Ismael Quiñones presents “Life After Rhetoric: Unrealism in Colonial Times”

The talk is a meditation on the possibilities of augmenting pluriversal futures. The politics of our current moment, with the escalation of human induced climate change, call for a reorientation in the ways we do rhetoric. Unrealism, both as a problem and a possibility, is a response to the limits of colonial times we were born to live. By reflecting on my own story of migration, the histories of friars that narrate European invasion upon the lands and waters of Originary nations, and the traces of resilience from a colonial archive, my dissertation Undocumented Times: Rhetorics of a Colonial Moment asks us to imagine beyond the confines of the politics of intelligibility.

Ismael Quiñones is a doctoral candidate in Communication Arts and Sciences. His work has been published in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Philosophy & Rhetoric, and Communication Education. He will graduate in summer 2023.