Reimagining the Face of HIV/AIDS

Chapter 5 features a discussion of the queer biopic’s relationship to PWA photography and media representation, looking finally to contemporary media practices to reflect upon the current AIDS media landscape. The queer biopic does not function outside of other modes of photography and video; instead, questions of portraiture are foundational to any understanding of the biopic form. The chapter moves through the history of PWA photography, providing readings of photography by Therese Frare, Nicholas Nixon, David Wojnarowicz, and Nan Goldin. The chapter’s turn to contemporary HIV + multimedia artist Kia LaBeija examines the legacies of black queer performance that emerge in her video and photographic work.

Genius Trouble

This essay assesses the contradiction between the widespread critical acceptance of the post-structuralist mortification of authorship, on one hand, and the rise and continued purchase of authorship-focused scholarship, on the other. What seems to be missing is a theory of authorship that takes into account the fact that authors themselves have had to reckon with authorship as a construction, particularly the ideological emphasis on genius as it was commercialized during the “industrial era” of print publication. Several stories by Henry James that stage author-reader relations offer glimpses of his idea of authorship and suggest that, for him, authorial self-consciousness plays out as a queer performance.

ACONTECIMENTO PERFORMÁTICO PARA O NASCIMENTO DE UMA VIDA-VIRILHA: UMA EXPERIÊNCIA COMPARTILHADA / Performative event for the birth of a virilha-life: a shared experience

O presente artigo é um diálogo com a performance Viril, da performer e escritora brasileira Ana Luisa Santos. Viril faz parte da série de trabalhos da artista sobre masculinidades, sobre a experiência das sexualidades fora do quadro dos binarismos e da heteronormatividade, sistema que governa a estrutura patriarcal. A performance de Santos tem como ação principal a leitura de um manifesto de sua autoria, Viril ou por uma performance queer da masculinidade. Mediante falas-falos, a artista interpela o público, mas também a si mesma, ao expor e tentar desconstruir a ficção violenta de masculinidade tóxica e seu atributo principal: a virilidade. A relação entre o texto da performer e a imagem de si que ela mostra é essencial. É a partir do compartilhamento de uma experiência íntima (autobiográfica), que as palavras adquirem dimensão política, sendo a linguagem da performance o que permite o intercâmbio e o estabelecimento de interconexões. A análise de Viril está inserida na necessidade de questionar quem conforma o(s) novo(s) sujeito(s) dos movimentos feministas hoje, para o que me apoio em pensadoras feministas não hegemônicas e no pensamento decolonial.Palavras-chave: Performance; corpo; feminismos; descolonização; vida-virilha. AbstractThis article is an analysis and a dialogue with the performance Viril by Brazilian performance artist and writer Ana Luisa Santos. Viril is part of the artist’s series of works on masculinities, on the experience of sexualities outside the framework of binarisms and heteronormativity, a system that governs the patriarchal structure. Santo’s performance has as main action the reading of a manifesto, Viril or by a Queer performance of masculinity. Through falas-falos, the artist challenges the audience, but also herself, by exposing and trying to deconstruct the violent fiction of toxic masculinity and its main attribute: virility. The relationship between the performer’s text and the image of herself is essential. It is from the sharing of an intimate autobiographical) experience, that words acquire a political dimension, with the language of performance allowing an exchange between performer and audience, as well as the establishment of interconnections. Viril’s analysis is inserted in the need to question who shapes the new subjects of feminist movements today, for which I rely on non-hegemonic feminist thinkers, as well as on decolonial thinking.Keywords: Performance; body; feminisms; decolonization; virilha-life.

“Queering” the Nation?

This article explores how gendered Chineseness is represented, circulated, and received in Huangmei musical films for audiences in martial-law Taiwan. Focusing on Love Eterne (1963), the analysis examines how theatrical impersonations in the film provided a “queer” social commentary on aspects of Chinese nationalism that conflicted with the Kuomintang's military masculinities. Love Eterne features dual layers of male impersonations: diegetically, the female character Zhu Yingtai masquerades as a man to attend school with other men; nondiegetically, the actress Ling Po performs the male character Liang Shanbo, Zhu's lover. In addition to the “queer” imagination generated by Ling's cross-dressing performance, the author considers how the feminine tone of Love Eterne allowed the Taiwanese audience to escape from masculine war preparations. Although the Kuomintang promoted Ling as a model patriotic actress, it was her background, similar to many Taiwanese adopted daughters, that attracted the most attention from female audiences. This female empathy and the queer subjectivity arguably disturbed the Kuomintang's political propaganda. Hence, this study adds to the breadth of queerness in studies on the cinematic performance of same-sex subjectivities and invites new understandings of queer performance in Love Eterne as a vehicle that can inspire alternative imaginings of gendered selfhoods and nations.