Shifting Futures: Digital Trans of Color Praxis

Code Poetry Library, Conclusion

In a poetic mode, I have described both Kara Keeling’s black femme function and Janelle Monae’s ability to dance between identities through code poetry in my performance of “Femme Disturbance” at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics31. The code poems follow. 


femmeDisturbance.keeling.blackFemmeFunction () { 
	delete visibility;
	if( commonSense.disrupt(racist) && commonSense.disrupt(sexist) && commonSense.disrupt(heteronormative) ) 
	{
		//once these forms of commonsense have been disrupted
		//exit this entire computational paradigm and
		//split off into a new imaginary computational system
		//yet to be defined
		fork(blackFemme(revolutionary, anticapitalist));
	}	
}


femmeDisturbance.janelleMonae.flickerBetweenRealities(){

	//initialize
	delete race;
	delete gender;
	delete humanity;

	//flicker
	while ( perform(androidNotHuman) )  { 
		miscegenate( human );	
		//literally
		go(insane);
		danceDefyingGravity();	
	}	
}


Code poetry performs the indeterminate aesthetic of poetry through the multiple temporalities of the algorithm. The poem can be read in order of execution, as a textual poem or as a structural concrete poem. Looking to an algorithmic model of identity that can represent shifting, we may want to extend “I = Another” with “I = x” where x is a variable that can change over time, iteratively, perhaps being replaced with possibilities Keeling offers such as “you”, “us”, or “I”. This model accounts for the multiple possible futures described by Keeling. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Lisa Nakamura have also considered the possibilities of race as code or “a technology and a mode of mediatization”32. By focusing on the moment of shifting, as made visible by Monae, the algorithmic moment of changing identities and embodiments replaces any static identification. One could look to the assembly language instructions that might comprise a line of C code such as “x = 1;” to see the inner workings of this moment of identity, or the voltages that make up lines of assembly language that Chun uses to point blur the distinctions of analog and digital33. Or one could look to the pixel color and location blending algorithms of software that creates digital video morphs such as those in Monae’s video, or the video compression algorithms in the code of the Netflix player that create the illusion of smooth movement in Laverne Cox’s scenes in Orange is the New Black, or the Javascript code that makes the pages of this Scalar book fade in and out. Or, in an effort to decolonize technology, one could understand an algorithm for shifting between identities to be a series of steps, describable in any number of languages, and as analogous to a prayer, a ritual or a game. Doing so may provide a path towards a decolonial strategy for identity shifting that can evade the colonial logics of necropolitics.

Through the example of Janelle Monáe’s science fiction concept album “Metropolis”, and the music videos accompanying the album, I have proposed the shift as a form of movement that transgender, transsexual and gender-non-conforming people of color use for safety. These modes of being between visible and invisible have particular relevance for contemporary necropolitical situations which seek to restrict movement in order to ensure death for trans people of color. Learning from science fiction in digital media, one can see into the moment of shifting, which offers multiple possible futures. By looking at shifting over time, I articulate an algorithmic model of identity, which can be abstracted to have uses beyond digital technologies.

Next: Works Cited
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