The exhilaration of the festival is opposed to ordinary life, occupied as the latter is with daily tasks and hemmed in with a system of taboos and precautions […] In fact, the festival is presented as a re-enactment of the first days of the universe, the Urzeit, the eminently creative era that saw all objects, creatures and institutions become fixed in their traditional and definitive form.
–Roger Caillois
As the Global North celebrates the ‘end of COVID’ — a cry as silly as it is ignorant — and the motor of human-service-capital revs to life with restaurants in the US reopening, wait-staff unmasked, hacking their lungs up over food on its way to be served to ‘immune’ patrons, the festival has become an important theoretical device. Open the dating app of one’s choice, and one finds profiles reading “waxed and vaxxed ;)” or “2/2 Pfizer, ready to party!”: Issues of pent-up desires become foregrounded. A year ago, Friday nights were mild; today one finds gaggles of (un)washed masses lining up to gyrate their bodies in dimly lit North American bars while guzzling beer bearing the same name as the virus they once feared. As hips thrust and genitalia combine, hospitals overflow. Separated by wealth, class, and geographical location, the body of Death is intimately connected with the body of primal desire. Indeed, to speak of Death without speaking of libidinal expenditure is to do a disservice to both.
It is at the tail-end of 2021 that we at Plutonics are looking to Caillois’ theory of the festival to make (un)sense of life around us. With contributors from all over the world, from the Global North and South, we encourage submissions that deal in some way with expenditure. What does it mean to party with a plague? Does one pop Viagra while a virus runs rampant? What is the role of the festival when delta flies Delta? These questions, this ‘theme,’ are not so much meant to be rigid, as viruses to structure your thinking around. As such, we welcome submissions that deal directly with the festival as well as ones that deviate in deviant ways.
Thus, submission guidelines are minimal. Written works can be any length with citations easily convertible to Chicago Style. Works of art ought to be original (or heavily remixed) while plagiarized works ought to have an accompanying justification. Please email all submissions to mvupress@gmail.com and include the following information: title of your work, what you’d like to be called, a short (3-5 line) biography with any relevant links, and any other requests.
The “deadline” (a very malleable thing) is January 31st, 2022. Feel free to send any questions to the above email and we look forward to seeing what you produce!
Published by