Queer disconnections: Affect, break, and delay in digital connectivity

Abstract

<div><div><div><p>In this article, my intent is to theorise the intricate relation between technology and affect by considering questions of digital vulnerability – of disconnections, breaks, and delays – as a way of rethinking our affective attachments to digital devices. By extension, I also connect this argument with a framework of queer theory, as an opportunity to think differently about relations through questions of technological ruptures and deferrals. My bassline for this endeavour is the idea of the break as formative for how we can both sense and make sense of digital connectivity, in so far as the break has the potential to bring forth what constant connectivity means, and how it feels. Similarly, the break can potentially make tangible relational norms around continuous, coherent, and linear ways of relating and connecting, and thus provide alternative models for ways of being with digital devices, networks, and each other. If constant connectivity provides us with a relational norm of sorts, then disconnection could function as a queer orientation device with the potential of creating openings for other ways of coming together, and other ways of staying together.</p></div></div></div>