Event Title: “Feelings Without Frontiers: Reclaiming the Sentient Self from Euroaffective Supremacy”
Opening Speaker: Dr. Azaria Flux (they/spiral), Professor of Post-Sentimental Semiotics
DR. AZARIA FLUX (they/spiral) takes the stage:
Welcome, soul-cousins. We gather here today not to name emotions, but to liberate them—from the colonial grip of Enlightenment-era psychologists and 1990s Pixar films.
Today we launch the Decolonised Emotion Taxonomy—or DET. Not to be confused with DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), which is, frankly, epistemological biopower with footnotes.
A SLIDE APPEARS: “TRADITIONAL EMOTION LABELS VS. DECOLONISED FEELING STATES”
| Colonial Term | DET Replacement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Anger | Sacred Boundary Energy | Never “manage”—only channel |
| Sadness | Deep Ancestral Murmuration | Honour it with floor-based weeping |
| Happiness | Capitalist Glow | Suspicious unless communal |
| Anxiety | Systemic Reverberation | Often caused by group projects |
| Pride | Performative Inner Imperialism | Only valid when declared collectively |
| Shame | Unprocessed Normativity Residue | Requires immediate circle-based singing |
| Joy | Temporary Liberation Surge | Must be intersectionally justified |
DR. FLUX CONTINUES:
No longer will we say “I’m feeling sad.” Instead, we might say:
“I am visited by the whisper of my grandmother’s unrealised potential, filtered through late-stage capitalism’s tempo.”
Or, instead of “I’m anxious,” we say:
“I’m vibrating at a frequency disallowed by colonial time structures.”
Q&A SESSION
CLOSING RITUAL: EMOTIONAL UNNAMING CEREMONY
Each attendee receives a hand-carved stone inscribed with the name of their most colonial emotion. They are then invited to cast it into a “Pool of Fluid Identity” (a refurbished fountain with seaweed and ambient whale noises), symbolising the shedding of affective categorisation.
