Queer Persistence: On Death, History, and Longing for Endings

Author(s):  
Maia Kotrosits

“What does it mean to live with HIV indefinitely, without knowing whether or not it will kill you?” Tim Dean writes, marking the changing timeline for HIV in the wake of new medical treatments. Exploring the anxiety experienced by some gay men as a result of the new uncertainties around HIV positivity, Dean proposes that this anxiety might tell all of us something about our relationships to time, the future, and mortality. Indeed, death has haunted queer theory from its inception as its implicit telos, either to be embraced or refused. But if death is the telos of queer theory, then it is one that repeatedly and frustratingly refuses to be final. This chapter explores the longing for endings and what might be called a "queer persistence" through Dean’s essay, Eve Sedgwick’s almost incidental description of queer as a “continuing moment,” and the Gospel of Mark, a text that bends or thwarts conventions of beginning, middle, and end. If anything worries us more than death, it seems, it is a lack of resolution.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-38
Author(s):  
Phillip Joy ◽  
Matthew Numer ◽  
Sara F. L. Kirk ◽  
Megan Aston

The construction of masculinities is an important component of the bodies and lives of gay men. The role of gay culture on body standards, body dissatisfaction, and the health of gay men was explored using poststructuralism and queer theory within an arts-based framework. Nine gay men were recruited within the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants were asked to photograph their beliefs, values, and practices relating to their bodies and food. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, using the photographs as guides. Data were analyzed by critical discourse analysis and resulted in three overarching threads of discourse including: (1) Muscles: The Bigger the Better, (2) The Silence of Hegemonic Masculinity, and (3) Embracing a New Day. Participants believed that challenging hegemonic masculinity was a way to work through body image tension.


Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Rumens ◽  
John Broomfield

Building on emerging research on ‘gay-friendly’ organizations, this article examines if and how work contexts understood and experienced as ‘gay-friendly’ can be characterized as exhibiting a serious breakdown in heteronormativity. Taking the performing arts as a research setting, one that is often stereotyped as ‘gay-friendly’, and drawing on in-depth interview data with 20 gay male performers in the UK, this article examines how everyday activities and encounters involving drama school educators, casters and peers are shaped by heteronormative standards of gay male sexuality. Adopting a queer theory perspective and connecting with an emergent queer theory literature in organization studies, one concern articulated in this article is that heteronormative constructions of gay male sexualities constrain participants’ access to work; suggesting limits to the abilities and roles gay men possess and are able to play. Another concern is that when gay male sexualities become normalized in performing work contexts, they reinforce organizational heteronormativity and the heterosexual/homosexual binary upon which it relies. This study contributes towards theorizing the heteronormative dynamics of ‘gay-friendly’ places of work, arguing that gay male sexualities are performatively instituted according to localized heteronormativities which reinforce contextually contingent, restrictive heteronormative standards of gay male sexuality which performers are encouraged to embody and perform both professionally and personally.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Adam F. Braun

Abstract This paper argues that the operative force in Luke’s parable of The Rich Fool is negativity. Moreover, negativity is as common in Lukan parables as status reversals. As the parable warns against securing the future, this paper reads Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive to show how negativity, towards reproductive futurism in particular, activates Luke’s pessimism. This pessimism is grounded in the crucifixion and is not resolved in the resurrection. Luke’s pessimism is not only one which expresses his affective diasporic context, but it also invokes doubt on whether Jesus is messiah.


Author(s):  
Anne Harris

Drawing on the narrative frames of the "road trip" and "lesbian drama," genres which, it could be argued, normatively construct Otherness with all that is Queer, in respect to not fitting in or belonging, this article attempts to draw on queer theory to out gay male and lesbian relationships. Relationships between gay men and lesbians, constructed in and around identity practices, have been troubled by the emergence of queer folk, productively focusing attention on the differences between and within gay male and lesbian identities and communities. Using the metaphor of "road trip" to Queer gay male and lesbian relationships, I reconsider the question of lesbian presences in queer theory and in doing so seek to productively trouble the normalising practices of identity with gay male and lesbian relationships.


1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Morgan

This article examines sexuality anti-discrimination law in Australia. In particular, it focuses on a recent law reform proposal, the Sexuality Discrimination Bill 1995 (Cth.) and a parliamentary inquiry into that Bill. It analyses the Bill as reinscribing heteronormativity, and analyses the inquiry process as producing extremely oppositional visions of sexual identity. It also analyses the submissions to the inquiry, in order to illustrate what lesbians and gay men thought should be included in the Bill. Finally, it addresses the relationship between queer theory and legal activism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elkana Chrisna Wijaya

“Komparasi Eskatologi Injil Lukas dengan Injil Sinoptik Lainnya,” adalah subyek penelitian memberikan eksplanatori mengenai pemikiran-pemikiran teologis dari Lukas selaku penulis Injil Lukas dan Kisah Para Rasul, khususnya yang membahas tentang pemikiran-pemikiran atau pengajaran mengenai doktrin akhir zaman (eskatologi) yang dikomparasikan dengan Injil Matius dan Injil Markus, sebagai serangkaian kelompok dari Injil Sinoptik. Adanya kemiripan kata-kata, dan urutan bahkan isi/peristiwa yang hampir sama di antara ketiganya, serta kepentingan daripada doktrin akhir zaman, memberikan keunikan bagi masing-masing Injil, secara khusus bagi Injil Lukas itu sendiri. Disamping bermaksud untuk menyatakan keunikan dan perbedaan dari Injil Lukas dibandingkan dengan Injil Sinoptik lainnya, penelitian ini juga bermaksud memberikan informasi atau penjelasan mengenai hal-hal yang memiliki koherensi dan relevansi dengan doktrin akhir zaman yang dimaksud dalam subyek penelitian ini, di antaranya seperti perlunya menyentuh tulisan Lukas dalam Kisah Para Rasul, dan pembahasan mengenai Kerajaan Allah dan Kerajaan Sorga serta hal-hal lainnya. Oleh karena itu, untuk mengejawantahkan maksud di atas, maka penulis melaksanakan kajian terhadap beberapa ayat Alkitab dan pandangan para pakar dalam mengadakan pendekatan terhadap ayat-ayat eskatologi yang terdapat dalam ketiga Injil Sinoptik tersebut. Dengan pendekatan tersebut, maka hasil penelitian ini menjelaskan, di antaranya adalah bahwa Lukas menyusun Injilnya serupa dengan Markus, hanya saja terdapat penambahan pemahaman Lukas secara pribadi untuk menekankan nuansa yang berbeda dari tulisannya tersebut. Adapun mengenai istilah Kerajaan Allah dan Kerajaan Sorga, jika Markus dan Lukas konsisten menggunakan frase Kerajaan Allah, sebaliknya Matius menggantinya dengan istilah “Kerajaan Sorga,” meskipun memiliki pengertian yang sama, dengan maksud untuk memberikan pemahaman yang lebih mudah bagi para pembaca asli kitab-kitab tersebut. Di samping itu, ketiga penulis juga menuliskan kedatangan Yesus pada masa yang akan datang sebagai bagian penting dalam pemenuhan janji berkat Kerajaan Allah secara sempurna, sehingga tidak ada keraguan akan masa yang akan datang mengenai kedatangan Kristus kali kedua. "Comparative Luke's Gospel Eschatology with Other Synoptic Gospels," is the subject of an explanatory study of the theological thoughts of Luke as the writer of the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, especially those which deal with thoughts or teachings about the end-time doctrine (eschatology) which are compared with the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, as a series of groups from the Synoptic Gospels. The similarity of words, and the order and even the contents / events that are almost the same between the three, as well as the interests of the end-time doctrine, provide uniqueness for each of the Gospels, specifically for the Gospel of Luke itself. Besides intending to express the uniqueness and difference of Luke's Gospel compared to other Synoptic Gospels, this study also intends to provide information or explanations about things that have coherence and relevance to the end-time doctrine referred to in this research subject, including the need to touch writing Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, and a discussion of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven and other things. Therefore, to embody the above purpose, the author carries out a study of several Bible verses and the views of experts in approaching eschatological verses contained in the three Synoptic Gospels. With this approach, the results of this study explain, among them is that Luke composes his Gospel similar to Mark, only there is an addition to Luke's personal understanding to emphasize the different nuances of his writing. As for the terms of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven, if Mark and Luke consistently use the phrase Kingdom of God, instead Matthew replaces it with the term "Kingdom of Heaven," even though it has the same meaning, with the intention to provide an easier understanding for the original readers of the books that. In addition, the three authors also write about the coming of Jesus in the future as an important part of fulfilling the promise of God's perfect blessing, so that there is no doubt about the future about the second coming of Christ.


Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Ingrey

A survey of key contributors and theoretical tensions in the applications of queer studies in education is purposefully partial namely because of the impartiality embedded in the nature of ‘queer’, a verb whose action unsettles, dismantles and interrogates systems of normalization, beginning with heteronormativity and heterosexism. Queer theory emerged in the 1990s before influencing education, including both elementary and secondary schooling; however, queer is complex in that it involves the signifier or signified term: it is both the integration of queer content in curriculum as well as the practice of queering educational practices (i.e., curriculum, pedagogy and practice). The queering of pedagogy involves the queering of the educational subject, both teachers and students. In such a survey of queer in education, the ontological groundings for queer are important to consider given the paradoxical nature of queer to unpack and unsettle whilst maintaining its hold on an identity category in order to do its unsettling work. Indeed, the consequent recognition of the subjecthood of queer in educational contexts is a significant note in this attention to queer’s application in education. Queer also moves beyond not only an inclusion of queer content, but also exceeds queer sexualities to cohere and contrast with trans-infused approaches. Queer theory considers that the future of queer may well exceed beyond sexuality and gender altogether to become a practice of unsettling or critique more generally. Its continuity in education studies as well as its potentially impending expiration are concerns of scholars in the field.


This volume explores the history, application, and the future of ecocriticism. It traces the origins of and describes the practice of ecocriticism during the renaissance, medieval, and romantic period and evaluates the influence of the ecoformalism of country and old-time music. It analyzes the relevance of various theories and principles to ecocritical analysis including posthumanism, phenomenology, queer theory, deconstruction, pataphyics, biosemiotic criticism, and environmental justice. This volume also investigates the application of ecocriticism in the analysis of the politics of representation, evaluation literary form and genre and in eco-film studies and reviews the relevant works of various authors including Rudyard Kipling and W. E. B. Du Bois.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-397
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Moore ◽  
Denise Kimber Buell

Abstract This article introduces a thematic issue of Biblical Interpretation on the “temporal turn” in queer theory as it relates to biblical studies. Queer theorists of time have variously interrogated inherited concepts of history, historiography, historicity, and/or periodicity; the chrononormativity that regulates contemporary sexual lives; reproductive futurism, which evokes “our children” and their future to shore up heteronormativity and anathematize queerness; or explored the complex relations of queerness to the future and hence to hope. The contributions to this thematic issue, also introduced in the article, creatively harness these temporal theories and analytic strategies for queer biblical criticism and queer biblical hermeneutics.


Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072093239
Author(s):  
Jamie Hakim ◽  
Kane Race

In this interview with Jamie Hakim, Kane Race talks about his most recent monograph The Gay Science: Intimate Experiments With the Problem of HIV (2018). In The Gay Science, he explores how practices of sex and intimacy between gay men are shifting amidst what he calls the changing infrastructures of gay life – digital, chemical and communal. As such the book is empirically oriented and looks at a wide range of topics from hook-up apps, to PreP to chemsex/party ‘n’ play, to the history and politics of Sydney’s Mardi Gras as they take place on the ground. Theoretically he blends the thought of philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzche with critical perspectives such as actor-network theory and Science and Technology Studies to argue that as scholars of sexual practice we need to pay more attention to what emerges within the contingencies of the assemblages and infrastructures that make sex between gay men possible. In so doing, the book is far more optimistic about gay sex and digital media then either popular media or influential strands of queer theory, offering path-breaking insight into the major concerns of this special issue on Chemsex Cultures.


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