Julia Rose Camus - Core Response 3

On the topic of Queer OS, I feel there is further I’d like to expand upon. As we have mentioned in class, a number of graduate students have produced a response to Keeling’s work in the form of QueerOS: A User’s Manual penned by Fiona Barnett, Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas, Jacob Gaboury, Jessica Marie Johnson, and Margaret Rhee. In this piece, these theorists expand beyond the speculative nature of Keeling’s work to consider the practical applications of a Queer OS. They posit: “A more productive interface would be expansive, proliferating the relationality allowed for by the inter-face, its inter-activity, its nature as that which is between or among, that which binds together, mutually or reciprocally. Far from the extractive impulse of contemporary systems that mine and surveil, it is an act of consent and mutual transformation. It is that which allows us to enter one another and be in-formed—that is, to be shaped from within.”

As someone working in academia, I do find it incredibly helpful when speculative works are expanded upon in concrete thinking, and this has fueled much of my own thinking surrounding my dissertation. What comes after critique? is the key question at play. In this piece, Barnett et al. propose some of the ways in which we can practically understand the radical potential of a Queer OS, wherein hegemonic structures of interactives, dialogue, and interface are disrupted. This leaves us to question what this platform might actually look in practical execution. How does moderation affect this modality? Does this redefine the concept of a digital citizenship overall? Can a platform like this exist on the current Internet access that we know, or must we also radically tear down and rebuild the ways in which servers operate?