‘Unworlding’ – Jack Halberstam Keynote

In a keynote address to the Canadian Communication Association, Dr. Jack Halberstam (Professor of Gender Studies and English, Columbia University) gave a detailed examination of the concept of ‘unworlding.’ Halberstam considered the Congress 2022 theme of Transitions as it relates to the experiences of trans bodies, the built environment, and their interaction, drawing upon tools from science fiction, philosophy, artwork, and architecture. 

What does Halberstam mean by ‘unworlding’? It is a way of thinking about how to un-make the mess that we’ve constructed. The world we are living in is messy and difficult, as we try to navigate quasi-post-pandemic interactions, political precarity, and the climate crisis. This world we’ve created, where crises exacerbate pre-existing inequalities, needs to come undone. 

Halberstam drew on many examples to illustrate this idea of ‘unworlding,’ the first being N.K. Jemisin’s science fiction novel, The Fifth Season. This series takes place in a world that is incredibly unstable, constantly shaking or quaking and swallowing up humans. In this tumultuous world, a species of people evolved with special powers to still the earth, but they are enslaved and managed by a small group of powerful elites. A dying teacher figure imparts final wisdom to a student gifted with these powers: “I don’t want you to fix [the world]... I want you to make it worse.”

We live in a difficult world where the presumption is that repairing things will make the world right. But when things are wrong, they need to break so that something new can emerge, Halberstam asserted. The world in Jemisin’s novel is not one to repair; it is one to push to the brink of collapse. 

A second example comes from the works of Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva (Professor, University of British Columbia and a featured speaker in the Congress 2022 Big Thinking series). Da Silva has read against the tradition of Western philosophy to dismantle the ideological frame that makes it impossible to think differently. Key is Da Silva’s concept of ‘unpayable debt.’ This is an idea that we live in a system that passes on debt to people who have not incurred it, but now must repay it. This leaves people stranded in a deficit mode, as the system constantly extracts benefit from them for a small, exclusive group. 

Halberstam then turned to examples of ‘unworlding’ in architecture and art. In these fields, only when we take things apart, dismantle, pull down, or demolish do new ways become visible. ‘Anarchitecture’ (anarchy + architecture) is a concept to rethink the ways in which architecture has become central to capitalism with urbanization, and to push back against gentrification, the global economy, and the commodification of shelter. These ideas are central to the works of Gordon Matta Clark, Beverly Buchanan, and Alvin Baltrop.

 
Gordon Matta Clark, “Splitting” 1974 (Source: MoMA). 

Beverley Buchanan, “Wall Fragments” 1978 (Source: Brooklyn Museum). Buchanan brought pieces from demolition sites in New York and made new structures out of them. These shapes made by destruction were something she didn't make as an artist, but she used these ruins to create new systems in her own image. 

Alvin Baltrop, 1975-1986 (Source: Baltimore Out Loud, original print stored with the Alvin Baltrop Trust). Baltrop, a Black queer photographer, created an archive of gay male life in 1970s New York, where gay men went to the crumbling Manhattan west side piers to cruise. The spectacle of the collapse of this space was a key subject of his photography.

To consider ‘unworlding’ as it related to trans bodies and the trans experience, Halberstam turned to the novels Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. There is an assumption that with transitioning, a new body is built and inhabited, and that nothing changes for trans people. However, there are many different directions and dimensions to transition. The concept of ‘detransitioning’ is never about someone feeling like they made a mistake by transitioning, Halberstam explained — it is often a response to a world that is so transphobic that trans people feel they cannot exist as their full authentic selves. Emezi’s novel explores the multiple directions for transition that build and unbuild the body. The story features a protagonist born into a body in which many different spirits and gods live; the protagonist’s journey is one of coming out not just as trans, but as multiple or becoming many things. 

In summary, Halberstam’s idea of ‘unworlding’ is a form of creative destruction. When you break something, you must study the pattern of its shattering before you can piece it back together. In order for new ways of thinking, being, and doing to emerge, sometimes things must come undone.