Queer Research Articles

The Queer Art of Success: Lisa Duggan’s Fun and Fury

The Queer Art of Success: Lisa Duggan’s Fun and Fury

In a Queer Gothic Space and Time: Love Triangles in Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate

In her work, Jeanette Winterson consistently shows an interest in history and the way in which it has been transmitted through generations. In particular, she attempts to fill in the gaps of historical representation by shedding light on those identities that were marginalised and made invisible because they ostensibly violated society’s norms, or because they were perceived as deviant and threatening for the social order. From her first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) to her more recent works, Winterson reclaims a verbal and symbolic space for those subjects whom society has failed to recognise. Winterson narratively revisits history by adopting and combining several technical postmodern strategies, such as historiographic metafiction, parody, intertextuality, self-reflectivity and pastiche. In so doing, she aims to explore the cultural construction of sexual and gender identities as well as to challenge patriarchal and heterosexual hegemonic discourses.

Yes We Can? The Promises of Affect for Queer Scholarship

This article was first published in lambda nordica 2010, 3-4. Artikeln undersöker den så kallade affektiva vändningen som enligt ett specialnummer av South Atlantic Quarterly, “After sex? on writing since queer theory” (2007), kännetecknar även queerforskning på 2000- talet. Artikeln ifrågasätter existensen av “en vändning” genom en närläsning av Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks inflytelserika skrifter om skam samt om paranoida och reparativa läsesätt. Såväl Sedgwicks förståelse av skam som hennes uttalat metodologiska reflexioner kring queerforskning kännetecknas av komplexitet och ambivalens. Detta bottnar i hennes psykoanalytiska referensram och koppling av affektbegreppet till subjektteori, till skillnad från t.ex. nymaterialistiska ansatser. Som en följd kan hennes idéer om paranoida och reparativa positioner svårligen tolkas som två väsensskilda metodologiska alternativ eller en värdering av två valbara, sinsemellan alternativa läsesätt. Sedgwicks begreppspar kan inte heller reduceras till en inbjudan till forskare att “tala om” känslor och upplevelser. I stället kan dessa två positioner, förankrade i Melanie Kleins psykoanalytiska teori, med fördel uppfattas som en beskrivning av det queera forskarsubjektets ontologiska situation: dess nödvändiga pendling mellan negativ och positiv hermeneutik, mellan kritisk granskning och ifrågasättande av denna attityd, mellan tvivel och hopp i sitt förhållande till världen. I Sedgwicks tapp-ning innebär “affektiv vändning” en utveckling av subjektteorier. Hennes skrifter deltar i utmaningen av den förra, lingvistiska vändningen men deltar i dess dekonstruktion och vidareutveckling inifrån, med dess kännetecknande teoretiska verktyg, psykoanalys, dekonstruktion och närläsning.

Becoming Bach, Blaspheming Bach: Kinesthetic Knowledge and Embodied Music Theory in Ysaye's "Obsession" for Solo Violin

This essay explores kinesthetic musical knowledge: what can it tell us about the music, the performer, or the composer? In discussing my own experience of performing "Obsession," the first movement of violinist-composer Eugene Ysaye's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin, op. 27 (1923), I'll articulate some of the observations I made while learning to play it. These insights in turn inflect and clarify my relationship with Bach, whose violin music is the object of Ysaye's obsession. In the course of practicing and performing "Obsession," I have developed a reading of this piece as depicting not only Ysaye's purported obsession with Bach, but also his possession by (a demonic) Bach. Some aspects of my interpretation are readily audible, while others stem from my physical knowledge of the music. An embodied analysis such as I undertake here may uncover musical meanings apparent only to the performer, demonstrating that "the score is not the work to a performer; nor is the score-made-sound the work: the work includes the performer's mobilizing of previously studied skills so as to embody, to make real, to make sounding, a set of relationships that are only partly relationships among sounds" (Cusick 1994:18). Many feminist scholars have observed that the body is too often written out of the academic study of music. For instance, Philip Bohlman sees this erasure writ large in musicology's disinclination to study dance (1993:431). Suzanne Cusick's critique of mainstream musicological practice aims to rehabilitate "the inextricable presence of the body in music--a presence both musicology's and music theory's focus on the intentions and the texts of the composers scrupulously denies" (1994:15). Feeling that she is not meant to speak as a performer when teaching musicology, she has written of her efforts to resolve this apparent disjunction: "as a performer, I act on and with what we ordinarily call music with my body; as a musicologist I have been formed to act on (and with?) what we ordinarily call music with my mind, and only with my mind" (9). Recognizing in the act of music-making a resolution of this apparent mind/body split, Cusick argues for a more embodied analytical practice, calling for a "theory of musical bodies" (18). Elisabeth Le Guin has demonstrated the historical and interpretive insights that can be gained from such an embodied analytical practice, using her own performing body to explore the music and life of Boccherini (2002; 2006). Her methodology, which she calls "carnal musicology," links her experience as a performer to the eighteenth-century notion of sensibilite and shows how knowledge originating in her sensate body can motivate an interpretation of a piece. In the past two decades music scholars using feminist and queer theories have focused attention on musical bodies in their analysis and criticism. Relating performative knowledge of a piece to aspects of the music's structure is one such approach. A more common feminist methodology seeks connections between personal identity (the composer's or the performer's), and musical structures and/or performance. We can fuse these approaches by thinking about how subjectivity might be inscribed upon a music-making body. For instance, in studying vocal performativity, Cusick (1999) considers how our voices embody (perform) our gender, sex, ethnicity, etc. She hears in the timbre of Eddie Vedder's singing an assertion of his heterosexual male American subjectivity. His characteristic snarl, suggesting tightly constricted throat muscles, demonstrates his resistance to the discipline of song by physically limiting culture's penetration into the innermost spaces of his body; context for this analysis includes her observation that singing is a normative behavior in our culture for women but not for men. In another example of work that connects music and identity through the music-making body, Philip Brett relates Schubert's presumed homosexuality to the composer's four-hand piano music. …

Motley's Men: The Queer Haunting of We Fished All Night

Motley's Men: The Queer Haunting of <i>We Fished All Night</i>

Review Essay: “Metal in Three Modes of Enmity: Political, Musical, Cosmic.” Gerd Bayer, ed. Heavy Metal in Britain ; Steve Waksman. This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk ; Nicola Masciandaro, ed. Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1

Scholarship on metal always seems a little bewildered or put on the defensive by the genre’s profoundly adversarial nature. Metal certainly opposes something, and to a large extent is defined by this opposition rather than by any obvious message of its own, but what exactly does it oppose? Certain political values? Certain kinds of music? Certain religions? Or does it represent a vague opposition to “things in general;” is it the music of rebellion without a cause? The short answer, judging by the academic treatments under review here as well as earlier attempts to censor it, is that it opposes whatever its interpreters want it to. Thus its critics site accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia, while supporters praise its supposed opposition to capitalism, strict gender roles, and even the concept of order itself. Many of these metal partisans, especially those whose primary concern is the rehabilitation of an art form often perceived as ethically problematic, spend so much time explaining away its disturbing features that they ignore the possibility that disturbance is precisely the point. Even those who do recognize disturbance as a fundamental aim of metal and call attention to the specific forms that that disturbance takes, such as expressions of animosity toward certain groups of people, often fail to explain why listeners are attracted to these sounds. That the appeal doesn’t lie only in bigotry is clear from the growing number of fans who come from the very groups that have been the most stigmatized in metal-women, ethnic minorities, religiously observant people, and queer women and men. The following essay will not fully explain either the genre’s lust for enmity in all forms or the perverse attraction that this spirit of antagonism holds for fans, but it will at least review current scholarly thought on these subjects and suggest some possible avenues for future exploration. I will provide a brief overview of the scholarship that first legitimized the study of metal and consider three recent books that each turn the notion of metal’s enmity toward other things into an analytical methodology; that is, they attempt to define it by what it is not and by what it opposes. The books cast metal in opposition to certain political values, kinds of music, and religious/philosophical worldviews. Out of our discussion-imbued with the recognition that metal exists only in opposition, enmity, and negativity toward something else-will emerge a sense of the elusiveness of this art form as a subject of inquiry and the difficulty of finding a methodological approach that fully captures its strangeness, darkness, and hostility toward analysis.

Feminist, Queer, Crip

Feminist, Queer, Crip

Lesbian Rangers on a Queer Frontier

This paper explores Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s performance art piece Lesbian National Parks and Services, in which they enact the persona of lesbian park rangers. After investigating ways that white European settler surveyors and early park rangers formulated a narrative of Canadian wilderness embedded with colonialism and heteronormativity, this paper questions how Dempsey and Millan subvert these myths with their effective enactment of the park ranger persona. Dempsey and Millan’s ventures into the frontiers of the previously uncharted lesbian wilds thus serve to redo what the original park wardens and surveyors did, but this time without the omission of their own queer identities. Finally, this paper considers how we might move even further into this frontier—away from the masculinist colonial construction of Canadian wilderness, toward a narrative of nature shaped by desire, including queer desire.

Digging the Naturally Queer in Spinoza

Digging the Naturally Queer in Spinoza

Merabet, Sofian: Queer Beirut

Merabet, Sofian: Queer Beirut

Translation is blind: reflections on narcissus and the possibility of a queer echo

Jacques Derrida invites a reconsideration of the myth of Echo and Narcissus. Echo’s voice translates and remediates Narcissus’s beauty. In this “histoire d’amour,” it is the blind repeating of someone else’s words which constitutes her voice. And this translating voice is hers, not merely a borrowing from Narcissus. Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) and the medium of film itself equally promise the power to mirror/echo the human, to translate sound and motion to the flat reflective surface of projection and to preserve voices in a sound track. At least two queer texts from the turn of the nineteenth century anticipate this Derridean “blind echo,” Oscar Wilde’s prose poem “The Disciple” (1894) and Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Narzis” (1913). Lou Andreas-Salome, in “Der Mensch als Wieb” (1899), moreover, sees a double directionality of narcissism. All three insist that the surface on which Narcissus views his reflection and Echo’s repetition are not an abject predication but rather the initiation of a relationship. Translation does not elide the difference between original and translation. Instead, it asks us to consider closely the surface which ensures that such difference will always be present.

The gender and queer politics of translation: New approaches

The gender and queer politics of translation: New approaches

Revising ‘Re-vision’: Documenting 1970s Feminisms and the Queer Potentiality of Digital Feminist Archives

Revising ‘Re-vision’: Documenting 1970s Feminisms and the Queer Potentiality of Digital Feminist Archives

Conclusion: It’s Our Collective, Principled Making that Matters Most: Queer Feminist Media Praxis @Ada

Conclusion: It’s Our Collective, Principled Making that Matters Most: Queer Feminist Media Praxis @Ada

To Be Young, Gifted, and Queer

To Be Young, Gifted, and Queer

Silvia Antosa, Queer Crossings. Theories, Bodies, Texts

Il grado di complessita della societa contemporanea, costituita dalla compresenza su uno stesso piano di elementi e concetti che sfuggono a logiche interpretative tradizionali, trova uno dei suoi piu forti riflessi nella queer culture . All’interno di questo contesto, il merito dei queer studies e quello di proporre una varieta di incroci disciplinari e di superare posizioni teoriche consolidate, cominciando a problematizzarle.

Historicizing Queer Stories from Asia

Historicizing Queer Stories from Asia

Eucharistic Imagination: A Queer Body‐Politics

Eucharistic Imagination: A Queer Body‐Politics

Teatro Queer complied by Ezequiel Obregon (review)

Reviewed by: Teatro Queer complied by Ezequiel Obregon Ricardo Dubatti Obregón, Ezequiel, compilación y prólogo. Teatro Queer. Eusebio Ramírez de Mariano Moro, Tres mitades de José María Muscari, Es inevitable de Diego Casado Rubio, Escaleno de Gabriela Ynclan y Quiero decir te amo de Mariano Tenconi Blanco. Buenos Aires: Colihue Teatro, 2013: 141 pp. Obregón, Ezequiel, compilación y prólogo. Teatro Queer. Eusebio Ramírez de Mariano Moro, Tres mitades de José María Muscari, Es inevitable de Diego Casado Rubio, Escaleno de Gabriela Ynclan y Quiero decir te amo de Mariano Tenconi Blanco. Buenos Aires: Colihue Teatro, 2013:141 pp. Una de las perspectivas más importantes que han surgido a partir de la multiplicación de subjetividades y micropoéticas teatrales, entendidas como ejercicios de micropolítica, en la postdictadura argentina, es la de género. Desde el advenimiento de la democracia el 10 de diciembre de 1983, se ha producido en la dramaturgia un auge progresivo de la temática queer que ha avanzado desde casos como En boca cerrada de Juan Carlos Badillo (1985), donde el tópico es sugerido constantemente pero nunca explícitamente pronunciado, a Tercer cuerpo de Claudio Tolcachir, donde aparece como una materia ya más naturalmente asimilada. En este registro resulta muy valiosa la publicación de Teatro Queer, volumen de piezas teatrales de cinco textos dramáticos que presentan diferentes miradas sobre diversas situaciones vinculadas a lo queer. Uno de los aciertos del tomo es ese énfasis colocado en lo variado, en una multiplicidad de enfoques, ya que, como señala Obregón, se trata de textos que “en su espesor dramático fomentan la reflexión sobre la sexualidad sin recurrir a estereotipos” (5) y que comparten “la existencia de personajes dilemáticos retratados por fuera de cualquier tesis” (8). Obregón también señala en el prólogo que en la teoría queer no se marca una distinción binaria de sexos, sino que, por el contrario, se considera que todas las orientaciones sexuales dependen de una amplia serie de variables culturales y que no existe una determinación natural hacia la heterosexualidad. Así el prólogo se adentra en una serie de propuestas de diversos autores, entre ellos Judith Butler, Roberto Echavarren y José Amícola, y ofrece una breve pero muy útil introducción hacia la etimología y las problemáticas que radican en la denominación queer. Luego, desde una perspectiva historicista, Obregón destaca el caso de Los invertidos (1914), de José González Castillo, como piedra angular (a pesar de su fallido carácter moralizante) del teatro que aborda esa temática en la Argentina. Luego de mencionar la recepción del teatro de Copi en la Argentina de postdictadura, Obregón se detiene en el análisis de cada uno de los textos incluidos y remarca que: Lejos de proponer esquemas rígidos, muestran cuán complejo puede resultar el escape a las constricciones del género, entendido como un sistema de símbolos codificados culturalmente. Pensados en conjunto, estos textos demuestran que no hay una sola forma de tomar distancia de la normativa, dado que cualquier individuo en su devenir sujeto social adapta distintos recursos a las pautas de un rol. (8) Así, el objetivo de esta antología trasciende la puesta en evidencia temática (más marcada en los primeros años de la postdictadura) para proponer a los lectores una apertura desde lo estético, mediante un corpus de textos que muestra diversas formas de encarar y entender lo queer. [End Page 141] Teatro Queer reúne cinco obras: Eusebio Ramírez de Mariano Moro; Tres mitades de José María Muscari; Es inevitable de Diego Casado Rubio; Escaleno de Gabriela Ynclan; y Quiero decir te amo de Mariano Tenconi Blanco. Una mexicana y cuatro argentinos. Las piezas muestran un rango de procedimientos composicionales amplio, que responden a diversos contextos y situaciones; el travesti de Eusebio Ramírez que habla con su amante mientras reflexiona sobre volver al oficio de actuar; los triángulos amorosos que marcan la frivolidad de la clase alta argentina en Tres mitades (es...

From Gay to Queer

From Gay to Queer