‘Blood in the Queer Eye’: Anomalous Bodies and Monsters in Lina Meruane’s Fictions

This essay focuses on the peculiar intersection which seems to explain unstable living forms – precarious ‘bodies in progress’ – that inhabit Lina Meruane’s ‘degenerated’ poetics, one where queer discourse mixes with fantastic and gothic features. Indeed, if, on the one hand, the Chilean author’s political agenda clings to the refusal of a disciplinating mould and objections to any request of identity accountability, on the other, she constantly counterbalances her revolutionary theoretical drive always flirting with narrative codes of the ominous, as illustrated by estranging, almost a ‘horror’ staging she intends for every one of her ambiguous, amorphous creatures.

'More coming out, bigger market': Queer visibility and queer subjectivity in the Chinese pink market

The transnational circulation of Euro-American queer discourse affects queer subjectivity in local contexts. Through a case study of the Rainbow Love wedding competition, this article unravels the interplay between transnational queer politics, queer affect and the economy of visibility in the emerging pink market to explore how they shape the queer landscape in mainland China. Rainbow Love demonstrates how recent queer visibility in Chinese media manifests as a narrative commodity that is embedded in consumerism and in colonialist sexual discourse. By exploiting post-Cold War anxiety in mainland China, Rainbow Love invites affective identification and produces an 'ideal' queer subjectivity in the Chinese pink market: cosmopolitan, mobile and middle-class queers who desire and can afford luxury consumption. We argue that such queer visibility in the Chinese pink market has become a regulatory force on Chinese queer subjects despite the liberatory narratives that are advocated in the mass media.

Critical Discourse Studies of Language and Sexuality

This chapter looks at how sexuality, including sexual identity, has been addressed in critical discourse studies. It will first review previous work (e.g., Marko 2008; Morrish and Sauntson 2011) and point out the relative lack of relevant studies in this area, given that research into language and sexuality is mostly indebted to anthropology, sociolinguistics, and conversation analysis. Building on queer discourse studies (Motschenbacher and Stegu 2013), the chapter suggests a way of critically analyzing discourses on sexuality, where discourse is defined as textually mediated social action, with text producers utilizing linguistic resources and sociocognitive representations to establish, maintain, or challenge power relations. Critical discourse studies combine the description of linguistic features with their interpretation and explanation in context and ultimately make transparent the way in which language and discourse either construct and reinforce, or challenge and subvert, normativity. The chapter closes with an illustrative example of the discursive construction of lesbian identities.

Yamakawa Kikue and Edward Carpenter

This chapter focuses on the translation of Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) by Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) in the early 1910s and the influence on Japanese feminism of the writings of this thinker. While some writings on sexuality in Japan have lumped Carpenter with sexologists who were seen to have brought restrictions upon a premodern flexibility about same-sex relations, we see instead a modernist and international queer discourse to which many connected themselves and through which ideas about sexuality and social ethics were linked and developed. The chapter focuses especially on personal affiliations and translation, as understood through Carpenter’s correspondence with Japanese thinkers and Yamakawa’s personal observations in the feminist community of the Taishō era (1912–1926). Through analysis of rhetorical style and translation choices, this chapter explores the international and interpersonal dynamics of 1920s Japanese feminisms.

Ballet Bawdies and Dancing Ducks

This article examines the dancing joke-work of Jewish film stars as ballet swans in Be Yourself and Funny Girl. It shows how the joke of the Jewish swan queers white heterosexual femininity while revealing the sustained power of its classical Western-centric swan tropes. In situating Jewish swan humor within theories of parody, queer discourse, and gendered joke-work, the article highlights the pleasurable embodiment of enduring Jewish female stereotypes and reveals a comic dance legacy of the funny girl body unfit for love. It also explains how the humor of ballet parody and the swan constructs the Jewish funny girl body; how Be Yourself and Funny Girl stake a claim in ethnic and sexual otherness as sites of comic expression and critical difference; and how each film embodies critiques of classical ballet and its idealist proscriptions for white women even as both sustain romantic fantasies of female leads.

Queer Linguistic approaches to discourse

This introductory essay to the Discourse & Society special issue on Queer Linguistic Approaches to Discourse discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the connection between discourse studies and Queer Theory within Queer Linguistics – a strand of research that has recently gained great momentum. It outlines basic issues in Queer Theory and their repercussions in Queer Linguistic debates and research. The Queer Linguistic objective to provide critical heteronormativity research is then related to Queer Discourse Studies in its various forms and approaches. An overview of the contributions to the special issue and suggestions for future research conclude the article.