Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World: The Alchemy Lecture 2023

by Phoebe Boswell, Saidiya Hartman, Janaína Oliveira

Five Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas.The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Dr. Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists—agile thinkers and practitioners working across a range of disciplines and geographies—convened to discuss their radical visions of the beautiful world, and the manifestos that may help to guide us there. Their treatises have been captured and luminously expanded in the pages of this book.Cherokee Nation citizen and professor Joseph M. Pierce asserts that “[f]or this decolonial future to become possible, the guiding force must no longer be capital but relations.” Informed by her practice of “curation as care,” Brazilian film curator Janaína Oliveira evokes music and movement as a means toward this “it's almost by falling that you live. . . . The beautiful world dances the stumbles. The beautiful world dances dancing.” Kenyan-British visual artist Phoebe Boswell uses the space of a virtual gallery to ask, “If we burn down the institution, what happens next? Do we trust ourselves to know?” and gestures toward the possibility of this “as yet unlived, unexperienced thing.” Professor and MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman asks us to consider our capacity to burn, stating that “[P]ragmatism yields a profound tolerance of the unlivable.” And Mexican-American author Cristina Rivera Garza gives us the language of the future in the subjunctive, which “lays the groundwork for the irruption. . . . The subjunctive is the smuggler who crosses the border of the future bearing unknown cargo.”Each Alchemist is intimately concerned with the shape of this cargo and our ability to bear its weight, together. Through these expansive, transformative essays, new ways of being are threaded and proposed, illuminating our path towards this possible beautiful world.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

Published September 17, 2024

Reviews

[Cali · Rating 1 out of 5]

was that really necessary

[Annie Zaidi]

Definitely worth reading. Especially liked Hartman's 'Crow Jane Makes a Modest Proposal' and Pierce's 'A manifesto for Speculative Relations'.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

FIVE MANIFESTOS FOR THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD: The Alchemy Lecture 2023 by Phoebe Boswell, Saidiya Hartman, Janaína Oliveira, Joseph M. Pierce and Cristina Rivera Garza with an introduction by Christina Sharpe is a beautiful book! I really enjoyed reading all five manifestos. It was very interesting as each Alchemist works in such varied fields as film curator to visual artist and lives in diverse geographies from London to Brazil. The most impactful manifesto to me was “A Manifesto for Speculative Relations” by Joseph M. Pierce which made me cry at the end with this line: “Let me say this again: this world is incomplete without you.”

Thank you to the publicist and Knopf Canada for my uncorrected proof! This book is on sale today! Happy pub day!

I’m really looking forward to this year’s Alchemy Lecture The City of Our Dreaming which will take place next month and be the third lecture. The Alchemy Lecture is an annual collaboration between York University and Knopf Canada and it’s a multi-vocal model that brings together a constellation of thinkers and practitioners from different disciplines and geographies annually to think together and in public on the most pressing issues of our times.

[Ania · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled reading this book due to the level of difficulty understanding the subject matter. It was academic in nature. I was able to learn a few new things from it.

[Gloria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually did need this one a bit at the end of this semester