Special Issue: Ordinariness (Qui Parle)
In times of crisis—war, pandemic, severe disruptions of supply chains, climate apocalypse, systemic erasure of reproductive autonomy—there might seem to be no meaningful distinction between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Yet after the cultural emphasis on catastrophe in the last few years, a return to the ordinary is overdue. What role can critical thought on ordinary language, affect, and aesthetics now play in interrogating the evolving concept of ordinariness, imagining alternative ordinaries, and expanding our geographies and objects of study? Additionally, what are the limits of critical theory for understanding and communicating about ordinary experience?