Research Project Verita Sriratana Don’t they know it’s not the end of the (patriarchal and heteronormative) world?: Misogyny as (Post)Apocalypse

In 2020, Arundhati Roy described the COVID-19 pandemic as a “portal” to start anew, leaving behind social injustices in order to “walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”. In the face of looming catastrophe and in the period after devastating calamity, among the things that gender justice fighters dream of leaving behind and to its own demise – forever out of their luggage –, is misogyny. However, like the uncanny Odradek in Franz Kafka’s “The Cares of a Family Man”, misogyny survives even the most earth-shattering doom of dooms. Misogyny is the backbone of queer dystopia and even thrives in the postgender utopia. This project contends that it is literature that serves as portal through which one imagines the (post)apocalypse, dissects the past, deconstructs the present, and dreams of the future where gender justice reigns. It offers an in-depth analysis of the trauma brought about by misogynist necropolitics and epistemic.