scholarly journals Tracing the Ephemeral

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Spyridon Chairetis
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Cultural Stereotypes ◽  
Lesbian Identity ◽  
Television History ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Textual Approach ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

This paper examines how Greek television fiction introduced and represented lesbian characters during primetime. Drawing on feminist and queer theory and taking the codes and conventions of the comedy genre into account, the paper reveals Greek comedy’s elusive and ambiguous stances towards heteronormativity. By applying a qualitative textual approach, the paper argues that despite their subversive potentialities, the television shows in question (re)produce cultural stereotypes about lesbian identity, invest in queerbaiting strategies and play down the transgressive elements of certain lesbian characters. Despite this critique, the paper stresses the importance of recording, archiving, and further exploring such ephemeral moments in television history in understanding how small national television industries as well as audiences have engaged with the visual representation of gender and sexual diversity.

scholarly journals Anusocratie? Freemasonry, sexual transgression and illicit enrichment in postcolonial Africa

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 831-851
Author(s):  
Peter Geschiere ◽  
Rogers Orock
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
Postcolonial Africa ◽  
Anal Penetration ◽  
Sex Practices

AbstractCameroonians recently invented a new word to characterize the state of their country: anusocratie (the rule of the anus). This became central in the moral panic from 2000 onwards over a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Anusocratie links such same-sex practices to illicit enrichment by the national elites and their involvement with secret associations of Western provenance, such as Freemasonry, Rosicrucians and the Illuminati. This article tries to unravel this conceptual knot of homosexuality, the occult (Freemasonry) and illicit enrichment: first, by historicizing it. Of interest in the Cameroonian case is the fact that a similar link is mentioned in one of the first ethnographies, Günther Tessmann's Die Pangwe. Freemasonry is clearly a colonial imposition on the country, but the link between same-sex practices and enrichment has a longer history. Second, a comparison with similar ideas elsewhere on the continent can also open up wider perspectives. The link with illicit enrichment does not figure in classical conceptions of ‘homosexuality’ as developed in Europe, yet it strongly emerges from examples from all over Africa. Both Achille Mbembe and Joseph Tonda show that this image of the anus – anal penetration – articulates popular concerns about staggering inequalities. Yet, this aspect is ignored in debates about growing ‘homophobia’ in Africa. A confrontation with classical texts from Western queer theory (Bersani, Mieli) can help us discover other layers in African discourses, notably an emphasis on sexual diversity as an answer to homophobia. It can also serve to relativize the linking of sexual practices to sexual identities, which is still seen as self-evident in much queer theory of Western provenance.

Queer Theory and Heteronormativity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Page Valentine Regan ◽  
Elizabeth J. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sexual Diversity ◽  
Lgbtq Youth ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Queer Pedagogy

The concepts of queer theory and heteronormativity have been taken up in educational research due to the influence of disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, and critical race theory. Queer theory seeks to disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries that structure our understandings of gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity describes the belief that heterosexuality is and should be the preferred system of sexuality and informs the related male or female, binary understanding of gender identity and expression. Taken together, queer theory and heteronormativity offer frames to interrogate and challenge systems of sex and gender in educational institutions and research to better support and understand the experiences of LGBTQ youth. They also inform the development of queer pedagogy that includes classroom and instructional practices designed to expand and affirm gender and sexual diversity in schools.

‘Beside myself’: touch, maternity and the question of embodiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Nicolette Bragg
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Embodied Subjectivity ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

This article uses the surprising bodily effects of a period following birth to unsettle the reproductive narrative that circumscribes the maternal relation. Drawing on scholarship on skin and touch within philosophy and feminist and queer theory, ‘Beside myself’ demonstrates how an intensely intimate relationship can throw into relief modes of embodiment that trouble the temporality and space presumed of reproduction. Doing so, it calls attention to the limits of materialist discourses of embodiment. With reference to Gayle Salamon’s Assuming a Body, it describes an embodied subjectivity that exceeds the material contours of the body. A sense of being ‘beside’ oneself and ‘beside’ another stretches the time and space of the body, not only creating fractures within the reproductive frame, but also putting pressure on matter and possession as conditions for subjectivity.

scholarly journals Individuation, Sexuation, Technicity

2020 ◽  
pp. 026327642096740
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Seely
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Sexuality Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

Within the context of questions raised by gender and sexuality studies about the relationship between sex and technics, I develop a theory of sexuation derived from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation. First, I provide an overview of Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, from the physical to the collective. In the second section, I turn to the question of sexuality, outlining an ontogenetic account in which sexuation is conceived as a process of both individuation and relation that is fundamental to certain living beings. Then, drawing on Simondon’s theorization of technics in its mediating function between humans and the world, I resituate understandings of the relation between sex and technics. While each section – Individuation, Sexuation, Technicity – argues for the significance of these concepts to feminist and queer theory, overall the essay uses Simondon’s work as a new paradigm for gender and sexuality studies and calls for the invention of a sexuate culture.

scholarly journals Practising gender, queering theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 789-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Airport Security ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

AbstractThe development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and failure, particularly the importance on ‘competently’ practising gender in order to established as an intelligible subject. Given the centrality of ‘competency’ in ‘practice turn’ literature, theorising practice from the perspective of ‘gender failures’ sheds light on the embedded exclusions within this literature. To demonstrate the stakes of this critique, I discuss airport security practices, a growing area of interest to IR scholars, in terms of the experiences of trans- and gender non-conforming people. I argue that such practices ultimately complicate success/failure binaries. I conclude by considering the political stakes of practising theory in IR and how competency in theory is similarly marked by the exclusion of feminist/queer work.

‘An Incalculable Effect’ : Subversions of Heteronormativity

2007 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 656-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel A. Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Implicit Theory ◽  
Robust Response ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

The writings of Judith Butler are now canonised in the fields of feminist and queer theory, yet her contribution to politics and her role in the field of political theory remain uncertain. I argue, perhaps uncontroversially, that Butler's is a politics of subversion; I also contend, perhaps more contentiously, that Butler's understanding of subversion only takes clear shape in light of her implicit theory of heteronormativity. Butler's work calls for the subversion of heteronormativity; in so doing her writings both illuminate the general problem of normativity for politics and offer a robust response to that problem. Butler resists the tendency to treat norms as merely agreed-upon standards, and she rebuts those easy dismissals of theorists who would take seriously the power of norms thought in terms of normativity and normalisation. Butler's contribution to political theory emerges in the form of her painstaking unfolding of subversion. This unfolding produces an account of the politics of norms that is needed desperately by both political theory and politics. Thus, I conclude that political theory cannot afford to ignore either the theory of heteronormativity or the politics of its subversion.

scholarly journals Invisible while visible: an Australian perspective on queer women leaders in international affairs

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-443
Author(s):  
Elise Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
Women Leaders ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
White Male ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

In among the silencing and invisibility of their stories, queer women operate as critical leaders in international affairs. They face multiple marginalisations: (1) challenging the archetypical diplomat or security leader as a heteronormative (white) male; and (2) operating in different cultural contexts with varying negative attitudes towards women in power and homosexuality in general. Providing both empirical and theoretical contributions to the fields of diplomacy, feminist and queer theory, this article gains unique access to Australian lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, and intersex diplomats and attachés to understand: what are the experiences of queer woman leaders in international affairs?

scholarly journals Towards a feminist politics of mobility: U.S. Travel and immigration memoirs

Feminismo/s ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Leah Butterfield
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Feminist Geography ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

This paper challenges longstanding cultural associations that link men to mobility and women to stability by outlining what I term a feminist politics of mobility. Bringing together four contemporary memoirs that foreground journeys, I explore how U.S. women embody and represent their mobility, as well as how movement shapes their relationships to global power structures and to norms of gender and sexuality. I draw on feminist geography, feminist and queer theory, memoir studies and mobility scholarship to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love (2006), Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us (2012), Daisy Hernández’s A Cup of Water Under My Bed (2014), and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012). Highlighting the differences between these authors’ journeys as well as the patterns across them, I ultimately find that these memoirists model a feminist politics of mobility, wherein moving through space redistributes power to women and renegotiates social relations that have historically supported women’s subordination.

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