Motifs of homosexuality in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

To avoid the stigma of societal dissaproval, love for somebody of the same sex has often been hidden from the declinatory views of the public; however, it has also been secretively transcribed into a broad spectrum of art. Virginia Woolf embroidered her homosexuality into the grotesque lines of Orlando. At the time, Woolf was engaged in an intense lesbian relationship with author Vita Sackville-West, who served as a model for the work’s main character. Woolf proclaimed her masterpiece “A Biography”, mirroring the duality of her own and Vita’s character, the perpetual beauty of the book’s hero, enduring for centuries, and his subtle gender transition. In the paper, we discuss some of the homosexual motifs in Orlando, which were formed by different influences, including the queer movement, ancient Greek literature and feminism.

Infidelity to True Story and Novel: Locating the Auteur in Rituparno Ghosh’s Dahan

Rituparno Ghosh (1961-2013), a celebrated Bengali film director who started making films in 90s, often borrows plots from literary and other cultural narratives. The essay aims to explicate Ghosh’s early film Dahan (1997) which is an adaptation of distinguished Bengali novelist Suchitra Bhattacharya’s novel with the same title. Bhattacharya’s novel is influenced by the real incident in which a couple was harassed by four youths at Tollygunge Metro Station in Kolkata on 27th November, 1992. The film also acknowledges that it is indebted to the true story. The essay explicates the adaptation of the two sources by the auteur. It examines the duplication of authorial concerns in this adaptation while following the narratives of two texts. Ghosh remains unfaithful to the literary text and the cultural memory of the true story to establish his authorship. As Ghosh’s films portray the middle-class women in a patriarchal society, following Janet Staiger’s reconsideration of the theory of auteur in the context of queer movement and identity politics in the 1970s, the essay argues that the performance of infidelity to the literary and true story to establish authorship is auteur’s “technique of the self”.

Pride festivals as a space of self-expression: tourism, body and place

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the authentic experiences and sense-making processes of LGBTQ+ participants of Amsterdam Pride as well as their bodily and spatial interactions that arise during the festival. Design/methodology/approach By taking a critical, poststructuralist stance on pride festivals and drawing on 40 in-depth interviews and participant observation, the data are subjected to an inductive, qualitative, thematic content analysis for key themes. Findings Amsterdam Pride provides distinct spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals to express their carnivalesque bodily practices freely. While Pride offers an existential authentic experience by creating spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals where they can be themselves, the participants exhibit their “authentic” identities freely only within limited time and space that are not separated from the heteronormative order. Pride is increasingly perceived by LGBTQ+ participants as an arena for demonstrating their “normality”. Thus, the paper “signposts” greater political tensions between the queer movement and growing normalisation/citizenship trends among LGBTQ+ individuals. Originality/value The paper contributes to a growing body of knowledge around issues of LGBTQ+ identities within the context of an oppressive heteronormative social order. It also reinforces the need for pride festivals for embracing queer, disruptive, sexually dissident expressions of identity as well as continuing transgressive and sexually dissident spaces. This study fills a significant void in the mainstream festival and event management literature and contributes to the theoretical development of festival and critical tourism research by identifying aspects of LGBTQ+ tourists’ authentic experiences at Amsterdam Pride.

Materialist and queer feminism in France: Politics of Counter-Hegemony = Féminisme matérialiste et queer en France: Politiques contre-hégémoniques

This article questions the relationship between materialist feminism and queer movement in France. It addresses the pluralization of feminist emancipation in France since the mid-1990s in light of the conflict between materialist and queer feminisms, which started as the queer theory was developed in France in the nineties. The starting point is the hypothesis that the link between these two political theoretic discourses is possible since it actually takes places in the current “queer-feminist” movement’s activist practices. The article argues that this combination is meaningful and deserves to be better theorized because it carries with it a radical message of inclusiveness. The alliance of the two approaches questions the definition of the feminist subject, and especially the formulation of a political unity that is not essentialist. The article analyses the extent to which the counter-hegemonic approach provides with tools to answer this issue.Key words: Materialist feminism, queer movement, feminist subject, Politics of Counter-Hegemony.Résumé: Cet article interroge le rapport entre le féminisme matérialiste et le mouvement queer en France. Il envisage la pluralisation des formes d’émancipation féministe en France depuis le milieu des années 1990 à la lumière de la controverse entre les féminismes matérialiste et queer, qui a comencé quand la théorie queer s’est développée en France dans les années 1990. Mon hypothèse initiale postule que le rapprochement entre ces deux visions théorico-politiques est possible car il se pratique concrètement dans les mouvements queer-féministes actuels. Cet article affirme que cette articulation est pertinente et mérite ainsi d’être théorisée davantage car elle propose une forme d’inclusivité radicale. L’alliance entre ces deux courants questionne en effet la définition du sujet féministe, et, en particulier, une unité politique qui soit non essentialiste. Cet article analyse dans quelle mesure la stratégie contre-hégémonique donne des outils intéressants pour répondre à cet enjeu.Mots-clés: Féminisme matérialiste, mouvement queer, sujet féministe, contre-hégémonie.

Straight Paths Through Queer Walking Simulators: Wandering on Rails and Speedrunning in Gone Home

This article identifies the limitations of queerness in Gone Home (The Fullbright Company, 2013) by exploring the ways in which players’ movements through space in video games can be considered queer or “straight.” Drawing from Sara Ahmed, I demonstrate how the potential for queer in-game movement in Gone Home has been straightened both by the game itself and by elements of its player reception. Gone Home is widely seen as exemplifying a current shift toward increased LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) representation in video games. The game is also associated with queerness through its status as a “walking simulator,” a genre with ties to the queer flaneur. Indeed, Gone Home’s gameplay seems to encourage queer wandering, moving not straight but instead meanderingly. Yet, a closer analysis of its interactive elements reveals that Gone Home is far less queer than it may initially appear. The player’s path is rigid and linear, much like in a “rail shooter.” The potential for queer movement in Gone Home has been furthered straightened by speedrunners who play the game along the straightest possible paths. This article argues for player movement as an important site of meaning in video games and calls for an increased engagement with the tensions that surround queerness and video games.