Poetic World-Making: Queer as Folk, Counterpublic Speech and the ‘Reader’

Abstract

The television programme Queer as Folk depicts both scandalous, indecorous behaviour, and respectable, even conventional, forms of love. It constitutes what Michael Warner, in his influential essay ‘Publics and Counterpublics’, has described as public speech and, at the same time, it sits both inside and outside his category of counterpublic speech. As such, it operates as a boundary case through which the distinction between public and counterpublic can be analysed. In this article, this analysis is conducted both as a means of building upon Warner’s theory, and to offer insights into the ways in which young gay male viewers in Sydney, Australia watch the programme and, linked to this, how they understand sexuality in relation to transformational politics. In the process, the article troubles Warner’s distinguishing of counterpublic from public by investigating the rather neglected question of the ‘reader’ in his designations of the counterpublic.