Transecological Imaginations
is conceptualized as a working group that bridges spatial theory and transformative practices to imagine equitable futures. Transecological ethics is an embodied relation to place which is attuned to histories of difference in all its forms, especially those that challenge binaries such as nature/culture, female/male, rural/urban. The transecological framework aims to resist a planetary future centered on anthropic exceptionalism that hierarchizises life according to colonial, racial, and gendered forms of violence and perpetuates precarious life. Through this group, we attempt to conjure postanthropic new realities to contribute to building a future where justice dwells.
To deepen this inquiry, the group will focus on the case study of a building at the intersection of Turk and Taylor streets, and its surroundings, in the impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood of downtown San Francisco. This crossroads was the site of a queer grassroots uprising against police brutality, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot of 1966. The riot at Compton’s was spearheaded by street youth and gender-nonconforming people three years before the Stonewall Riot in New York, which typically marks the beginning of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Today, the three-story building that housed Compton’s Cafeteria at street level and a residential hotel above is operated as a “halfway house” by GEO Group, a for-profit prison company.
