Abstract
For the 12.1 issue of SPECTRA, we opened our Call for Papers without a set theme, instead inviting scholars to reflect on their fields, speak across difference, and reconsider the categories that shape intellectual life. The resulting issue reflects this breadth and continues SPECTRA’s interdisciplinary commitment to theory as a practice of critical interruption. Across essays, reviews, visual work, and an interview on Afro-Futurism and global politics, contributors renegotiate inherited paradigms to confront urgent sociopolitical questions. Together, these pieces demonstrate theory’s power to unsettle “common sense” and to reimagine the worlds scholarship makes possible.
© 2026 Elhom Gosink, Chris Thorne, published by Virginia Tech Publishing
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