More of Us beyond This Room: Feminist (Hi)stories and Solidarity in The Future of Another Timeline

Using the framework of Clare Hemmings's Why Stories Matter to examine the critical functions of storytelling in feminist praxis, I argue that Annalee Newitz's recent speculative novel The Future of Another Timeline mobilizes citational practice and affect to illustrate the historical presence and ongoing necessity of coalitional solidarity in feminist theory/practice. Via a close reading of the various timelines and perspectives within the novel, I explore how Newitz constructs an ethicopolitically grounded approach to critical hope that carries the possibilities of coalitional solidarity into the future(s), through a transnational and transtemporal fictional approach. The Future of Another Timeline ultimately argues for a dynamic balance of approaches to action, organizing, and theorizing that maintains the room to tell multiple types of feminist histories-such as one from the perspective of a scholar-activist with her own unacknowledged privileges, another from a young woman coming to feminism via experiences of trauma, and still more.

Automated summary

Using Clare Hemmings's framework, this article examines the critical functions of storytelling in feminist praxis, and argues that Annalee Newitz's novel The Future of Another Timeline exemplifies the historical presence and ongoing necessity of coalitional solidarity in feminist theory/practice through citational practice and affect. Through a close reading of the novel's various timelines and perspectives, it explores how Newitz constructs an ethicopolitically grounded approach to critical hope that carries the possibilities of coalitional solidarity into the future(s).