Can we speak of a turn to absence? Across the contemporary academic conjuncture, theory is reapproaching the absent in its varying figurative and fleshly forms – revalorising the presence of absence as a critical matter. Whether in queer theory, trans studies, Black studies, Eastern European studies, or literary studies, enduring scholarly investments in re-presenting and re-presencing the absented body have become supplemented by an affirmative interest in staying with absence as such. This scholarship locates absence at the heart of myriad resistances against exploitation, appropriation, undoing, and normativity. For this issue, Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis has invited scholars and artists alike to submit work on the uses of absence in and outside of theory today. As an object of study, a critical figure, and rhetorical tool, absence is given a shape, meaning, form; it is put in writing, where it has a function, a flavour, and a politics. Absence, in other words, fails every time to be purely nothing. How, then, to think the contradiction and the provocation of a contemporary aesthetics of absence?

Join us at De Nieuwe Anita to interrogate some of these complexities. The evening will begin with an introduction to the issue, followed by readings by some of the contributors. Afterwards, guests are invited to enjoy a small exhibition displaying the visual works from the issue, accompanied by the author’s texts on artistic research. Feel welcome to further explore the complexities of absence under some music, speak to our contributors and purchase a copy.

The event will be free of charge. ‍

Marta Lopes Santos is a writer and researcher based in Amsterdam, where she recently completed an MA in Literary Studies. She has been researching labour, dreams, futures, collectivities, rest and refusals. Her writing has previously appeared in Soapbox Journal, Pala Press and Literature & Aesthetics. Recently, she co-founded the publishing project Sleepy Press. martalopessantos.com.

ilja schamlé is a community organiser, cook, and artist whose practice moves through the worlds of food, ecology, and health. She works from her fleshy metabolic experiences and the ingestion of the other, wondering how psychosomatic and psychoanalytic perspectives might fabulate new stories of the self. Their writings, community projects, herbalist learnings, and cooking performances transform their wounds into capacious spaces. They are currently studying at the Dutch Art Institute and are an active co-organiser at Massia residency space.

Parel Joy is a writer and poet. Her pamphlet The Queen of Cups and Other Poems was published by SPAM in 2022 and she runs DykeHouse Press, which has published 3 zines of dyke poetry so far. She has translated works by jimmy cooper, Porsha Olayiwola and Bryan Washington, among others, from English into Dutch. She is currently finishing her research master’s degree in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. www.pareljoy.xyz‍

Eugenie Brinkema is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Status-Only Graduate Professor in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the relationship between aesthetic form and violence, affect, sexuality, and ethics. She is the author of The Forms of the Affects (2014) and Life-Destroying Diagrams (2022), both with Duke University Press, and is currently writing a book about colour.‍

Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis is a student-run publishing platform founded in 2018. It has since promoted scholarly, artistic, and interdisciplinary work that engages provocatively with cultural artefacts, concepts, and contemporary phenomena within the humanities. This event is supported by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), and the issue is supported by Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA).