ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Janelle Monáe’s short film Dirty Computer (2018) from a queer temporal perspective in order to identify how it simultaneously figures and theorises queer temporal resistance and its relation to bodily timings and movements. Drawing upon both Henri Lefebvre’s (2004) and Elizabeth Freeman’s (2010) work on the relation between the body, rhythm and power, this piece explores how Monáe’s work resists the binding of ‘naked flesh’ into ‘socially meaningful embodiment’ that underwrites the temporal order of ‘chrononormativity.’ Ultimately, it is argued that Dirty Computer, through its choreographed musical numbers, offers a vision of both how one can resist being bound into a normative body as well as what oppositional, queer spatiotemporalities fashioned by queer rhythms could look like.
