Sense8

This collection explores the many ways in which the Netflix series Sense8 transcends television. As its characters transcend physical and psychological borders of gender and geography, so the series itself transcends those between television, new media platforms and new screen technologies, while dissolving those between its producers, stars, audiences and fans. Sense8 united, inspired and energized a global community of fans that realized its own power by means of online interaction and a successful campaign to secure a series finale. The series' playful but poignant exploration of globalization, empathy, transnationalism, queer and trans aesthetics, gender fluidity, imagined communities and communities of sentiment also inspired the interdisciplinary range of contributors to this volume. In this collection, leading academics illuminate Sense8 as a progressive and challenging series that points to vital, multifarious, contemporary social, political, aesthetic and philosophical concerns. Sense8: Transcending Television is much more than an academic examination of a series; it is an account and analysis of the way that we all receive, communicate and consider ourselves as participants in global communities that are social, political and cultural, and now both physical and virtual too.

List of figuresList of contributorsIntroduction: A Sense8 of BelongingDeborah Shaw and Rob Stone 1. What's Going On?: Netflix and the Commissioning of Sense8Amanda Lotz2. You Are No Longer Just You: Netflix, Sense8 and the Evolution of TelevisionZoë Shacklock3. Skip Intro?: Sense8's Title SequenceJames Walters4. The Sense8 Bible: The Creation of a New Creed for Our TimesDeborah Shaw5. What's Queer about a Cluster?: Sense8's Polycentric ImaginaryRosalind Galt6. Between Necropower and Erotopolitics: Community and Clusterfuck as Alloerotic DistractionJohn Lessard7. Sing a Song of Sense8: Musicality, Multiplicity and SynchronicityRob Stone8. Sense8 and The City: Frontier CosmopolitanismLuis Freijo9. The Common Good: Birth, Death and Self-sacrifice in/ofSense8 Will McKeown10. Dancing in the Streets: The Politics of Sense8's Pleasure ActivismSo Mayer11. #WeAreTheGlobalCluster: Affectivity, Resistance and Sense8 FandomRox Samer and Laura Horak12. Revisiting the ClusterCáel M. KeeganIndex