Streaming intersectionality: Queer and trans television aesthetics in post-medium transformation

Abstract

Following the first Trans TV dossier, this dossier shifts the focus from transformations of television industries, institutions, fans and audiences to questions of queer and trans* aesthetics and representation in contemporary television. It entails an intersectional approach, but one that looks at what happens to intersectional genealogies in the era of streamed, internet-distributed television. Do the post-network or even post-medium transformations identified in the first dossier facilitate the opening of queer and trans spaces in the contemporary television landscape? Or is the evolution of television more cyclical than linear, offering both moments of transgression and emergence, as well as reaction, in relation to new technological and institutional configurations? While the focus of most of the work is on the level of representation and aesthetics, the questions raised are pertinent to understanding the new configurations of technologies, production, distribution and consumption that characterise internet-distributed television, which, in turn, need to be positioned in relation to the complex intersectional genealogies of televisual content presented in this dossier.