Extremity and the Future

Nelson Varas-Díaz is Professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University.Daniel Nevárez Araújo is Associate Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico.

This is an important book. It is a very timely collection of global scholarly voices that encourage us to engage with the intersections of extremity and the future, both of which are very loaded terms that may evoke flurries of panic and negativity, often offering more questions than answers. Reading this text encouraged me to acknowledge my own fears about the future, whether ecological, financial or health-based, and to reframe these worries as necessary collective endeavors, as moments of global community, of playful foreboding, all gloriously entangled with strident possibilities and hope. When conceptualizing or even contemplating concerns around extremity and the future, it can be easy to slip into despondency and frustration, and whilst this edited collection fully acknowledges these very legitimate responses, it also provides a place and a framework to explore these ideas in an intelligent, mindful and anticipative way. It celebrates resistance, it honors diversity, and most of all, it gives us the warmth and knowledge to know that we may co-create sites of future-making that actively confront our common uncertainties.

• List of FiguresList of ContributorsChapter 1 - Playful Foreboding at the Intersection of Extremity and the Future. Nelson Varas-Díaz & Daniel Nevárez AraújoSection 1: Technologies of Denial and EnduranceChapter 2 - To Live Forever: Optimization, Health, and Extremity. Sheilla R. MaderaChapter 3 - The Future of Denialism: From the Instrumental, to the Extreme, to the Beyond. Keith Kahn-HarrisChapter 4 - Extremity, Permanence, and Ambiguous Escape Valves. Nelson Varas-DíazSection 2: Living with Broken FuturesChapter 5 - Blame It on My Youth: Extremity as a Form of Control in Indonesia. Oki Rahadianto SutopoChapter 6 - Unmooring Traumas of the Past / Drifting Towards Imagined Futures: How Puerto Rico’s Obsession with the Past Stagnates Actionable Paths Forward. Daniel Nevárez AraújoChapter 7 - The Persistence of Traces: The Shadows of Destroyed Black Archives and the Reinscription of the Black Population in Brazil. Aluísio Ferreira de LimaSection 3: Practices of Extreme InquiryChapter 8 - Extreme Frustrations: A-Positioning the Future of artXeducation. jessie l. beier, José Cortés & Veronica MocklerChapter 9 - Struggling Against the Current: Community Work amid Extremity and Uncertain Futures in Havana, Cuba. John Vertovec and Maria Baylon GuillenChapter 10 - Fleeting Frames: A Photographic Project on the Finite and the Fragile in Extreme Times. Nicole WerneckSection 4: Embodied and Sonic ExtremesChapter 11 - Run to the Hills: An Epistemological Theory of Extremity through Fell Running. Karl SpracklenChapter 12 - Echoes of Extremity: An Analytical Psychology Perspective on Extractivism in the Global South through Metal Music. Léandi Steenkamp & Suzanne Strauss