Queer Studies

Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community—white, middle class men—and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence—racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender. Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence—and perceive that violence quite differently—based on their race, class, and gender. His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination—including racism and sexism—shape LGBT people's experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren't sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people—particularly the most vulnerable—have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between the military and homosexuality by analyzing the experiences of sexual minority soldiers in the Korean military beyond the claim that homosexuality in the Korean military is a social and national "problem". In recent years, the anti-homosexual discourses have been spreading that homosexuality in the military is causing the serious national crisis. However, substantive researches or sociological interests are insufficient. Meanwhile, homosexuality in the military has been defined as a perverse existence to be managed and punishment in the change of the 'Sexual Harassment in Military Criminal Act' or 'the Military Discipline Instructions' since the mid - the 2000s. However, unlike anti-homosexual discourse or legal discourse that calls homosexuality in the military as a "problem," non-normative sexual identity in the military actually exists as a process rather than a fixed, essential attribute or category. In the military that is male-centered and heterosexual -oriented, sexual minorities are coping strategies for surviving by "passing" into heterosexuals and practicing being joined into the male bond, or by separately performing military service successfully. Some sexual minorities have been criticizing the military from the point of view of a man who is not a 'heterosexual soldier', that is, an 'inside outsider', by first being aware of and accepting his sexual identity in the military. These experiences reveal that self-representation carried out by sexual minority soldiers in the institutional and cultural conditions of the military is in the dilemma of self-contradiction and invisibility of homosexuality. However, this dilemma comes not from the strategic gender practice itself of the sexual minorities but from the institution itself, which reproduces homophobia and recognizes only heterosexuals as 'men'.

최근 한국에서는 군대 내 동성애를 국가적 위기와 연결하는 반동성애 담론이 거세지고 있다. ‘군형법상 추행죄’나 ‘부대관리훈령’이 2000년대 중반 이후 정비되 는 과정에서 군대 내 동성애(자)는 관리되어야 할 변태적 존재이자 처벌받아야 할 대상으로 규정되어 왔다. 본 연구는 그러한 배경 아래에서 군대 내 남성 동성애자 의 경험을 중심으로 군대와 동성애(자) 간 관계를 분석하는 것을 목표로 한다. 군대 내 동성애(자)를 ‘문제’로 호명하는 반동성애 담론 내지는 법 담론과는 달리 실제 군대 내 비규범적 성 정체성은 고정적이고 본질적인 속성이나 범주이 기보다는 과정으로서 존재한다. 동성애(자)는 군대 내에서 존재하지 않는 것으로 간주되거나 존재를 드러내지 않도록 강요당하며, 이들에 대한 차별대우는 공적/ 사적 영역 그리고 행위와 존재라는 허구적 구분을 통해 정당화된다. 폐쇄적이고 위계적 공간 속에서 성소수자는 이성애자로 ‘패싱’하여 남성 연대 속으로 편입되기를 시도하거나, 군인됨을 성공적으로 수행함으로써 살아남는 전략을 택하기도 한다. 반면 어떤 이들은 군대에서 자신의 성 정체성을 비로소 자각하고 받아들 임으로써, 남성이지만 ‘이성애자 군인’이 아닌 ‘내부의 외부인’의 관점으로 남성 중심적인 군대 문화를 비판하기도 한다. 이는 군대라는 제도적이고 문화적인 조건 속에서 성소수자 군인들이 수행하는 자기재현이 동성애의 비가시화와 커밍아웃에 따른 제도적 폭력 간 딜레마에 빠져있음을 역설적으로 보여준다. 본 연구는 이러한 딜레마가 성소수자의 전략 적 젠더실천 때문이 아니라, 성차별적이고 동성애혐오적인 군대라는 제도, 이성애-남성중심적 한국사회 자체에서 비롯한 것임을 밝히고자 한다.

Documenting Rebellions is a study of four archives that were constituted with a common desire to preserve the memory and evidence of lesbian and gay people. They are The Lesbian Herstory Archives (New York), The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles), the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives (West Hollywood), and the ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives (Toronto). Using a narrative approach that draws from first-person accounts and archival research, each chapter tells a story about how these organizations came to exist, who has supported them over time, and how they have survived for more than forty years. This book is the result of a five-year project that began in 2012 and builds on the author’s own experience working with lesbian and gay archives. In Documenting Rebellions, Sheffield places lesbian and gay archives in the context of changing political opportunity structures that have afforded a liberal lesbian and gay rights movement some successes while continuing to marginalize intersectional, queer and trans people. The goal of this study is not to critique these organizations, but to show how this cohort of community archives has been affected by the very same combination of socio-political and economic factors that shape the cultural histories that they preserve. Documenting Rebellions consider the material needs of archives – space, money, and expertise – that are sometimes rendered invisible by the idiosyncratically subjective cultural theory model of ‘the archive’ that has emerged from within interdisciplinary studies. By tracing the emergence and development of these organizations, Sheffield uncovers representational politics, institutional pluralism, generational divides, shifting national politics, interpersonal relationships, and challenges with sustainability, both financial and otherwise.

The evolving representations of queer people in moving ima­ges have taken the form of a homecoming, especially in light of recent law changes that pertain to same-­sex marriage in the United States, and the media’s concurrent readiness to recast sexual minorities in the roles of husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children. In an effort to investigate the formation of queer chosen families, independent of, or in opposition to, heteronorma­tivity, the paper approaches director Jennie Livingston’s 1990 film Paris Is Burning as an intertextual object in order to situate queer kinship at the inter­ sections of gender, race, sexuality and genre.

Religious authority figures often use religious texts as the primary basis for censuring homosexuality. In recent years, however, non-heterosexual Christians and Muslims have begun to contest the discursively produced boundary of sexual
morality. Drawing upon two research projects on non-heterosexual Christians and Muslims, this article explores the three approaches embedded in this strategy. While acknowledging that homosexuality is indeed portrayed negatively in some parts of religious texts, the participants critique traditional hermeneutics by highlighting its inaccuracy and socio-cultural specificity, and arguing for a contextualized and culturally relevant interpretation. They also critique the credibility of institutional interpretive authority by highlighting its inadequacy and ideology, and relocating authentic interpretive authority to personal experience. Finally, they recast religious texts to construct resources for their spiritual nourishment.This strategy generally reflects the contemporary western religious landscape that prioritizes the authority of the self over that of religious institution.

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?

Questo intervento intende esplorare e problematizzare la rappresentazione delle donne in quanto icone, muse o soggetti passivi, e come esse diventino ricettacolo di proiezioni sociali. Quali strumenti estetici e politici le donne hanno impiegato per riappropriarsi della propria soggettività e autonomia in una cultura visuale patriarcale ed eteronormativa? Attraverso un’analisi critica queer-femminista – e percorrendo le definizioni di sesso, genere e sessualità – questa lectio prende come punto di partenza esempi tratti dai media mainstream per poi allargarsi verso problematiche che riguardano la rappresentazione dei corpi in ambito artistico.

[EN]
'Body, Femininity and Objectification: Queer-Feminist Perspectives'
This presentation explores and problematises how women are usually portrayed as either icons, muses or passive subjects, either way becoming receptacles of social projections. What aesthetic and political tools have women employed to re-frame their own subjectivity and autonomy within a heteronormative and patriarchal visual culture? Through a feminist and queer critical analysis, this lecture will take as its starting point examples drawn from mainstream media, to move towards issues that relate to the representation of bodies in the arts.

-- text available only in Italian --

HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education


Edited by Anthea Black and Shamina Chherawala


HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education is the first student-authored resource book of its kind. It offers faculty a radical rethink on how to work with queer and transgender students on their path to becoming artists and designers – from the first day of school through to seminars, studio classes, and critiques. HANDBOOK draws directly from student experiences to help faculty of all orientations bring equitable teaching practices and queer curricula into art and design classes.


HANDBOOK is a collaborative intervention in art and design pedagogy. Queer Publishing Project was a working group of over 100 students, alumni, staff and faculty at OCAD University and beyond who identify as queer and/or transgender.


Handbook: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education
$20 CDN, first edition 2018, out of print
Publisher: OCAD University and Queer Publishing Project
Distribution: Art Metropole
ISBN: 978-1-77252-006-4


Editors: Anthea Black and Shamina Chherawala
Graphic Design: Cecilia Berkovic
Production: Nick Shick
Illustration: Morgan Sea
112 colour pages with gatefold letterpress cover, printed by Nick Shick, Anthea Black, and Queer Publishing Project at OCAD University Printmaking and Publications on Vandercook Universal and No. 4 presses. Edition of 1,200.


LAUNCHES:
Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Canada March 9-10, 2018.
Art Metropole, Toronto, Canada, March 21, 2018.
OCAD University Student Union and Office for Diversity Equity and Sustainability, Toronto, Canada, March 22, 2018.
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, USA, October 2018.
OR Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, October 2018.
Artexte Information Centre, Montreal, Quebec, October 2018.


LECTURES:
Anthea Black, Queer Publishing as Pedagogy talk, presented by Queer Conversations in the Arts and Culture, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, October 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY2ROvlQNGA&feature=youtu.be

A conversation with Anthea Black, Kama LaMackerel (Our Bodies, Our Stories), and Jenny Lin (B&D Press) and Q&A with Production Mentor and Lead Printer Nick Shick in attendance, Artexte Information Centre, Montreal Quebec, October 2018.

Anthea Black, Surviving Academia for Queer and Trans Profs, 2019 AICAD Symposium, "INCLUDE ME! Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion," Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California, November 2019.


LIBRARY COLLECTIONS:
Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary
Art Center College of Design, Pasadena
Artexte Information Centre, Montreal
Banff Centre, Paul Fleck Library and Archives, artist's book collection, Banff
The Black Archives, Amsterdam, Netherlands
California College of the Arts, Meyer Library, Oakland
Concordia University, Montreal
Cornell University, Ithaca
Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City
Maryland Institute College of Art, College Park
Metropolitan State University, Denver
Minneapolis College of Art & Design, Minneapolis
Monash University Library, Melbourne, Australia
Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia
National Gallery of Canada Library, Ottawa
NSCAD University, Halifax
OCAD University, Toronto
PaTi - Paju Typography Institute, Paju Bookcity, Seoul, South Korea
RMIT University Library, Melbourne, Australia
Tufts University, Tisch Library, Boston
UC Berkeley
University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford
University of Maryland, College Park
University of San Francisco
University of Waterloo, Kitchener-Waterloo
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
York University, Toronto

Article link: https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/11/1/216/138278/Toxic-BodiesTicks-Trans-Bodies-and-the-Ethics-of


Tracing ticks in two different artworks and Leslie Feinberg’s activist writing, I take my lead in this article from philosopher Donna Haraway and her suggestion to think about engagement with the environment through an “ethics of response-ability.” By deploying close readings, I will discuss the affects represented in the video installation Act on Instinct (2013) by Elin Magnusson, a sequence of the film Something Must Break (2014) by Ester Martin Bergsmark, and blog entries from the “Lyme Series” by the late trans activist Leslie Feinberg. Through these works, I explore the meaning of this correlation between ticks and transing bodies for environmental ethics as well as for the forging of livable lives for trans people. Toxicity surfaces as a link in these works. The notion of feminist figuration, developed by philosopher Rosi Braidotti among others, allows me to discuss toxicity as a material-discursive figuration, which highlights how human societies in a western context approach the body of the Other, in this case the transgender body as a human-Other and the tick as animal-Other. As a figuration, toxicity then becomes a shared meeting site that helps to problematize the western pathologization of trans bodies and asks what ethics emerge in this proximity between ticks and trans bodies. Toxicity exists in the discussed works in particular as a complex material-discursive trajectory. Although some discourses on toxicity uphold social hierarchies and racist assumptions, as illustrated by Mel Y. Chen, for example, the works here seem to reappropriate the status of the toxic body as a strategy for adjustment and alliance and a site of ethical engagement with the world. The tick will be my guide in weaving together stories of different bodies and of what Deborah Bird Rose and Thom van Dooren call the “unloved other.”

Erica Brausen's life has hiterto been obscured by history and academic neglect. In this thesis I have written an academic biography of Brausen and a history of the Hanover Gallery. I have looked at the artists of the canon whose careers were closely linked to the Hanover. I have also argued the importance and impact of the Hanover Gallery to the representation of queer artists and
imagery in London from 1948-1973.

Please contact me for the full paper.

Published in NICHE [Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement]. 23 June 2022
***
https://niche-canada.org/2022/06/23/teaching-wild-things-in-texas/
***
This is the ninth post in NICHE's series called "Succession II: Queering the Environment"; a fourteen-part series in which contributors explore topics related to unruliness, care, and pleasure. Succession II centers queer people, non-humans, systems, and ideas and explores their impact within the fields of environmental history, environmental humanities, and queer ecology.

In 1972, Syed Mustafa Siraj (1930-2012) published Māyā Mridanga, a novel which has attained an iconic status in recent years[1], with the advent of queer studies and a proliferation of queer texts in South Asia. Since its first appearance, the novel, set within an almost extinct itinerant folk theatre group, Alkaap, drew the attention of scholars working on aboriginal and folk cultures of Bengal; but, they have largely ignored Siraj’s declaration in the 1972 preface that the novel primarily deals with the cross-dressing male actors (p.5), the chhokras–jara purush tobu purush noy, nari – tobu nari o noy (Men, who are not men, but women – yet, not quite women either, p. 12). Siraj’s novel is a rare modern Bengali text to address deep philosophical questions of sexual subject formation, of essence and existence, of being and becoming.

The intro is available on my personal website via the link. The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex.

The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions.

In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

(The Georgian Underworld: Criminal Subcultures in Eighteenth-Century England; Chapter 16) One of the most interesting subjects in the history of sexuality is the sudden appearance, three hundred years ago, of a well organized gay subculture in the city of London. This was patronized by homosexual men who used gay slang, who frequented gay cruising areas, and who engaged in camp or effeminate behaviour amongst themselves. Even from the very beginning of the century, sodomites frequented a network of gay pubs, where they socialized with one another, singing and dancing together, and otherwise behaving in a disorderly fashion. The legal records cover a wide range of circumstantial details beyond sexual activity, and often give us an interesting glimpse into the social life of the sodomite.

Queering Australian Museums addresses the problem of how queer or LGBTIQ communities can be further included in Australian museums on their own terms. It looks at four areas of museums—management, collections, exhibitions, and connections with audiences and communities—to consider barriers and enablers of queer inclusion in these often heteronormative institutions. Case studies of queer-inclusive efforts in public Australian museums are interpreted from institutional and community perspectives drawn from 25 interviews. The interviews are put into critical conversation with archival material and literature from museum studies and the emerging field of queer museology.

The study evaluates the visibility of the history, cultures, and identities of queer communities in Australian museums. It establishes that many public representations of queerness have been driven by the efforts of LGBTIQ communities, particularly through community-based heritage organisations. It also gathers and reflects upon examples of critical queer inclusion that have occurred in public museums. Using these exemplars, it argues that queer communities should be empowered to make decisions about their own heritage with the support of museums and their unique attributes; that individual and organisational leadership, involving queer individuals and allies, should be brought to bear on this task; and that effectively navigating the tensions between museums and queer communities requires mutual understanding and accommodation. Through the process of queering the museum, it is suggested, each party might be transformed, leading to LGBTIQ diversity being valued as an integral part of society.

The thesis addresses the gap in Australian museum studies literature on queer or LGBTIQ inclusion compared with Euro-American settings. It further contributes original case studies to the international field of queer museology, and to museum studies literature on including and empowering diverse communities. Both recognising the agency of queer communities and also engaging with the language and conventions of museums, it constructs a distinct account of how to navigate the historical tensions between the two. It thereby aims to enrich museum offerings for all audiences on the terms of those erstwhile excluded.

This article explores rabbinic traditions that see in the character of Joseph a figure of uncertain sexual orientation. I examine a series of rabbinic and biblical texts in which an unconventional gender dynamic may be present. While it is true that these biblical and rabbinic texts ran contrary to the normative ideational and behaviorally prescriptive traditions concerning sexuality presented by the main body of biblical and rabbinic texts, it is nonetheless true that the texts I examine invite readers to see an alternative dynamic through their stories. I will employ a variety of methodologies, including philological/critical scholarship, close literary reading, and queer theory, through which we might most profitably examine the interpretative traditions I consider.

https://brill.com/view/title/61619?language=en
Volume Editors: Kamden K. Strunk and Stephanie Anne Shelton

Queer studies is an extensive field that spans a range of disciplines. This volume focuses on education and educational research and examines and expounds upon queer studies particular to education fields. It works to examine concepts, theories, and methods related to queer studies across PK-12, higher education, adult education, and informal learning.

The volume takes an intentionally intersectional approach, with particular attention to the intersections of white supremacist cisheteropatriachy. It includes well-established concepts with accessible and entry-level explanations, as well as emerging and cutting-edge concepts in the field. It is designed to be used by those new to queer studies as well as those with established expertise in the field.

*Winner of the Peter C. Rollins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the Northeast Popular Culture Association*
An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures.

The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is one of the twentieth century's most influential art schools, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories.

The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers―notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhäusler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities in design; the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works; and the school's communist period (1928–1932), when Bauhäusler put their skills into the service of the revolution―even as Nazism emerged and entered the Bauhaus itself.

With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Based on fifteen months of ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and
2013, this article explores queer life-worlds through the Armenian notion of alternativ
space, spaces that create possibilities for practices, desires, ways of looking, and
being that differ from Armenian national values of propriety. Political-economic
reform has created anxieties regarding national propriety and the family’s ability
to exist in continuity with a moral past within postsocialist time-space. Intense
anxieties regarding the proper social reproduction of national propriety make
visible forms of difference from what is considered proper difficult. As such,
in/visible spaces in which these differences can be exhibited have emerged, merging
nonnormative sexual and gendered worlds with wider experiences of alterity that
disturb the nation’s social reproduction and continuity with the past. Although
alternativ spaces make difference possible, they also reproduce the nation’s norms
by containing that difference in interior queer life-worlds. I suggest, however, that
these spaces also have the potential of redefining Armenianness as they bring alterity
into the larger space of nation, queering Armenian futurity in ways that LGBT
visibility would not make possible.

From its inception, depiction of sexuality on screen outside of heteronormative behavior has consistently been met with censorship by the state and negative criticism from the media. Yet, beginning with mid 1960s and spanning latter decades, Turkish filmmakers have become far more open and daring in their depiction of the gay and lesbian relationships. It is the aim of this essay to outline a history of LGBT representations in Turkish cinema over the last fifty years, depictions progressing from lesbian to transsexual and finally to homosexual males during the period, 1962 to the present.

SOURCE: Baril, A. (2020). « Queeriser le geste suicidaire : penser le suicide avec Nelly Arcan », dans I. Boisclair, P.-L. Landry et G.P. Girard (dirs.). QuébeQueer : Le queer dans les productions littéraires, artistiques et médiatiques québécoises, Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, p. 325-341.

ABSTRACT
This research, situated at the junction of feminist, trans and disability studies, examines the limits of intersectional feminist analyses and the difficulties faced in their consideration of gender identity and ability through an analysis of two types of body modification: transsexuality and transability (voluntary disability acquisition). In response to the question “what are the limits of intersectional analyses and how can they be addressed?”, three objectives are proposed: 1) participate in the critical examination of specific limits of intersectional feminist analyses in order to diversify their axes through the consideration of gender identity and ability; 2) question the conceptual assumptions and cisgenderist and (cis)ableist privileges informing negative discourses around these body modifications and highlight points of convergence among feminist, transactivist and anti-ableist movements in order to encourage dialogue and solidarities among them; 3) provide feminist, trans and disability studies with an enriched model of intersectionality capable of addressing new claims for justice from oppressed groups, such as those of transsexual and transabled individuals. The negative discourses of certain feminists and other scientists regarding these body modifications are mapped and critiqued through a methodology combining archeological, genealogical and critical discourse analysis. The reflections presented here, inspired by poststructuralist and queer approaches, explore neither the “origins” of transsexuality and transability nor their motivations; this is a study of the negative discourses about these phenomena and the normative systems from which they originate. The result is an important contribution to theoretical, normative and political fields of knowledge: the examination of two “extreme” cases of body modification reveals the bodily normativities of dominant regimes, specifically cisgenderism and (cis)ableism, that remain as unrecognized in our societies as in our social movements. 


KEYWORDS
Intersectionality; feminist theories; trans theories; queer theories; disability theories; social movements; body modifications; bodies; transsexuality; transability; voluntary amputation; BIID; disability; mutilation; pathologization; normality/abnormality; stigmatization; discourse; critical discourse analysis; norms; oppression; autonomy; bioethics.


RÉSUMÉ
Cette recherche se situe à la jonction des études féministes, trans et sur la production du handicap. Elle s’intéresse aux limites des analyses féministes intersectionnelles et leurs difficultés à considérer certains axes identitaires, telles l’identité de genre et les capacités, à travers l’analyse de deux cas de figure de modifications corporelles, soit la transsexualité et la transcapacité (transformation visant à acquérir un handicap). Cette thèse s’articule autour de la question suivante : quels sont les angles morts des analyses intersectionnelles et comment pouvons-nous y remédier? Pour répondre à cette question, cette thèse propose trois objectifs : 1) Participer aux questionnements critiques entourant certaines limites des analyses féministes intersectionnelles pour en diversifier les axes à partir de l’identité de genre et des capacités; 2) Remettre en question les présupposés conceptuels et les privilèges cisgenristes et (cis)capacitistes qui sous-tendent les discours négatifs entourant ces modifications corporelles et mettre en valeur les points de convergence entre les mouvements féministes, transactivistes et anticapacitistes pour instaurer des dialogues et des solidarités entre eux; 3) Fournir un modèle enrichi de l’intersectionnalité pouvant être déployé en études féministes, trans et sur la production du (trans)handicap, apte à répondre aux nouvelles revendications de justice de groupes opprimés, comme celles des personnes transsexuelles et transcapacitaires. À l’aide d’une méthodologie alliant l’analyse critique de discours, l’analyse archéologique et généalogique, les discours négatifs de certaines féministes et d’autres scientifiques sur ces transformations corporelles sont cartographiés et critiqués. Les réflexions présentées ici, s’inscrivant dans une approche poststructuraliste et queer, ne proposent pas une recherche des « origines » et des motivations de la transsexualité et de la transcapacité, mais plutôt une étude des discours négatifs vis-à-vis ces phénomènes et des systèmes normatifs qui sous-tendent ces discours. C’est sous cet angle que cette recherche constitue un apport important aux champs des savoirs, tant sur le plan théorique, normatif que politique : en se penchant sur deux cas de figure « extrêmes », elle met en lumière les normativités corporelles des régimes dominants, notamment cisgenriste et (cis)capacitiste, occultées tant dans nos sociétés que dans nos mouvements sociaux.


MOTS CLÉS
Intersectionnalité; théories féministes; théories trans; théories queers; théories sur le handicap; mouvements sociaux; modifications corporelles; corps; transsexualité; transcapacité; amputations volontaires; BIID; handicap; mutilations; pathologisation; normalité/anormalité; stigmatisation; discours; analyses critiques de discours; normes; oppressions; autonomie; bioéthique.

This article addresses the identity politics that serve as a base for collective action for many groups active in fighting for LGBT rights and looks at queer theory and queer politics as an alternative to identity based politics. Queer theory is discussed through the work of several prominent queer theorists, as well as in comparison with post-colonial theories. Some suggestions are then made for undertaking a queer politics.

This article analyses the narrative depictions of LGBTQ minorities in contemporary Italian transnational television. To understand the sociocultural repercussions of these representations I first contextualize them by exploring current cultural theories behind trends in production and acquisition practices. I argue that by conforming to 'univer-salized' format and audience standards individual nations achieve transnational visibility. In turn, this universalization contributes to the transnational validation of the narrative discourses within these television programmes. As such, the depic-tions of LGBTQ characters on the shows Suburra, Gomorrah, Baby and SKAM Italia legitimize a certain level of sexual and gender variance while simultaneously endorsing acts of discrimination against those within these minority categories.

Otto and B.D.G., a black and desi gay couple in the film Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya, 2007), are an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, they use a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems that surround them. This essay explores the unconventional ways through which Otto and B.D.G.’s intimacies are depicted, and analyzes the performance styles they use to express critical perspectives on racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. I argue that Otto and B.D.G.’s performances offer alternative ways to think through contemporary conversations around cultural appropriation and interracial desire in ways that decenter whiteness or a white desiring subject. However, I also observe how their critical deployments of hypermasculinity potentially skew public conversations about racialized violence.

Fallon Fox became the first openly transgender fighter in professional mixed-martial arts (MMA) in 2013. Her outing elicited fervent responses from the MMA community, reflecting the barriers many transgender women encounter in sex-segregated sports. Fox frequently faced pseudoscientific arguments alleging innate physical advantages over cisgender women, which are deeply entangled with sexist and racist assumptions about trans identity. For Fox, the only way to prove her “true” womanhood—that is, that she was just as biologically inferior to men as “regular” women—was by losing fights. In this article, we trouble Fox’s “damned-if-she-wins” and “damned-if-she-doesn’t” conundrum by drawing on Halberstam and Muñoz’s theorizing on the queer art of failure. In order to challenge binary logics that structure our sporting world—including male/female, winning/losing, success/failure—and that are specifically imposed upon transgender athletes such as Fox, we employ a queer methodology to center Fox’s voice as she grapples with the meanings and uses of failure. Her insights reveal a productive engagement with athletic failure, which not only challenges sex segregation in sports and the interlocking discourses of racism, (cis)sexism, and transphobia, but allows us to imagine queer modes of undoing beyond the athletic realm of the MMA cage.