“Unbearable beings” are the subjects who inhabit abject and/or revolutionary positions in relation to the sociopolitical apparatus and offer alternate possibilities of living and being in this world. On the other hand, “unbearable being” is an affective state of being and becoming that indexes the intolerableness of existence within the normative.

Treated as the refuse of urban renewal and gentrification, and/or displaced by environmental crises, wars, and ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and extractive capitalism, marginalized subjects have, however, fostered socialites in spaces deemed unhomely and unclean and have effected enormous sociopolitical changes over time. How do abject spaces—prisons, hospitals, segregated housing projects, war-torn zones, disaster sites, nightclubs, single-room occupancy hotels, digital spaces, and other similar sites—function as generative locations for the creation of alternate socialities?