My thread was getting wild so I'm going to start a new one with Florence Okoye's keynote 'Caliban at the Boiler: Rendering Speculative Fiction as Plantation Hardware' @FINOkoye for the final paper at the @LSFRC_'s Beyond Borders conference #LSFRC20

Florence begins by acknowledging that we are not living in unprecedented times, that technology is an expression of social change BUT that it is also a site of novelty and that to speak about it precisely involves acknowledging it as a site of the production of futures #LSFRC20

She asks what the relation is between this now and the many nows generated by technology and speculation - a speculation which does not need to be prophetic but might be witsful or playful #LSFRC20

This is not a capitulation to a deterministic model of technology but rather an effort to examine eras that saw themselves as 'realisers of the new' without simply refuting that position (I am not nailing this but it is fascinating) #LSFRC20

These eras, particularly the Early modern era, give us our time, but what about place? Florence cites Catherine Hall who observed that 'the colonies provided the many benchmarks which allowed the English to determine what they did not want to be and who they were' #LSFRC20

Where the English might see the distinction between England and Scotland, South and North Italy they did not bring this granular approach to the colonies which thus act to determine the identity of the metropole #LSFRC20

Florence thus focuses in on Early modern colonies, particularly the Caribbean. She introduces us to some colonial maps of Barbados as analysed by Charlton Yingling #LSFRC20

These are maps of omission, marked by absences and silences. The indigenous inhabitants and the enslaved are both erased. Florence argues that we can read these maps as both technologies and fictions, which gives us access to the speculative futures they were oriented towards

Her exploration of these 'geological strata of fictions' tracks both the maps and the built environment that they represent or rather fail to as the plantations themselves are technologies are both concealed and used to surveille #LSFRC20

She speaks about the maroons' use of the 'concealed' visibility' of these roads before moving to a discussion of the colonial map as an exercise in 'worldbuilding' #LSFRC20

Florence asks how deep the split consciousness, which allowed plantation owners to want to live a life of luxury without seeing how that luxury was produced, goes? #LSFRC20

She is now thinking about the representation of the enslaved as attached to and in fact indistinguishable from the machines which they worked on. This is the invisibilising of automata seen particularly in the production of sugar #LSFRC20

Florence knows that the mechanisation of labour had no impact on the enslavement of Africans or the genocide of indigenous peoples. Florence argues that this is because the futurity that is wanted is one of vanishing #LSFRC20

The absence of representation, or of representation which is obviously staged, speaks to this desire for vanishing. Florence speaks of the fear of the early modern cyborg as

Florence now moves to a discussion of Thomas More's Utopia and the vanishing of the people of Abraxa who are colonised and vanished by King Utopos #LSFRC20

She cites Carl Hardy's work, which stresses that whether satirical or not, More's text had a direct impact on the colonisation of the Americas. (such a great point for those interested here are some more resources on this idea https://utopia.ac/resources/decolonisation/) #LSFRC20

Florence reads this idea into the theory of 'action at a distance' - discussed extensively by Francis Bacon. Both this theory and the colonialism and extractivism which Bacon espoused are driven by the idea of erasing the intermediate, the connection between actor and actant

Here then the colonial ideal is one in which action at a distance becomes a power that a white humanity can wield for itself. This is a speculation, an attempted futurity but crucially not a reality #LSFRC20

My god what a truly phenomenal keynote That rocked my world. Thank you to everyone for making this a fantastic conference particularly to @Gear_774 Sasha Myerson who carried us all on her incredibly capable back and without whom this literally wouldn't have been possible #LSFRC20

Let's go forth with a spirit of intentionally engaging in the fictions that shape our worlds. Big love to all #LSFRC20