Crossings + Boundaries Talks: Sayak Valencia and Lorena Wolffer

Talk: From Queer to Cuir: Geopolitical Ostranenie from the Global South

Sayak Valencia’s talk will explore the politics of survival and the alliances of the trans/border/messtizx/sissy/lesbian/dressed/slut-fag/cripple. The word “cuir” represents a defamiliarization—or ostranenie—of “queer,” which challenges automatic reading and registers, through its unfamiliarity, a geopolitical inflection southward and from the peripheries. Countering colonial epistemology and Anglo-American historiography, cuir invokes a space of decolonialized enunciation, at once playful and critical.

Sayak Valencia (Cultural Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte) is the author of Capitalismo Gore.

Talk: Citizen Affects/Afectxs ciudadanxs

Lorena Wolffer will discuss her experiences producing Citizen Affects/Afectxs ciudadanxs at UC Santa Barbara and at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City in 2017. This participatory cultural interventions project is focused on the affects that cross, regulate, and define women, queer, and non-normative individuals in our interaction with others and with the power structures that surround and legislate us.

Lorena Wolffer (1971) is an artist and cultural activist based in Mexico City.

A reception will follow.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Crossings + Boundaries series and the Idee Levitan IHC Endowment.