For the third issue of Soapbox: a graduate platform/journal for cultural analysis, we invite submissions that critically engage with the concept of 'Impasse.' Dwelling on the term impasse provides space for speaking of the unresolvable, of the disorienting (what is outside of time and space, alter/outer), of the failure of connection, and finally, of loss, of the unretrievable and the necrotic. The notion of impasse comes to mind all the more in the context of the ongoing pandemic and of transmission through physical contact or proximity.
In its most literal meaning, an impasse indicates a border that arises in our way. In everyday life, it is what prevents one from moving forward, for instance from entering onto a property one is not allowed to be in or arriving at a dead end. Supposedly, the only possible counter-action, the exit from an impasse, is either the risk of trespassing, of having to turn around, or ending one’s journey. An impasse can also denote a specific kind of liminal spatiality. It is a space of thein-between; where one gets stuck or does not know how to proceed. As a state of unknowing, the impasse is constantly being re-configured. How can we orientate ourselves in a space that is always becoming?
