed me up” because I was no longer trying to “steal” information from the interview transcripts but was instead teasing out the intertextuality of the voices that I aim to honor. Writing towards critical dialogue becomes a spiritual endeavor that seeks to sense humanity behind the words.
You’ll see that the word(ing)s are messy, subjective and imperfect, as are life and qualitative research. Some are direct quotes, and some are thought experiments that seek theoretical resonance. Each segment enlivens the memories of those prior conversations and drives a longing to put lingering thoughts into words. During those calligraphic pursuits, joy and validation emerged as the ideas were playing in an open field: no gatekeeping politics of research validity or objective evaluations of neutrality. The flowing aesthetics of those words open up an inter-subjective possibility.
We are implicated in the neoliberal culture of speed in academia. Sit with your data and humanize them. (I encourage the reader to disidentify with/against the “we” in your own choice).
A Beach on a Distant Planet
Fonzi Mendoza
What was wrong with us
What was wrong with me
We were never taught to feel, only fight We were never allowed to feel it, only fight it
Who was there, to shelter us? Make us feel at home? Who was going to tell us what we felt, what we did, was normal? Who? We didn’t know how to Love. We only know how to love. We only knew love.
No one taught us how to hold each other.
No one told us we could hold each other.
How were we to understand what was happening? What was feeling?
Who said you could go?
Who said you should stay?
That wasn’t up to me. It wasn’t up to us either. Anger. I was angry. I was mean. I was gentle and caring. I loved the only way I knew how. The only way I was taught to love. I’m sorry.
Years later, maybe seconds later. It’s all a blur. Alone together on this beach at last.
We hold each other so. Our love takes us beyond the heavens, through timeand here we are again on some far off beach on another planet. We are finally alone now.
This beach. Our beach. It feels like a dream, or maybe a nightmare. We meet again, my sweet-sour past. The piece of myself I can’t remember, and a part of me I’ll never forget. I’ve tried. And tried. And tried again to forget, to lose that part of myself. Wiping away my memory seemed the only way to heal. The only way to move past the unbearable pain of a thousand losses. I had to kill that part of me, and you with it. I had to mourn. I mourned. I lost and forgot.
The weight of a thousand no’s, the mounting pressure of what shouldn’t be and what couldn’t have been. Here I am again. Here it is.
Re-membered. Re-membered with the weight of a thousand no’s. Re-membered with the memory of what I was. Re-membered with the part of myself I thought was dead. Resurrected.
No one told me it would hurt this much, to be brought back to life. Is this what Frankenstein’s monster felt? Waking up alone in that tower? Isolated. Alone. Created. Destroyed.
I don’t want this part of me. I didn’t ask to be made whole again. I didn’t ask to be brought back to life. Maybe a part of me was comfortable moving throughout the world, monstrous, undead.
Comfortable walking amongst others, only partly there. Only partially human.
Sitting in plain sight with my selfdisfigured, torn apart for all to see. As long as I couldn’t see it. As long as I couldn’t feel it. Yet, here I am. Awoken from my slumber. Here I am, a cold piece of flesh brought back from the dead. Laying on a metal table chained up. Alone. Was I created? Will I be destroyed again? Here we are. On this beach.
Between Mary Katreeb
The space between gender euphoria & dysphoria is just a few inches
I find it between the second and third buttons of this Old Navy men’s shirt
It’s mouth pulled open to laugh at me where it bunches, refusing to lie flat
How can I blame it for laughing - I’m the one pushing against it, willing it to hold me inside
I hung it up last night, the wrinkles of its smile left as evidence of its battle with my transness
When my body stops making it laugh, I hope the wrinkles stay
Only a (Hotot) Bunny
Stephany Rojas Hidalgo
I lived my early life as a pet. My closet companion was my human. Wherever she went, so did I. Parks, museums, classes, and under blankets. Rosemary was my name. People fawned over me because I was small. Life was good for me, I had hay and veggies. Plenty of enrichment toys. But we got news of our dispatch in the fourth year of my life. That is when things changed for me. We were separated. I was kept in a cage and routinely tested. For 8 un-ending months I knew nothing but white sterile walls. My new name was crew member P-3. There were brief moments of time where we interacted. My human snuck me snacks and tried to comfort me. I don't think she had much of a choice in the matter. I was government issued, apparently. Always meant for a mission among the stars. But now back on earth life is different. I gave my sight to ensure we survived. I would do it again, for my human. I’m limited now, retired after one year of active duty on Peko-4.
I wished to go back. To where I was free, before I saw the stars.
This is what I imagine Rosemary looks like (taken from google)
so much energy
by Jenna Hanchey
I wanted to walk through the portal, sure, but I’m just so tired maybe if it hadn’t appeared right after I got home from work and when there was still a pile of dishes in the sink I mean, you can’t just go to another world and leave a dirty apartment it did look all lush and green, though, really appealing like Chad’s Zoom background from that damn cruise we’ll never hear the end of but it frightened the hell out of me, appearing in the patio door like that the stupid dog tried to run through immediately, thank god I caught her where are you going to get flea and tick medicine in fantasyland, Moxie? fuck
besides, I still have so many papers to grade even if half of them are written by ChatGPT and I’m two weeks late on that essay deadline could you imagine if I literally just disappeared? I would never get tenure
I was tempted, though, when that glittering unicorn made eyecontact and tilted its head as if to gesture me in it would have been so easy to take that first step but what happens after that?
I’m just so tired, you know and it would take so much energy to learn a new world
Things I May (Not) Tell You
Chill Babe
My aunt, lying next to me, dials a number and asks in English: “Hello sir, would you like a massage”. She’s been doing this all night: calling hotel rooms and crossing off the room numbers on a piece of paper. She’s been the financial source of the family since my parents divorced and moved to different cities for work. At the age of 13, I am impressed with the fact that she can speak English, even though she only attended high school. English was her key to money. A few weeks before she passed away from cervical cancer, she asked me to bring her daughter to the United States in the future.
My aunt brought my mom and my cousin to the gambling/intimacy businesses later on, which is illegal in this country. Mom doesn’t have higher education and my cousin was convinced by my aunt to make money from escorting after finishing middle school. She gave the money she earned in 5 years to help me pursue my master’s degree in the U.S. Should I tell you that I got all A grades in my classes not because of my intellectual excellence but because I studied damn hard so as not to be a disappointment?
I have to be “creative” here in the U.S. when asked about my mother’s profession a hotel concierge, a tour guide, an internet café owner, etc. Part of the hiding is related to the legality but mostly if I just told the truth I would disdain someone’s pity, like “Oh I am sorry that your mom has to do this; but she must be so proud of you”. She would be proud regardless. As an international alien, the burden of not disclosing the nature of my family’s sex work also lies in the fear of being seen as a cultural pariah disqualified to pursue a Ph.D. For those who can’t have a say (not necessarily don’t have a say), hiding is surviving.
You don’t need to guess who I am. I am just a Chill Babe among many other sexy babes. De-stigmatize and de-criminalize sex work today to receive 15% off your first purchase of radical self-transformation; call now.
In the forest of Elsew/here the girls come out to play
Pablo Ramirez
In the forest of Elsew/here the girls come out to play
Pablo Ramirez
In the forest of Elsew/here the girls come out to play
Pablo Ramirez
Two Selves
“If there is a threshold laid between life and death, what constitutes my days is constant friction over that threshold. Have you ever felt that friction? Do you even understand what it means, what forms of pain it entails?”
Her eyes were filled with tears. But she was calm. Her voice was firm. Her language was not broken. It was just unheard.
“Yes, I understand”, I said. “Or at least, I’m getting there. I’m aware that there are people who decided to bother to live a life a life that deserves dying. Maybe I can’t fathom, but I know, no, I mean, I actually do know such feelings. I know what it’s like to live along with deaths.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She was skeptical. “Because I’m trying so hard to figure out what this is.”
Forbidden Mourning
There is nothing alive here. Only suffocating silence falls onto me and wraps my body.
People would tell me, “You are still the same. He can’t impact anything in your life. You are still the same person that I used to know.”
I wouldn’t disagree. Nothing has changed; but at the same time, everything has changed. I wish I could be my myself who did not have these memories.
But I can’t take away these memories. They are part of my brain. If I want to stop them from coming back, I will need to cut out my brain. Perhaps that’s why I’m suicidal. Do you know that one can be suicidal regularly? I must complete the circuit every night. I cry because I know the pain; I cry because I know what to expect; I cry because I am so afraid of what’s coming next. Please, can you please stop, I was already exhausted yesterday.
Trauma is forbidden mourning. It is grieving a loss of oneself, a loss that nobody knows.
A Pandemic
What day is it? I can’t tell how many days and hours I have been crying. My tears can’t go outside of the circuit. Hey, you are not supposed to do so, actually. Everyone must keep a good distance from everyone else. Don’t forget the shelter-in-place order. Don’t be a risk. No hugs, no kisses.
The entire world has stopped. The world stays still, but no one can see through it. What would it look like once this grief is gone? Is your life also on hold? By now, people may understand what an irreversible change means? An irreversible change in my body, mind, and soul.
Crip Time
This bodily malfunction is inscrutable. I was never like this in my whole life. Why can’t I move? No injuries. No wounds.
It took a while to understand and accept being the wounds. I am the wounds; and it’s fine. If there is a word like, intermittent disability, I would embrace it as a way to be kind and compassionate to myself. I will live a crip time, occasionally, and it’s just a different way of living. It’s okay. It’s okay.
This bodily malfunction is inscrutable. I was never like this in my whole life. Why can’t I move? No injuries. No wounds.
It took a while to understand and accept being the wounds. I am the wounds; and it’s fine. If there is a word like, intermittent disability, I would embrace it as a way to be kind and compassionate to myself. I will live a crip time, occasionally, and it’s just a different way of living. It’s okay. It’s okay.
Vulnerability
Wound hurts but heals itself. I am vital because I am vulnerable. I have become more powerful because I have become more vulnerable. For wounded bodies, who refuse to succumb to violence, vulnerability is a source of potency.
“Breathe.” They said, gently. A deep inhale, and a heavy exhale. Grasping their hands, I was reading their body, marked by collective and intergenerational trauma. I was following their marks and traces those lines were beautifully written on their body, glowing and blooming like a different world.
If you are determined to survive, imagine a different world. How do you want to remember this world on your last day? What memories do you want to keep on your last day?
I was still closing my eyes.
One into Many, Many into One
When I discovered myself, I discovered you. I heard your voice. I am meaningless without the histories of you. I am mortal, but we are immortal.
I am blessed with new eyes that see this world full of streaks and traces made by the wind in the air. The wind has no forms, but it’s so tangible to me. The wind is invisible, but it’s so vivid to me. The wind is absent, but it’s so present to me. The wind is elusive, but I can go anywhere with it.
I give you my side. I stand by your side.
The Wind
Listen to the whispers of the wind. The wind is everywhere.
I believe you. I am with you. I stand alongside with you. I will go anywhere with you. I am here because of you. I am nothing without you. I will never leave your side. I will fight with you. I am here and forever will be with you.
You are beautiful. You are vital. You are potent.
I want you to live. I want you to live. I want you to live.
ASU Performance Tree
Collaboratively crafted at the 2024 Performance Retreat
I4C Happenings
Fall 2023 – Spring 2024
Annual Theme: Elsew/here
Fall 202 3
1. Meetings (1-hour meeting; 1-hour critical communing on a subject)
2. Writing Retreat at Empty Space Theater (October 13-14) coorganized by: Stephany Rojas Hidalgo, Ame Min-Venditti, Blake Harms, Isabella Flores, and Lore/tta LeMaster
Spring 202 4
1. Meetings (1-hour meeting; 1-hour critical communing on a subject)
2. WSCA Decompression Happy Hour (March 16)
3. Performance Retreat at Empty Space Theater (May 18) coorganized by: Pablo Ramirez, Stephany Rojas Hidalgo, and Lore/tta LeMaster
Guests included
1. Dr. Ronald Jackson (University of Cincinnati) presented “When They Refuse to See Me: Blackness, CRT, and the Politics of Identity and Media Representation” on Nov. 6, 2023. Co-sponsored with Transformation Project and ICGlobal
2. Shannon Walker (ASU Archivist) facilitated a discussion on archival research
3. Charissa Lucille (Wasted Ink Zine Distro) facilitated a zine history and making workshop. Co-sponsored with Transformation Project
4. Dr. Brandi Lawless and Dr. Yea-Wen Chen joined us for a discussion on Critical Thematic Analysis. Co-sponsored with Transformation Project and ICGlobal
5. Pablo Ramirez led a button-making party
6. Lore/tta LeMaster led 2 harm reduction packing parties – I-4C packed over 500 Narcan kits this year!
A selection of recent works by I-4C members
Cortés, R., Terminel Iberri, A. I., Stephenson, M., Reutlinger, C., Rife, T. S., Razzante, R., Hanna, K., & LeMaster, L. (2023). Inner monologues of a newbie CCPer. TextandPerformanceQuarterly,43(4), 240-47.
Hanchey, J. N. (2023). Catastrophe colonialism: Global disaster films and the white right to migrate. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication16(4), 300-16.
Hanchey, J. N. (2023). It’s time to write your lesson plan Chooseyourown future: Fascismseries#8,” Liminalities19(2), 1-6.
Hanchey, J. N. (2024). When you see a dragon, you run. Simultaneous Times . August 15, 2024.
Hanchey, J. N. (2024). The Almost-Activation of Ruby Valentine’s Catastrophe Machine,” SimultaneousTimes . January 15, 2024.
Hanchey, J. N. (2024). Africanfuturism beyond the future, Strange Horizons . August 26, 2024.
Kim, H., Stanley, L., Harms, B., & Michaelides, A. (2024). Enacting compassion in mHealth: Communicative subprocesses of compassionate coaching and their relationships to resilience during a prolonged pandemic. Journal of AppliedCommunicationResearch,52(3), 297-317.
Kim, H. (2023). The state violence, social insecurity, and the crisis of community in the neoliberal age. Transdisciplinary Humanities, 15 , 1-25. (Note. The original title in Korean is “‘신자유주의 시대의
공동체의 위기.”)
Kim, H., & Mouton, A. (2023). Challenging institutional whiteness: The lived experiences of structural tensions in diversity work. In B. J. Van Gilder, J. T. Austin, & J. Bishop (Eds.), Communicationandorganizationalchange makingfordiversity,equity,andinclusion(pp. 147-62). Routledge.
LeMaster, L., forum editor (2023). “Cultivating resistance to fascism in the classroom.” Liminalities, 19(2), 2023. http://liminalities.net/192/cultivating.pdf.
LeMaster, L., section editor (2023). “Anti-TERF: Trans feminisms against white nationalist projects.” Women’sStudiesinCommunication,46(2), 218-68.
LeMaster, L., & Tristano Jr., M. (2024). A sense of healing: A relational meditation in queer (and trans) of color communism. In R. Halualani & T. K. Nakayama (eds.), Handbook of critical intercultural communication (2nd ed.) (pp. 337-50). John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Stanley, B. L., & Hanchey, J. N. (2024). Speculative fiction as rehearsal for decolonization. SAGE research methods cases: Diversifying and decolonizingresearch . SAGE.
Critical(In)Coherenciesis produced on stolen Akimel O'otham and Piipaash land and is a communal publication by members and affiliates of the Intersections of Civil, Critical, and Creative Communication (I-4C) Research Collaborative, housed in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.
Cover art and clipart by AI in collaboration with Lore
The I-4C Collaborative mobilizes resources from rhetoric, performance, and critical-cultural studies to explore the intersections of civil, critical, and creative communication. Through our collaborations, faculty members and graduate students generate research that illuminates our understanding of the human experience in its cultural, contextual, and sociopolitical dimensions. We strive to create knowledge by engaging with communities and catalyzing social change through innovative and critical research methods of inquiry and presentation.
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Drawing prompt: Draw a liberatory future. What does a liberatory future look like and feel like to you?
