Six Ways of Looking at Fractal Mechanics

Abstract

In this creative nonfiction essay, I traverse through permutations of “fractal mechanics” as a means of processing experiences of oppression and imagining revolutionary futures. I introduce fractal mechanics as a method for thinking through how “the institution,” broadly understood, travels and transmutes from physical structure localized in place to a set of internalized rule sets that bind themselves to transinstitutionalized “host bodies”—a NeoLiberation. Through a series of vignettes illustrating violent experiences of “inclusion,” I explore how the institution is reproduced in neoliberal constructions of inclusion, liberation, and justice. I then integrate critiques of liberation within neoliberal frames with crip imaginings of justice-in-relation to explicate how fractal mechanics can be understood not only as a method of oppression but also a method for revolution. I close with a series of imaginaries that encourage us to prefigure, or dream, a fractal politic of intercommunal connection.