An Intellectual Obsession

You may or may not know that I am currently obsessed with the apocalypse. Not so much about the nature of its occurrence, but with the nature of life after the apocalypse. I enter this realm of thinking with hope for the very radical reorganization of norms, whose persistence have dragged us into closets, silenced us, lain prohibitions and punishments upon our bodies, which have killed us. I look hopefully towards after the end because if I am not dead, I can pick up the pieces of the puzzle without regard for the picture on the box. My virtues and my flaws, my ability to express, my laziness, will not only be the ground work for who I will to become, but will indeed be the naked truths of being. Nothing will appear as it did; I will not be able to rely on appearances as the justification for my judgments. Lost, I will find something different, potentially horrifying, and necessarily transformational; after the end, beyond the boundary of time lies the spaceless space and timeless time of the abject.

Having crossed beyond the boundary of knowable time, all that is is that which should not be. After the end we do not consider ourselves lucky for what we have survived. Survival, our new occupation, is luckless. Life at times does not seem preferable, or perhaps never is. We shall never know.

And all the same, I am hopeful. Beyond the end, I carry nothing with me but my body. Its intactness is the only proof of transition. Unlike heaven or hell, I carry with me my body. Perhaps I will be the most in my body as I have ever been. Perhaps others will recognize my body as the only mark of my existence, rather than the color of my skin, hair and eyes, rather than the characteristics that differentiate me as man or woman, child or adult, king or peasant. The meaning of freedom is a contract between my body and the environment, and power is a consequence of proper nourishment, the intensity of the sun, of shelter. Performative constitution hinges on my ability to survive in every circumstance, not simply to survive homophobia, sexism, racism. A new indiscernible law of unnatural nature will prevail, its instability fascinating, its countenance to be feared.

I will not be afraid. I have known unjust fear. I have corrected my body, my language, I have edited my desires and hidden my past, complicit in the edicts of fear. I have crept to not be detected, and I have closed my eyes and watched companions, lovers, friends and strangers be berated and scorned. I know fear. I confront it when I leave my apartment, and it does not leave my side until I have locked the door behind me. After the end, I will not be afraid. I will have a body free from prescription. I will have a voice free to speak. No matter these things will not last. After the end, nothing lasts. Everything is done lasting.


...For this installment of my studies, I will be writing about the development of my obsession with the post-apocalypse. Central to this work is the question of how I came to see the end as the best solvent to oppression. Admittedly similar to the politics of separationism (a perspective I find myself coming back to over and over again), the post-apocalyptic politic starts with a people without place, though goes further to investigate a people without people. It is, after all, that those of us who occupy a space in the abject are close to invisibility. I am speaking specifically of multi(fill in the blank) identities, whose realization is neither this nor that, whose very being provokes fear and anxiety in a racially (sexually, etc.) structured status quo. My own understanding of my identity is central to this project. This is exciting and frightening. I refuse to allow fear to close doors leading towards my future, towards the end.