The panel deals with the role concrete physicality plays in the realization of critique, not least from the perspective of minoritized bodies. How do more or less conditioned and abled bodies unite as a movement? How can critique be understood as embodied between collective action and resistance, rejection, passivity and depression? Particularly with regard to an increasingly mediated, mirror-like form of experiencing the self, the question of interruptions and withdrawal takes on a new turn. What role do cultural narratives play in the construction of norms and, in particular, fantasies of a healthy body? In contrast, can a critique of this construction be produced by adaptation or disruption?

Speakers

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Spatial Agency and the Choreography of Resistance
Quill Kukla

Spatial agency is our ability to express ourselves, be self-determining, pursue pleasure and fulfillment, and act with appropriate authority in space and through our use of space. Full spatial agency requires not just the ability to adeptly navigate spaces and their choreographies, but also the ability to resist, critique, and change the possibilities for identity and action that spaces make available to us. This requires that we be able to re-choreograph space. I will explore our need for this kind of resistant spatial agency and the conditions under which we have it and fail to have it, through a series of concrete examples: political protest; squatting and occupation; crip activism and the "radical rest" movement; and drag. 

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The University Cannot Hold
Priya S. Gupta

Can the University fulfill its promise as a public good and a space for critical thought? (Has it ever?) This project considers three destructive dimensions of the current university: corporatization, the treatment of diverse bodies and temperaments, and the suppression of dissent. It examines their mutual reinforcement and argues that together they push the university into a conformist, sterile, ‘neutral’ space constructed in furtherance of market ideals while also pulling the core norms of the University apart. It then asks what happens to critique and emancipatory and utopian imagination in the shadow of the neoliberal university, with reference to student movements and occupations of university spaces in Spring 2024.