GOBLIN QUEENS AND QUALIA KNIGHTS
A Guide to Xisting in a Time of Catastrophes
Phil Smith
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Introduction
This is a handbook for covertly becoming a Qualia Knight or a Goblin Queen. Both are undercover ways of being and sustaining sensitivity in a world that has become hyper-productive and morbidly over-surveillanced and that is increasingly drained of vitality and meaning. We live in a world in which increasingly we cannot be ourselves; in which whatever we feel is sold back to us via digital and social media as a spectacle of meanness. We are asked to perform in travesties of what we intended: artists are expected to be content providers, lecturers to be fee-recruiters, teachers to be syllabus dispensers, social workers to be scapegoats, migrants to be instant patriots, journalists to be demagogues... To be a Qualia Knight or a Goblin Queen (or both), on the other hand, is to live by those feelings that you choose, whatever your circumstances; as such, you honour the Goblin Queen you are, while attending as a Knight not only to the patterns and webs of the world but also to those formed by your Queen within. It only requires that you learn a myth and do your best to live by it. That myth, and initiation into it, come towards the end of this book; before then the book will lay out the ground for a quest of change, its place in webs of history, nature and culture facing collective catastrophe, the personalities of the players in your story, and a repertoire of preparatory actions for you to perform. Go back to the main book page |