Call for Chapters - Archipelago of Extremity: Fragmentation and Renovation in Puerto Rico
Archipelago of Extremity:
Fragmentation and Renovation in Puerto Rico
Editors
Daniel Nevárez Araújo, PhD, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
Nelson Varas-Díaz, PhD, Florida International University
Description
There seems to be a growing sense, among individuals, communities, and even scientists and researchers, that we are living through extreme times. Reflections on extremity are evident in academic work on capitalism, racism, ecocide, disasters, and human relations, to name just a few areas of interest. These areas and many more share similarities in their concerns about surviving the present, with fixing what ails us, goals which seem ever more distant and sometimes impossible. It is no coincidence, then, that scholars have called for the emergence of ‘extremity studies' as an area of inquiry aimed at understanding how extremity and the extreme—those experiences, events, and ideas once thought of as unfathomable—come into existence and how they blend into everyday life. Extremity, in both its oppressive and liberating forms, becomes part of daily life in what scholars have termed the “quotidian extreme” (Varas-Díaz, Scott & Bardine, 2023). Approaches toward extremity lead us to ask, how can the visible and invisible forms of extremity ingrained in everyday life be explored academically? We posit that geographical specificities become open windows for this endeavor, with Puerto Rico representing one such case.
The multiple histories of Puerto Rico narrate the story of a nation that has increasingly coalesced around its own definition of the imagined Puerto Rican community (Meléndez-Badillo, 2024; Duany, 2017; Ayala & Bernabé, 2011; Picó, 2006). Much of this trek towards self-definition has been a response to the push and pull of imperial actors as well as economic realities often defined beyond the archipelago’s shores. As such, one would be better served not to argue for a monolithic history of Puerto Rico, much less a monolithic conception of a Puerto Rican identity (Torrecilla, 2004; Pabón, 2003). The “nación en vaivén,” borrowing Jorge Duany’s (2010) characterization of the archipelago and the diaspora (the diaspora itself proposed here as part of the archipelagic extension), thus, harbors a multitude of extreme realities; many of these represent extreme forms of surviving, experiencing, thinking, imagining, consuming, creating, migrating, resisting, performing, and living. As the Puerto Rican archipelago and its people have attempted to move towards a concretely defined Uber-Puerto Ricanness that encompasses these pluralistic experiences, colonial histories, material conditions, natural disasters, and governmental corruption and mismanagement have exerted increased pressure, tearing at the sociocultural fabric of the archipelago.
In Cruel Optimism (2011), Lauren Berlant posits that “contemporary historical experience” is lived simultaneously “at an extreme and in a zone of ordinariness” wherein “life building and the attrition of human life are indistinguishable, and where it is hard to distinguish between modes of incoherence, distractedness, and habituation from deliberate and deliberative activity” (96). In the case of Puerto Rico, this interaction between the extreme and ordinariness has been amplified by the factors delineated above. Consequently, Puerto Rico has increasingly become what we call an archipelago of extremity wherein its people experience the forces of fragmentation and renovation on a daily basis. While Puerto Ricans are often summarily relegated to the zone of nonbeing, to borrow Franz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks, 1952) insights, they have also developed extreme forms of resistance rooted in embodied expression, shared needs and desires, practices of mutual aid, and demands for increased visibility (Lloréns, 2021).
This edited volume will bring together chapters that consider the various extreme oppositional forces that have and continue to exert pressure on the archipelago. Setting off from the daily clashes between extremity and ordinariness, the collection seeks to place these forces in conversation with each other. As it moves towards understanding the extremity embedded in the archipelagic realities experienced by Puerto Ricans everywhere, the collection similarly seeks to develop an archipelagic methodology that promotes the use of fragmentation and renovation as frames that dismantle, disrupt, and move analysis, criticism, and theory away from the demands for monolithic conceptions of nation, identity, belonging, and personhood.
Areas of Interest (These are presented as examples; we will consider additional areas as they are proposed)
- Tourism and extreme tourist behavior in the archipelago
- Extreme light and sound pollution
- The fragmentation and renovation of party politics
- The clash between federal, state, and street laws (Código de Orden Público, Boceteo, etc.)
- A Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans
- The AirBnBification of Puerto Rico
- Global Warming and its effects on the archipelago (extreme heat, extreme storms)
- Construction, erosion, and abandonment
- The rise of Pop-ulist music in Puerto Rico
- The fragmentation and dismantling of the education system (public schools, UPR system)
- The spread of medicinal cannabis and the marketability of healing
- Twice removed: Vieques and Culebra and the extremity of bare life
- La BoriVogue and the reconstitution of LGBTQ+ spaces
- Anti-resilience as praxis
- Femicides and the extremity of official and public responses
- The logics of mall and storefront expansion and collapse
- The fragmentation and renovation of Afro-Puertorriqueñidad
- Trans lives and the health care system
- The ubiquity of religion/the ubiquity of anti-religion
- Extreme Puerto Rican performance art
- Death and extremity: Deathways and funerary practices
- “Yo turisteo donde vivo:” Cost of living, taxation, and access to property and goods
- Cyclical migration versus permanent vacation
- Power outages and their effects on health
- Extremity and its effects on disability in the archipelago
- Language resistance and absorption: The fragmentation and renovation of language practices
Instructions
- Send a 500-word abstract to daniel.nevarez1@upr.edu by April 30, 2025.
- Authors will be notified of their inclusion in the book by June 1, 2025.
- Selected authors will be asked to submit a complete manuscript (7,500-8,000 words) by June 1, 2026.
- The book will be published by Lexington Press under the “Extremity in Society and Culture” series.