Poetic Operations

“In this beautifully written book, micha cárdenas directs us to look at how the algorithm, as analytic and praxis, holds the possibility of trans of color survival. Deftly moving across numerous geographies, texts, and fields of inquiry, Poetic Operations is a bold contribution to trans of color studies.” - C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

“micha cárdenas’s powerful new work extends intersectionality as a mode for understanding the relationships between race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other axes of power, oppression, and resistance. Doing important theoretical and analytical work in its analysis of trans of color media arts practice, Poetic Operations will be useful for those working in media studies, digital studies, trans studies, and art history, as well as anyone interested in interrogating power.” - Sasha Costanza-Chock, author of Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

"Poetic Operations is arguably the first major academic work to deal with the subject matter in such detail. How cárdenas uses the term will likely become the standard by which other engagements with the term are measured.” - Sofie Vlaad, Journal of Critical Race Inquiry

“Importantly, this book models theory developed from and for trans of color existence and models how scholars must critically reflect on how our theories have ramifications for people’s lives. . . . Poetic Operations provides methods for analysis and design that invite exciting and innovative projects that engage in decolonial trans of color survival and celebration.” - Shano (Hongyuan) Liang and Michael Anthony DeAnda, Lateral

“cárdenas explores digital media, speculative design and technology, performance and visual arts, coding, activism, theory, games, and poetry across the geographies of the Americas and beyond, along with a deep self-reflective engagement with her own practice-based projects. . . . Centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx trans and travesti voices, PoeticOperations offers critical approaches to deploy digital technologies for decolonial futures.” - Nishant Upadhyay, American Quarterly

"Poetic Operations is a clear, well-written, and creative first- and third-person account of trans of color existence in written, digital, and performed avenues of praxis. Ultimately, cárdenas provides a useful model of algorithms, exposing this tool as a survival method used by trans people for centuries and how it continues to prevent violence and provide safety and security for contemporary communities everywhere." - Riana Slyter, Women's Studies in Communication

"The works above are, in intimate ways, rooted in humankind’s inherent intertwinement with the worlds and the words of poetry." - Jessi Maceachern, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

"cárdenas braids together theory, algorithmic analysis, and self-reflexive critique offering generous and candid expressions of her work as an artist-activist-scholar. ... Poetic Operations is an intuitive model for weaving theory and practice and exploring the generative slippages between thinking and doing."

"Scholar-activists across fields stand to benefit from cárdenas’s contribution to trans and digital media studies, especially as Poetic Operations reminds us of the importance of listening to trans people of color as they share and organize around experiences of not only incomprehensible violence and subjugation, but also joy, connection, healing, and solidarity. " - Sam Turner, E3W Review of Books

"The methods that cárdenas pioneers are not only compelling but worthy of commendation. . . . Poetic Operations reinvents our conceptions of algorithms in ways that pose potential breaks from this techno-history of modernity. As digital connectivity has helped engineer a new social panic about trans people, cárdenas deftly constructs a new algorithmic imaginary, one that contains possibilities for trans survival, expression, and justice." - Michael Reinhard, GLQ