Proceedings from

the Summer School for Sexualities,

Cultures and Politics 2014
Edited by
Stanimir Panayotov
and Ana Koncul
IPAK.Center -
Research Center for Cultures,
Politics and Identities

Belgrade
2015
Proceedings from the Summer School for
Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2014

Edited by Stanimir Panayotov and Ana Koncul

the authors
© Front cover, design and layout: Filip Panchev
© Illustrations by Lazara Marinković and Velimir Žernovski
Photo documentation: Kornelija Sabo and Nada Kostić
Copy-editors: Stanimir Panayotov and Slavčo Dimitrov
IPAK.Center - Research Center for Cultures,
Politics and Identities, Belgrade, 2015

ISBN: 978-86-919103-1-0

The Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2014 was supported by:
 5 7 19

Stanimir Panayotov and Ana Koncul Steph Schem Rogerson Claire Finch
Note from the Editors Queer Archives Mutating France’s
Queer Territories

34 47 58
Antonina Anna Ferrante Thomas Muzart Marius Henderson
In Drag We Trust: Normative Drives and Pornography Must Be Defended: Tentative Heretical Notes on Queer
Homonationalism in RuPaul’s Drag Race Rethinking Pornography with Lionel Soukaz “Necro” Practices and Sensibilities

69 83 95

Jennifer Vilchez france rose Mónica Guerreiro

Hard to Swallow: Porn Star [ the space in between ]: Intense, Animal, Imperceptible:
James Deen’s Arousing Work The Power of Contemporary Art Vera Mantero’s a mysterious Thing,
and Young Women’s Fandom to Reimagine Gender said e. e. cummings* as a Queer Dance Solo

105 117 129

Anna Wates Melisa Slipac

Grieving as Political Action: Contesting When a Woman Loves a Woman:
Austerity Politics through Narratives of Loss Lesbian Love and Homosexual Desire in Ajla Terzić’s Novel
in the Disabilities Rights Movements Mogla je biti prosta priča (Could Have Been a Simple Story)

Note from the Editors
Old saying suggests that the third time is a charm,
implying that an event will finally succeed when attempted
for the third time. It also implies the possibility of the moment
reaching its peak and of something exceptional and perhaps
unrepeatable taking place at last. However, the Summer School
for Sexualities, Politics and Cultures, which took place in August
2014 in Belgrade, Serbia, was a charm for many reasons other
than being the third. It has been a great pleasure to organize
and an honor to attend the Summer School. The enthusiasm
about the theoretical approaches and discussions and the spirit
surrounding practical - artistic and activist - endeavors were
both immensely enjoyable and inspiring for everyone involved.
The third edition of the Summer School in Sexualities, Politics
and Cultures was organized by the IPAK.Center for Cultures, Politics
and Identities and the Faculty of Media and Communication and
supported by the American Embassy in Belgrade, Kvinna till Kvinna
and Reconstruction Women’s Fund. For the first time it took place
in Belgrade, after being moved slightly northern, from Macedonia.
The Summer School consisted in three courses: Wild Bodies: Gender,
Sexuality and Power, led by professor Jack Halberstam, Derrida’s
Queer Bio-Politics, by professor Eszter Timár, and Bracha Ettinger’s
course “The World is Gone, I Must Carry You”: Daring the Shock of
Emun (Trust). On the Transjective Subreal in Art and Psychoanalysis.
Vibrant discussions on the aforementioned topics did by no means
5
stay between the classroom walls - more than forty participants
from around the world got involved in Belgrade’s cultural life by
also attending the School’s off-programme events, among which
the opening night of Macedonian contemporary artist Velimir
Žernovski’s Distitled: Pieta received the greatest attention. It was
not only the participants who showed interest in these incredibly
relevant political and cultural issues. The wider public engaged
in heated discussions which followed Jack Halberstam’s open
lecture “On Behalf of Failure” and a performance lecture, delivered
by the Polish professor Tomasz Sikora, called “Living with an Alien,
or, (Again) Against Representation.”
The following texts have been written by a range of talented
young scholars, artists and activists. We consider the first issue of
the SSSCP Proceedings a great contribution to a wider body of
research conducted within the field of cultural studies overall, but
also to queer theory/politics/practice, gender studies, media and
studies of the body. What differentiates this collection from others
is a delicate balance between personal journeys and academic
adventures that authors have taken upon. The first edition is also
of invaluable importance and an immensely relevant input to a
regional political and cultural struggle to embrace otherness.
We would even go as far as to claim that the present collection
represents a fresh and daring contribution to the inert regional
academic production and a useful, empowering tool for various
sorts of activist and artistic endeavors.
Stanimir Panayotov and Ana Koncul
 6

Velimir Žernovski, Pieta: Distitled:

The Haunting Spectres of Loss and Futurity (2014)
Video HD 9 min,
with Nikola Herman and Sebastijan Bereta

“Spectres haunt our contemporary political horizon and make us

face the grieving experiences and losses to be mourned, and all
their derivative backward and negative feelings that disrupt the
neoliberal biopolitical demands for productivity, flexibility, mar-
ket investments and perpetual self-overcoming as the means for
adjusting ourselves to the happiness machine of capitalism. In a
similar vein, the spectre of loss, sorrow, suffering, vulnerability,
precariousness and melancholia haunts our fantasmatic drive
for autonomy, self-sufficiency and individualised atomistic sub-
jectivity. At the same time this spectre of loss is grafted onto its
unavowed other, the spectre of queer losses and dispossessions,
the unwritten history of unevenly distributed tears (Barthes)
that uproots the heteronormative frames of recognisability and
intelligibility, as much as it exposes the ‘shaming’ distitled emo-
tional failures persistently denied by the normalising ‘It gets bet-
ter’ mainstream activist politics.”

Slavčo Dimitrov on Velimir Žernovski’s Pieta: Distitled (2014)


Queer Archives
Steph Schem Rogerson
Abstract: By the nineteenth century a vast array of ethnogra-
phies such as racialization, class, sexuality, gender and crim-
inology had become the cornerstone to the social sciences.
The body became a site of social regulation, and the notion
of truth and its manifestations on the body became culturally
realized through systemic ideologies. The social body was the
triumph of Bourgeois order, where the political economy of
Industrialism, Capitalism and Imperialism were entwined with
the individual and the state, and where sexual conduct was
converted to economic and political behavior. The category
of homosexuality was a device meant to control and regulate.
Foucaultian analysis asserts that nineteenth century prohibi-
tions established far reaching oppressive sexual discourses,
however, through systems set out to control sexuality - ho-
mosexuality began to speak in its own behalf (Foucault 1980).
The queer archive provides a site of memory that historically
has been entrenched in erasure, inscribing both the archives
and their users with political power. Without knowledge of the
past, what can we expect of future queer subjectivities?
Key words: queer, archives, history, social body, affect
7
Introduction
The relationship between the historical production of the
archive and the construction of social body are wounds of engen-
dered, sexual, racial and caste violence that were informed and
enforced through the nineteenth century’s social sciences. I inves-
tigate the effects of these historical constructions on queer peda-
gogy and why these issues remain relevant to queer knowledge
and thought in the twenty-first century and its futurities.
The social body was constructed in the nineteenth century
through the social sciences to inform both ideological impera-
tives and technological developments, and to create sites of truth
and order. For those operating on the margins or outside the sta-
tus quo, the historically imposed heteronormative approaches to
the archive as remembrance and visibility functioned through the
lens of secrecy and complex codes. This research examines how
meaning and significance are assigned to the archive and how the
past can influence the future of queer studies. I explore the histor-
ical construction of the archive through Jacques Derrida’s Archive
Fever in order to outline the founding concepts of the archive, and
how the Derridean approaches can be both helpful in archival
practices, as well as reveal its limits as far as queerness historici-
zation and feminist pedagogy. Allan Sekula’s text The Body and
the Archive will assist in the historical examination of the archive
through the relationship between the social body and the cul-
tural manifestations of order and its systematic ideologies. I place

Archive Fever and The Body and the Archive in dialogue with each
other to reveal critical debates of the historical archive, categori-
cal violence and its implications.
An alternative perspective to the heteronormative institu-
tionalization of historicization will be examined through Michel
Foucault’s History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, which
invites the concept of “reverse discourse” to queer epistemolo-
gies. Further, Heather Love’s insight into the politics of queer
history and its historical injury in Feeling Backwards: Loss and
Politics in Queer History offers pivotal arguments to abjection,
pain and loss. Ann Cvetkovich analyzes queer history in An Ar-
chive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures
by examining affect as an invaluable aspect to reconstructing
queer emotional knowledge in archival practices. These theo-
rists present invaluable discourses to counter the criterion of
heteronormative, patriarchal structures of the archive. Their
contribution fleshes out the complexity of historical injury and
why queer knowledge is vital as a discourse.
The discussion of homosexuality, a category constituted
through medicine and the social sciences, demonstrates how
the criminalization and public shaming of same-sex affection
had far reaching consequences of both ideological and social
control. The historical concept of the social deviance and crimi-
nalization of homosexuality can be understood as occupying
similar territory as racialization, misogyny, and other violent so-
cial phenomena. Siobhan Somerville in Queering the Color Line
8
investigates the crisis of homo/heterosexual definitions in the
late nineteenth century as being concurrent with conflicts over
racial definitions, where historical queerness and racial inequal-
ity reveal the taxonomy of the socio-political crisis of Imperial-
ism. In the late 1800s sexology, and most certainly eugenics and
phrenology, developed new categories that sought to re-envi-
sion knowledge by surveilling bodies. In this paper I argue that
queer knowledge has been historically bound to the categori-
cal force and violence of nineteenth century social sciences as
well as coerced through social obligations.
The queer archive is discussed as a location for memory
that historically has been entrenched in erasure. Due to histori-
cal violence and expurgation, queer archives inscribe both the
archives and their users with political power and queer affect.
Based on historic institutional and governing archival practic-
es, I investigate the political paradigm of The Lesbian Herstory
Archive in Brooklyn, NY among several other queer archives as
case studies to propose spaces of resistance to heteronorma-
tive and patriarchal sites of remembrance by concentrating on
both lesbian knowledge and queer discourse. I specifically look
at Mabel Hampton, an African American lesbian, who against
all odds has an archived voice that speaks directly of historical
violence and survival. Searching out hidden, secret or culturally
erased history is examined in this essay as discursive acts that
are entwined in political power of remembrance and the emo-
tional influence of reclamation.

Archive Fever
Derridean approaches to the question of the archive are based
on the rules of reasoning or the nomological principle of the archive.
I will focus on specific issues raised in Derrida’s Archive Fever involving
concepts surrounding consignation, which include how systems are
put into place through the principle of “gathering together” (Derrida
1998: 10) and how consignation informs “unification, identification
and classification” (ibid.). Historical visibility for those on the margins
complicates the historical imperative of the archive as systems of
power and control authorized social, cultural and political strategies
of knowledge. The principle of “gathering together” (idem) com-
manding legitimacy, security and unification has a long history in
the social sciences of sanctioning racist ideologies, supporting gen-
der inequality and surveilling of sexuality.
What strikes me about Archive Fever is how the archive is his-
torically structured, what effects these structures have on social
control and knowledge as well as political power in histories of the
oppressed. Derrida argues, “[T]here is no political power without
control of the archive, if not memory.” (Derrida 1998: 11) Effective-
ness of the archive can be measured, as stated by Marlene Manoff
in “Theories of the Archive, from Across the Disciplines,” “the par-
ticipation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its in-
terpretation.” (Manoff 2004: 9) I believe there is a fissure between
Derridean notions of political power and the archive, and what I
am proposing. Archive Fever reinforces the archive with patriarchal
9
authority by placing emphasis on legitimacy, where social order is
a nomological principle of the archive, and the rules of reasoning
are embedded in notions of empire. Political rule and empire are
entwined in Archive Fever.
Derrida’s deconstruction of hegemonic approaches to the
critical analysis of the historical archive are found deep in the foot-
notes. Sonia Combe’s Forbidden Archives (Archives interdites: Les
peurs françaises face à ‘‹histoire contemporaine) is acknowledged
by Derrida as “gather[ing] a considerable collection of material, to
illuminate and interpret it; she asks numerous essential questions
about the writing of history, about the “repression” of the archive
as “power of the state over the historian.” (Derrida 1998: 4)
Sonia Combe is cited as a contributor to archival discourse,
and as the only woman mentioned in Archive Fever she is footnoted.
Although she is cited, her contribution is buried at the bottom of
a page. This is political for me as a feminist and queer researcher,
where women, people of colour, queers and those not operating in
white male privilege are continually footnoted throughout history.
Yet, citation is pivotal to Derrida as a reference to the economy of the
archive. For Derrida, citation is an inscription that adheres to politics
of capital and politics of masculine dominance through the exergue
of an inscription below the principal emblem on a coin and circum-
cision. Whether it is “the intimate mark… on the so-called body”
or “the exergue capitalizing on an ellipsis… preparing the surplus
value of an archive.” (Derrida 1998: 12) The exergue is examined in

Archive Fever as a marker of dominance. If the arkhe is of the cov-
enant, the Word, the Beginning and the Law, it is built on structures
of heteronormative patriarchy that requires critical attention and in-
terrogation. For feminists, Combe addresses patriarchal constructs
by stating, “I hope to be pardoned for granting some credit to the
following observation, but it does not seem to me to be due to pure
chance that the corporation of well-known historians of contempo-
rary France is essentially, apart from a few exceptions, masculine...
But I hope to be understood also…” (Derrida 1998: 10, footnote 17)
Political power, as I am addressing it in this research, is not
contingent on rule. Governance is contrary to my position and re-
duces “the political” to the state. Political power, in terms of the
archive, and the knowledge of historical queer subjects and ac-
cessibly to queer history is a politicized relationship between the
exercising of power on historical queer subjects, their subjection
to prohibitions, and the recouping of histories. The dilemma with
Derridean approaches to the archive is that the unification of ma-
terials is constituted as legitimate without critical concern of what
is on the margins or how the collection of information can trouble
the status quo. If the archive cannot or does not contain a particu-
lar kind of information or mode of scholarship, then it is effectively
excluded from the historical record. If there is no political pow-
er without control of the archive, and historical queerness was
regulated and condemned, then it appears that political power
can only be acquired within hegemonic structures of knowledge,
power and cultural acceptance.
10
The Body and the Archive
By the nineteenth century a vast array of categorical ethnog-
raphies such as divisions of race, class, sexuality, and gender had
become the cornerstone to the social sciences. The body became
a site of social regulation, and the notion of “truth” and its manifes-
tations on the body became culturally realized through systemic
ideologies. The cult of the empire was exemplified through the fe-
tishization of gender, sexuality and race to delineate purification
as social discipline and the staging of social hierarchies informed
the performativity of cultural signs and social spectacle. The so-
cial body was the triumph of Bourgeois order, where the political
economy of industrialism, capitalism and Imperialism were en-
twined with the individual and the state, and where sexual con-
duct was converted to economic and political behavior.
Sekula’s The Body and the Archive (1986) contributes invalu-
ably to the discourse of the “social body” (Sekula 1986: 6) and
its “invention.” Sekula outlines how systems of nineteenth cen-
tury archival practices were enforced through social Darwinism
and “positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance.”
(ibid.: 19) Criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, eugenicist Francis
Galton and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot founded tech-
niques to systematize and rationalize the social body through-
out Europe and North America. Bertillon invented the mugshot
in the 1870s, Galton created systems for what we now under-
stand as racial profiling and Charcot was a leading scientist in

female hysteria, all three, among others created sites of order
and control that offered modernism a precarious normalcy by
revealing in rational terms “the other.”
The body became a site of social regulation at the same
time as massive industrialization, and the notion of “truth”
and its manifestations on the body became culturally real-
ized through systematic ideologies. While the criminalization
of homosexuality spread across the Americas and Europe,
photographic practices and its technologies rapidly devel-
oped. Historical artifacts of queer representation from this
time period illustrate the cultural themes of oppressive cat-
egorization and survival. The overarching social and cultural
changes in the late 1800s were a time of unprecedented con-
vergence between mechanical reproduction and the inven-
tion of homosexuality. How has history been positioned by
the repressive powers of early social sciences and categoriza-
tion, and what is the impact of such a history on the social
implications of early queer representation?
Reverse Discourse
Same-sex affection and love is as old as time itself: such
is examined by several theorists, such as David Halperin’s
One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, Jeffrey Weeks’ Invented
Moralities, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men: English Lit-
erature and Male Homosocial Desire and Jonathan Ned Katz’s
11
The Invention of Heterosexuality, among several other cultural
and queer theorists. However, the categorical device of ho-
mosexuality was invented in the nineteenth century to en-
force normativity for the purpose of maintaining bourgeois
order through the social body as an ideological imperative
that was tangled into the political economy of Industrialism,
Capitalism and Imperialism.
The birth of modern homosexuality as stated by Fou-
cault was through Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal in 1870, which
appears to be one of the first medical accounts of sexuality as
a psychiatric disorder where sexual relations directed one’s
sensibility. The convergence of the social sciences and indus-
trialism in the nineteenth century coerced social imperatives
of control and order to demand normativity. In 1886, Rich-
ard von Krafft-Ebing’s Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic
Study was published in German with the English translation
being published in 1892. While Krafft-Ebing protested Para-
graph 175, Germany’s legal code criminalizing homosexuality
in 1871, he maintained that homosexuality was an illness that
required a cure. Furthermore, Krafft-Ebing’s believed “sexual
inversion” in women is occupying a “masculine soul.” In Eng-
land, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labour
for gross indecency (homosexuality) on May 25, 1895. This
prison sentence played a colossal cultural role in the “identi-
fication” of the homosexual.

The homosexual as a species was quickly absorbed in the
matrix of modern tradition and established as criminal, deviant,
indecent and predatory. By avowing the silence of sexuality or
affirming its nonexistence (Foucault 1980: 4) modern Puritan-
ism prescribed silence beyond the law into social systems, where
everyone could be part of prohibiting queer desire. While Fou-
caultian analysis asserts that nineteenth century prohibitions
established far reaching oppressive sexual discourses through
systems set out to control sexuality via incarceration, death, dis-
cursive shaming tactics, regulations and surveillance, “homo-
sexuality began to speak in its own behalf.” (ibid.: 101) Reverse
discourse plays an invaluable role to the significance of queer
archives and sites of historical queer remembrance.
The complexity of uncovering queer history speaks to a
variety of tactics necessary for survival. The historical evidence
of concealed, hidden and double lives of same-sex affection
has placed queer history in a precarious and obscure position
that requires further scholarship and research. To understand
why queer history can be opaque and challenging to uncover,
it is important to note that the invention of homosexuality was
a categorical device meant to control, regulate and generate
fear. The proliferation of categorical research by sexologists of
the time period, and the debate around homosexuality informs
how this early discourse not only became institutionalized by
medical devices and enforced by laws, but also how these dis-
courses were socially maintained.
12
Queer Archives
In An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian
Public Cultures, Ann Cvetkovich analyzes queer history through
archival practices and examines the affective power of queer
archives as forging emotional knowledge in LGBT lives. Cvetkov-
ich investigates queer pedagogy as tracing the trauma of LGBT
communities that have faced erasure and invisibility. She asserts
that queer archives preserve histories of traumatic loss to sup-
port queer memory and affect, whereby the context of remem-
bering is emotional, affective and sensory. For Cvetkovich, queer
archives are repositories of feelings that evoke both the past and
queer persistence. By forging emotional knowledge in LGBT lives
and the affective power of queer archives, Cvetkovich investi-
gates queer pedagogy by tracing the trauma of LGBT commu-
nities that have faced erasure and invisibility, in order to evoke
both the painful past and the possibility of queer persistence.
Ann Cvetkovich examines queer trauma by connecting the
importance of recognizing - and archiving - accounts of trauma
to the ordinary and everyday domain of queer lives by revealing
how the archive can transform the conditions of trauma. Heather
Love suggests “embracing loss” and “risking abjection” because
the “modern homosexual identity is based on... the experience
of social damage.” (Love 2009: 29) For Love, the abject, the pain,
the damage and the exclusionary of queer historical injury is mo-
tivation to recall, remember, and “engage with the past without

being destroyed by it.” (ibid.: 1) To envision a queer future, a resis-
tance to the idealization of queer history is rooted in what Love
calls a “backward future” (ibid.: 147), which is both a rigorous and
critical embrace of the past that orients itself towards the future
by looking back. As contemporary queer subjects continue to
experience shame and stigma, Love argues that what is needed
is not necessarily an affirmative genealogy but “a politics forged
in the image of exile, of refusal, even of failure.” (ibid.: 71)
Queer archives provide a site of memory that historically
has been entrenched in prohibition, silence, violence and era-
sure. Without knowledge of the past, what can we expect of fu-
ture queer subjectivities? By shifting queer subjectivities from
secrecy to non-secrecy, what are the effects on discourse and
knowledge? The complexity of uncovering queer history speaks
to a variety of socio/political tactics designed to culturally op-
press homosexuality as well as socially inhibit queer epistemolo-
gies. Secrecy as a methodology of survival troubles queer his-
tory, and what is archived and how it is archived. Those who lived
in secret they either did not participate in institutional systems
of archiving, or did so through complex coding or were archived
outside of mainstream.
For the Lesbian Herstory Archive and other queer archives
creating order and systems require some Derridean principles of
the archive through order, physical, preparation, classification
and shelter. However, I would argue that not all archival princi-
ples are founded on patriarchal structures of gender dominance
13
or imperialistic traditions of racism and sexism, and that particu-
larly Lesbian Herstory, among others such as the GLBT Historical
Society (CA), The One Institute and Archive (CA) and the CLGA
Archive in Toronto, and others in North America and Europe con-
travene traditional hegemonic positions of power, which results
in community-based social justice imperatives and perspectives.
Herstory preserves and gathers information that was “de-
nied to us previously by patriarchal historians” and “to encour-
age lesbians to record their experiences in order to formulate
our living herstory.” The mission statement continues by affirm-
ing, “archival skills shall be taught, one generation of lesbians
to another, breaking the elitism of traditional archives” and “the
Archives will never be sold nor will its contents be divided.” By
breaking from a tradition that sought to deny the existence of
queer subjects, queer archives profoundly impact queer knowl-
edge and reveal historical trauma as both not forgotten and
potential future sites.
Joan Nestle, among many others including Mabel Hamp-
ton (1902-1989) were closely connected with the Lesbian Her-
story Archives beginning in the early 1970s. Mabel Hampton, a
woman who had lived her long life in the African-American Les-
bian community donated her extensive collection of 1950s lesbi-
an paperbacks and ephemera from her life. Born in Salem, North
Carolina on May 2, 1902, Mabel Hampton lost both her mother
and grandmother before she was seven years old. In 1909, the
young Hampton went to New York City, where she lived with

her aunt and uncle. She ran away due to sexual and physical vio-
lence. She states, “my aunt went out one day and he raped me. I
said to myself, ‘I’ve got to leave here.’ … So this day, I got tired of
that. I went out with nothing on but a dress, a jumper dress, and
I walked and walked.” Often living on the edge of poverty, she
was wrongfully imprisoned for prostitution. She served a two-
year sentence in Bedford Hills Reformatory and was incarcerated
again after a neighbor told the authorities that Hampton was
attending women’s parties in New York City. Upon her second
release, Hampton continued to live in the company of women
who love women and worked as a dancer in Coney Island for a
women’s troupe.
When Mabel Hampton talked about her prison experienc-
es, she states where she found kindnesses in a sea of injustices,
“It was summertime and we went back out there and sat down.
She (another prisoner) says, ‘I like you.’ ‘I like you too.’ She said
no more until time to go to bed. We went to bed and she took
me in her bed and held me in her arms and I went to sleep. She
put her arms around me… and I went to sleep.” Hampton’s ar-
chive at the Lesbian Herstory Archive includes a vast array of
documents from the Harlem Renaissance, personal ephemera
of her lesbian loves and a broad view of queer community in
New York. Mabel Hampton began working in the Housekeep-
ing Division of Jacobi Hospital from 1948 until her retirement in
1972, where she earned the nickname “Captain.” At Jacobi Hos-
pital, she met Christine Jorgensen, a pioneer transsexual and
14
paid nightly visits to her hospital room. Hampton carefully cut
and saved newspaper articles on Jorgensen. From Hampton
archive, “Daily News Article, December 1, 1952: “Ex-GI Becomes
Blond Beauty,” which contains a letter written by Jorgensen
explaining to her parents why there is so much consternation
about her case. Jorgensen explains, “It is more a problem of so-
cial taboos and the desire not to speak of the subject because it
deals with the great hush, hush, namely sex.” In 1984, she gave
a speech at The New York City Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade, “I,
Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years,
and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my
people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay
people and my black people.”
Mabel Hampton and her archive at Herstory speaks directly
to how marginalization and abjection can have reverse discourse,
and shift the disavowal of historical queer knowledge into a sig-
nificant structure that reaches beyond, yet in tandem with so-
cial damage. Modern homosexual identity is formed out of and
in relation to the experience of social damage.” (Love 2009: 29)
The “homosexual species,” as stated by Foucault (1980), began to
speak in its own behalf. However, due to historical damage of he-
gemonic structures of power, LGBT communities require sites of
accessibility in order to develop and maintain queer discourse. To
know your past is in some way to connect to your future, for queer
folk around the world the experience of social damage, pain and
loss demands our subjectivities to be viewed by us and for us,

whereby to embrace our losses, we face a dichotomy between
historic injury and a “plurality of resistances.” (Foucault 198: 96)
The emergence of LGBT holdings and archives since the
1969 Stonewall Riots and Gay Liberation across the Americas and
the recouping of erased histories in post-Fascist Europe confront
questions raised by the historical social regulation of sexuality
and gender. Further, queer holdings, collections and archives
challenge traditional consignation and legibility by confronting
heteronormative and patriarchal structures that were historical-
ly intended to wound and erase. By “gathering together,” queer
archives and its practices operate to create access to queer his-
tories. Yet, under a political paradigm of social justice and anti-
oppressive principles queer archives offer broader approaches
to developing strategies far beyond the hegemonic authoritari-
anism of nineteenth century social sciences.
In conclusion, the historical construction of the archive
and its “gathering together” of signs reveal systems of power
authorized to control socio-cultural and political knowledge.
Derrida’s principle of “gathering together” (Derrida 1998: 10)
held an authoritative grip on what was in the archive and
what was not. Derridean approaches to the archive suggest
that there is no political power without the archive, yet hege-
monic, patriarchal, racist, misogynistic and homophobic ide-
ologies impeded the voices of those on the margins, or used
those voices to instill socio-cultural fear. Legitimacy and his-
toric legibility under the consignation of law and order, which
15
had been firmly embedded in the nineteenth century social
sciences began to sink under its own weight of imperialist and
colonialist anthropophobia.
By examining the work of Allan Sekula’s The Body and the
Archive alongside queer thinkers, I have attempted to reveal
the cultural crisis in taxonomy of classification in the nine-
teenth century and why this crisis continues to affect queer
knowledge. Sexuality, gender and race in the nineteenth cen-
tury were based on complex ideological positions, whereby
socially constructed boundaries of sexuality, gender and race
were embedded in anxieties to control language and repre-
sentation. These controls have been manifested not only in
law, state and industrialization but have been enforced with
social regulations, where the archive was not simply a place-
holder of power but ideological systems of cultural value that
were socially internalized.
The systemic relations of power and control have been ex-
amined under the rubric of both the effects of top-down power
of Imperialist, Capitalist and Industrialist approaches to knowl-
edge and the social influences enforced by law and state that
created systems of surveillance reached beyond the hand of law.
Where everyone, everywhere could participate in the policing
of sexuality, whether externalized by “ratting out” a sodomite to
law officials, prison sentences for “gross indecency” or internal-
ized shame that resulted in self-denial or the destruction of per-
sonal collections of same-sex affection.
 16

Foucaultian methods in the discursive power of knowl- queer futurities. Her speech at the 1984 Gay Pride Parade in
edge and memory whereby top-down power can establish “re- New York City exposes the magnitude of living history for queer
verse discourses” are invaluable to queer epistemologies that communities by asserting sage wisdom of both self-acceptance
considers how reverse discourse functions both relationally to as well as public declarations of historic visibility. By examin-
hegemonic power but also operates as a refusal of oppressive ing queerness through the historical binary of either silence or
power structures. Heather Love’s Feeling Backwards takes up this public degradation, archival practices and accessibility to queer
paradigm by suggesting that reverse discourse is predicated archives propose the damaged and compromised subjectivity
on embracing the wounds of a queer past. Love considers Fou- of queer desire as potential future sites of queer knowledge.
caultian analysis of reverse discourse as a call to move beyond
the structural forms of power and a disavowal of historical pain
that paralyzes to a political model, which adopts a violent past
and its injuries as a site of resistance.
My case studies of The Lesbian Herstory Archive and Ma-
bel Hampton have confronted patriarchal structures of gender
dominance, imperialistic traditions of racism and sexism to rup-
ture traditional hegemonic positions of power to inform meth-
odologies in community-based social justice imperatives. By
gathering information that was previously “denied to us” and
“to formulate our living herstory,” Herstory directly addresses
issues of traditions intended to deny the existence of queer
subjects. Mabel Hampton, an African-American, working class
lesbian illustrates how the everyday queers, surviving routine
cultural abjection, violence, racism, sexism and homophobia in
American imperialism is an instrumental voice in queer histori-
cal knowledge. Hampton’s life, loves and struggles reveal how
the average person has extraordinary political influence over
 17

Photo by Lazara Marinković


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Mutating France’s
Queer Territories
Claire Finch
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the strict borders of queer
thought in France are the result of how queer theory was in-
troduced in the French context as an alternative to versions
of feminist thought that were visible at the time, in the late
1990s. This opposition between queer theory and versions
of feminism was necessary, both in order to imagine political
strategies outside of materialist paradigms of domination and
oppression, and to criticize the heteronormativity of existing
French feminist discourses. However, this opposition between
queer theories and feminisms also created deeply rooted
points of exclusion, that work today to normatively enforce
the borders of queer thought in France. I examine one such
point of exclusion, a paradigm of non-queer territory in the
French context: the writing of Hélène Cixous, often explicitly
categorized as essentialist through early queer texts in France.
In an effort to shatter French queer theory’s constrictive dis-
ciplinary limits, I read Cixous and her concept of sexual differ-
ence alongside and through queer theorist Paul B. Preciado’s
writing. In a queer reading of Cixous’ version of sexual differ-
ence, I argue that Cixous’ work proposes writing as a form of
19
mutation, and proposes sexual difference as a mobile platform
from which we can re-think from a queer perspective the in-
tersection of body, language, society, and subjectivity.
Key words: subjectivity, sexual difference, queer theory, feminist
theory, France, academic disciplines, Paul B. Preciado, Hélène Cixous
Testo-Rire: An Imaginary Conversation between
Hélène Cixous and Paul B. Preciado1
In 1962, I started to write and to hope that we were going
to address Medusa’s mutilated corpse, and give her back her live
tongues. I took testosterone (instead of providing a commentary on
Hegel, Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, or Butler); I wanted to decapi-
tate myself, cut off my head that had been molded by a program of
gender, dissect part of the molecular model that resides in me. In the
end, I had had enough of these decapitations.
I do not want the female gender that has been assigned to me
at birth. I do not want, either, the male gender that transsexual medi-
cine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave in the
right way. I had had enough. I do nоt want any of it.
Writing herself, the woman will return to the body that has
been more than confiscated from her, which we have turned
into the disturbing stranger on display, the sick or the dead,
1 See KEY, infra pp. 30-32.

the cause and location of inhibitions. As a body - and this is the
only important thing about being a subject-body, a technoliving
system - I аm the platform that makes possible the materializa-
tion of political imagination.
Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space
that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the
precursory movement of a transformation of social and cul-
tural structures. I’m taking not only the hormone, the molecule,
but also the concept of hormone, a series of signs, texts, and dis-
courses, the process through which the hormone came to be syn-
thesized, the technical sequences that produce it in the labora-
tory. She foresees that her liberation will do more than modify
power relations or toss the ball over to the other camp; she
will bring about a mutation in human relations, in thought, in
all praxis: hers is not simply a class struggle, which she carries
forward into a much vaster movement. In this way I become one
of the somatic connectives through which power, desire, release,
submission, capital, rubbish, and rebellion circulate.
A world of searching, the elaboration of a knowledge, on
the basis of a systematic experimentation with the bodily func-
tions, a passionate and precise interrogation of her erotogene-
ity. It is a voluntary intoxication protocol, based in testosterone,
which concerns the body and affects of BP. A body-essay. A fantas-
tic mix of men, males, messieurs, monarchs, princes, orphans,
flowers, mothers, breasts, gravitates around a wonderful “sun of
energy,” love, which bombards and disintegrates these ephem-
20
eral loving singularities so that they can rebuild themselves in
other bodies, for new passions.
Each of these life vectors could have moved in a different di-
rection, but they converged toward us and met here, exactly, un-
der her skin and mine. I, too, overflow; my desires have invented
new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. I, too, have so
many times felt so full of luminous torrents that I could explode.
I said to friends: it is up to us to laugh, up to us to write. Laugh-
ter is a form of resistance, survival, a way of mustering forces.
It does nоt hide, this laughter. It says amusement with
multiple nuances, an abundance of ironies, of hilarities, of
angers, of jokes about me and about you, the irruption, the
exit, the excess, I have it over my head, I have tongues over my
head. She is covered with my feminism as if with a diaphanous
ejaculation, a sea of political sparkles.
Anxieties
a. Why read Cixous into Preciado, or Preciado into Cixous? Why
queer Cixous’ concept of écriture féminine (“feminine writing”), or look
for traces of écriture féminine in the queer poetic writing of Preciado?
b. Are there feminist theories that are definitely non-queer?
Do we sometimes construct borders between queer theo-
ries and feminisms for good reasons?
c. Has queer theory lost its potential to destabilize?

The recent orientation of queer theory in a U.S. context around
questions of nationalism and normativity, and the centrality of the
work of Jasbir Puar for example, builds on the basic understanding
that “queer” has become more a site of (hetero)normative complicity
than the means to subvert that same normativity.
Turning to the French queer context that is at the base of
this paper, the theorist Paul B. Preciado introduced, in 2003 in the
French journal Multitudes, his concept of the “queer multitude” as a
platform for political resistance in the European post-colonial con-
text (Preciado 2003). Yet he declared the inefficacity of the queer
multitude only two years later, in 2005, when he wrote, for the same
journal that, “My own creation ‘multitudes queer’ is, today, a politi-
cally obsolete assemblage.” (Preciado 2005: 153) He suggests that
2
queer has, instead, become the currency of academic “gurus.”
d. Does the introduction of this paper - reading Cixous and
Preciado in parallel, imagining their conversation, imagining their
agreement - does it further the evacuation of political impact from
the word “queer”?
Does it contribute to the integration of queer studies into
forms of institutionalization, both academic and national?
e. Could a project that interrogates old divisions between
feminisms and queer theories shatter the supposed solidity of
academic disciplines?
2 My translation. Original text: “Ma propre formation ‘multitudes queer’ est
aujourd’hui un agencement politique obsolète.”
21
Could this type of project question and mutate the sup-
posed connections between gendered bodies and subjectivities?
Could it work to create new political and theoretical alliances in a
field (queer theory) that is rapidly closing its borders, cementing
its official histories, celebrating its institutional future?
If We Are Queer, We Are Definitely Not Essentialist
The suffocation of the feminist theories and politics of the
1970s and 1980s, was it not the doing of the feminine intel-
lectuals of Psych & Po – from Antoinette Fouque to Hélène
Cixous - armed with Lacanian psychoanalysis and the sac-
rosanct sexual difference?
Marie-Hélène/Sam Bourcie (2003b: 101)3
I’m gonna mark my territory.
Britney Spears (2013)
Often, the case of queer theory in France is described
as “late,” mostly referring to the translation of Judith Butler’s
Gender Trouble into French in November of 2006, sixteen years
after the book was first published in English (Butler 1990, But-
3 My translation. Original text: “L’étouffement des théories et des politiques
féministes des années soixante-dix/quatre-vingt n’a-t-elle pas été le fait des
intellectuelles féminines de Psych et Po, Antoinette Fouque à Hélène Cixous, ar-
mées de la psychanalyse lacanienne et de la sacro-sainte différence sexuelle?”

ler 2006). The first explicit appearances of the word “queer” in
a French academic context, however, were in the mid-1990s.
These early queer texts proposed an explosion of the suppos-
edly linear connection between sex, gender, sexuality, and
sexual practices. They promoted specific new political strate-
gies and practices, namely, the subversion of the mechanisms
of normalization, a critique of the binary, and the multiplica-
tion or mutation of the political subject.
To give a sense of the space that these francophone queer
works opened in the French context, I will elaborate on a few
of these works here. First, Q comme Queer, published in 1998,
is a zine-like text containing the transcripts of the seminars
held by the queer association the Zoo (Bourcier 1998). The Zoo
formed in 1995 and had its queer seminars, the “seminars Q”,
until 2000. During these seminars, which were often held in
non-university settings such as the LGBT center in Paris, par-
ticipants would collectively present queer critiques of media
and film, and would do “micro-translations” - instantaneous
collective translations - of un-translated queer works. Another
central work from this first period of francophone queer pro-
duction is Queer Zones: Politiques des identités sexuelles, des
représentations et des savoirs (the politics of sexual identities,
representations, and knowledges), by Sam MH. Bourcier, a
member of the Zoo and the editor of the collected texts re-
leased in Q comme Queer. Published in 2001, with a preface by
Preciado, Queer Zones created a context in France in which to
22
talk about queer subjects and identities from a non-patholo-
gizing perspective (specifically the four “zones” that Bourcier
introduces to a French public in the book: post-porn, SM, butch
and trans). A third work central to the context of the produc-
tion of queer theory in France is Preciado’s Manifeste contra-
sexuel (The Counter-Sexual Manifesto). The Manifeste was first
published in 2000 in French, translated by Bourcier from an
unpublished English version. It is a manifesto that proposes
Preciado’s term of “counter-sexuality” (“le contra-sexuel”) as a
queer, SM-influenced resistance to the “natural” as it is implic-
itly upheld by a heteronormative social contract.
These queer works, and the political strategies and prac-
tices that they presented, were introduced as the necessary
alternative to other French feminisms visible at the time. Spe-
cifically, those labeled “essentialist” and “materialist” (although
I will only go into the first of these oppositions, that between
queer theory and feminisms termed “essentialist,” in the scope
of this paper). Two examples demonstrative of the border be-
tween queer theory and essentialist feminism come from ar-
ticles written by Preciado and by Bourcier, in the same issue of
the French journal Multitudes. In Preciado’s article “Multitudes
queer,” he positions the creation “the queer multitude,” a for-
mulation that is polymorphous, a challenge to the unified and
normalizing political subject, in opposition to concepts of sex-
ual difference, “… inasmuch as it [sexual difference] is made
use of both in the essentialist feminisms (from Irigaray to Cix-

ous, passing by Kristeva), and in the structuralist and/or Laca-
nian variations of psychoanalytic discourse.” (Preciado 2003:
25)4 In Bourcier’s contribution to the same journal issue, he
also puts queer thought in explicit confrontation with the “es-
sentialist feminism” of Hélène Cixous and Antoinette Fouque.
Bourcier writes, “To speak of the end of ‘masculine domination’
is to say that it is possible to break with the reifying descrip-
tion of ‘masculine domination’ and its exploitation, that of a
certain Bourdieu as much as of certain feminist approaches.”
(Bourcier 2003a: 70)5 He specifies in the corresponding foot-
note that the “feminist approaches” that he is talking about
are, “Including, in France, materialist feminists (from Christine
Delphy to Nicole Claude Matthieu) and essentialist feminists
(from Hélène Cixous to Antoinette Fouque, the poorly named
‘French Feminism’ across the Atlantic.” (ibid.: 79)6 In order to
establish queer thought as critical of the binary hierarchisa-
tion of genders that the term “masculine domination” implies,
4 My translation. Original text: “… telle qu’elle [la différence sexuelle] est ex-
ploitée aussi bien dans les féminismes essentialistes (d’Irigaray à Cixous en pas-
sant par Kristeva), que dans les variations structuralistes et / ou lacaniennes du
discours de la psychanalyse…”
5 My translation. Original text: “Parler de fin de ‘la domination masculine’,
c’est-à-dire qu’il est possible de rompre avec la description réifiante de ‘la domi-
nation masculine’ et son instrumentalisation, celles d’un Bourdieu comme de
certaines approches féministes.”
6 My translation. Original text: “Y compris, en France, féministes matérialistes
(de Christine Delphy à Nicole Claude Matthieu) et essentialistes (d’Hélène Cixous
à Antoinette Fouque, le mal nommé ‘French Feminism’ outre Atlantique).”
23
Bourcier groups “essentialist feminism” together with “materal-
ist feminism” as well as the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The result
is the creation of a monolithic tradition of non-queer thought.
In both Bourcier’s and Preciado’s articles, “essentialist fem-
inism” is created and labeled as such at the same moment that
it is used to mark the boundary of acceptable queer thought.
The fact that Cixous is often cited as the primary example of an
“essentialist feminism” against which queer theory is necessar-
ily opposed - with little more than the name “Hélène Cixous”
and the term “la différence sexuelle” as proof of this essential-
ism - illustrates how this opposition between queer thought
and essentialist feminism is constructed not via an engage-
ment with Cixous’ writing, but rather as a way to mark queer
theory’s distance from the political space that Cixous’ work is
imagined to occupy. The term “essentialism” is an aporia that
signifies a part of feminist theory that we dare not touch, that
we know to distance ourselves from, and that, as queer femi-
nists, we often use to render less legitimate certain thinkers
and certain objects of study.
The difficulty today with these first queer francophone
texts is that a queer position was often defined and introduced
to a French public via an explicit disavowal of other feminisms
that were the most visible at the time, at the beginning of the
2000s. This disavowal, in which queer thought was positioned
as the alternative to certain feminisms, was necessary in or-
der to introduce and imagine new political possibilities, and to

imagine new ways of thinking the political subject. It was also
necessary in order to carve out a militant space from which to
fight against academic homophobia, a space in which queer
politics, identities, and desires could be studied from a non-
pathologizing perspective.
Queer theory in France was, and still is, often defined by
an elaboration of what it is not, of whom it is opposed to. The
“queer zones” of the earliest queer texts have transformed into
queer territories. The territorialization of queer theory is visible
in attempts to police its borders, to give and transmit a correct
version of its origins, to organize its syllabus and its theoretical
alliances. I argue that in certain cases, the theorists and con-
cepts that were used to establish queer theory’s borders were
falsely read as being “outside.” An interrogation of these points
of constitutive exclusion, these blind spots in queer theory,
can help us recognize and think through queer theory’s limits.
In the case of Hélène Cixous, of écriture féminine, and of her
version of sexual difference, this re-exploration can address
one of the central questions in queer and feminist theories:
the link between body and subjectivity, and how to imagine
a body and subjectivity that is without an ontological founda-
tion. In other words, how to imagine the disintegrating body
and multiplied subjectivities of poststructuralist queer theory.
24
Re-orienting Queer Theory:
Queer Readings of Sexual Difference
There is no sexual difference, but a multitude of differences, a
transversal of power relations, a variety of life forces. These dif-
ferences are not “representable” because they are “monstrous”
and thereby re-interrogate the regimes of political representa-
tion, but also the systems that produce the scientific knowl-
edge of who is “normal.”
Paul B. Preciado (2003: 20)7
And if we were to reorganize the feminist epistemologi-
cal landscape? If we were to read Cixous next to Preciado, if
we read Cixous’ concept of sexual difference next to Preciado’s
concept of the “pharmacopornographic,” (Preciado 2008) 8 as
tools that work to form and deform subjectivity? What assem-
7 My translation. Original text: “Il n’y a pas de différence sexuelle, mais une
multitude de différences, une transversale des rapports de pouvoir, une diver-
sité de puissances de vie. Ces différences ne sont pas ‘representables’ car elles
sont ‘monstrueuses’ et remettent en question par là même les régimes de repré-
sentation politique, mais aussi les systèmes de production de savoir scientifique
des ‘normaux’.”
8 Preciado elaborates his concept of the “pharmacopornographic era” in
his book Testo Junkie, first published in Spanish and in French in 2008, and
translated to English in 2013. Preciado uses the term “pharmacoporno-
graphic” to describe the process by which subjectivities become coherent
through both corporeal (such as drugs and hormones) and semiotic (such
as media) technologies.

blages could we begin to trace, could we follow the traces of?
What other queer resistances, mutable subjectivities, medu-
sas and monsters?
In the chapter of her book Le grand théâtre du genre enti-
tled “Les fins d’un idiome” (“The ends of an idiom”), Anne Berg-
er reminds us that no single clear connotation of the “idiom”
“la différence sexuelle” exists within feminist theory (Berger
2013). The term can be translated as the English “sexual differ-
ence”, although the English translation is less flexible than the
French “la différence sexuelle.” Berger points this out by nam-
ing it an “idiom” instead of a set term or concept. As an idiom,
“la différence sexuelle” is often used to mean different things
in different contexts, from anatomical difference to gender. As
Berger emphasizes, the idiom has no clear, unique meaning in
feminist theory. Departing from Berger’s analysis of the mul-
tiple meanings of “la différence sexuelle,” I propose that Cixous’
version of sexual difference, which she cuts and reconstructs
into an entity named “la DS,” offers a way of thinking the muta-
ble, mobile point of intersection between body, text, and sub-
jectivity. I also point towards other avatars of this version of “la
différence sexuelle,” specifically the “line of becoming” (“ligne
de devenir”) of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and the hor-
mones that are theorized as a technology that ties together
body, subjectivity, and gender in the work of Preciado.
Cixous stated in a paper given at a conference at the Uni-
versity of Paris 8 in 1994 that the DS “… is not one region nor
25
one thing, nor a precise space between two, she is the move-
ment itself…” (Cixous 1994: 56, my emphasis)9 Central to Cixous’
explanation of her understanding of sexual difference is that
the DS is not a gendered definition of difference, but a way of
expressing the movement between concepts. The emphasis is
on movement, not on the solidity of a definition. Berger elabo-
rates on what she calls the DS’s “destabilizing” characteristic,
noting how the term has been falsely linked with biologism,
or an attempt to affirm an anatomical destiny: “This DS that
passes, and that destabilizes the summons in passing, this un-
wise goddess [déesse pas sage] of the passage of one towards
the other and of one in the other, hardly has anything to do
with an anatomical destiny, nor with any organized division of
roles.” (Berger 2013: 63)10
As Berger’s reading of Cixous’ DS reminds us, the DS in Cix-
ous’ writing does not describe a visually perceptible difference
between (two) biological facts. Instead, the DS indicates a con-
ceptual movement, a vibration of the way in which we think
and understand gender. As a term defined by its liminality, Cix-
ous’ DS interrogates the supposed solidity of binary symbolic
differences. It challenges how the idea of sexual difference
9 My translation. Original text: “n’est pas une région ni une chose, ni une es-
pace précis entre deux, elle est le mouvement même…”
10 My translation. Original text: “Cette DS qui passe, et qui déstabilise les assi-
gnations en passant, cette déesse pas sage du passage de l’un vers l’autre et de
l’un dans l’autre, n’a guère à voir avec quelque destin anatomique, ni non plus
avec une division réglée des rôles.”

functions - and perhaps, how this idea does not function, un-
functions, de-constructs. Preciado writes, “There is nothing to
discover in nature; there is no hidden secret. We live in a punk
hypermodernity: it is no longer about discovering the hidden
truth of nature; it is about the necessity to specify the cultural,
political, and technological processes through which the body
as artifact acquires natural status.” (Preciado 2013: 35) A queer
approach to Cixous’ concept of sexual difference reads the DS
as the contested point of intersection between the body and
gendered subjectivity. Building on Preciado, a queer approach
to sexual difference finds, at this contested point of intersec-
tion, the possibility of interrupting the process by which ana-
tomical differences, and normal bodies, are constructed and
normalized.
Cixous’ DS does not lead us to a normal and normalized
body, but to a body that is non-reproductive, outside of filiation,
inhabited by multiple concentrations of gender. Again in the con-
ference paper given in 1994 at Paris 8, Cixous said,
The body-woman [corps-femme], for me, it is the place from
which [lieu d’où], the soft place [doux lieu] from which are
born girls or boys, humans, descendants, this place “below
the belt,”  that is like two hands [comme deux mains], like
tomorrow [comme demain], and which has more than one
memory, a memory of what took place, a memory of what
will take place. A memory, not ghostly, but transmitted, he-
reditary, I am thinking of women who have not had children
26
directly, but who have the child nonetheless written in their
flesh, from woman in mother and grandmother, in mother
in daughter in granddaughter.
(Cixous 1994: 56)11
The “corps-femme” (“body-woman”) is not immutably formed
by sexual difference, but is a “place” where difference collides and
deforms. The corps-femme here is twisting and disorganized, the
female genitals (a possible reading of the place “sous la ceinture” or
“below the belt”) are at the same time “les deux mains” (“the two
hands”). The hands transform into erotic zones, the corps-femme
into a deterritorialized, counter-sexual body. Cixous references
the “hereditary,” but in a non-reproductive sense; the “hereditary”
here refers to a simultaneity of genders, and of bodies, in one
body. The body-woman or corps-femme is at the same time disor-
ganized and multiple, inhabiting the dual temporalities of “what
took place” and “what will take place.”
There is also a connection between Cixous’ DS, defined as
“movement itself,” and the concept of the “ligne de devenir” or “line
of becoming” in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Like Cixous’ DS,
11 My translation. Original text: “Le corps-femme, pour moi, c’est le lieu d’où,
le doux lieu d’où naissent filles ou garçons, humains, descendants, ce lieu ‘sous
la ceinture’, qui est comme deux mains, comme demain, et qui a plus d’une mé-
moire, une mémoire de ce qui a eu lieu, une mémoire de ce qui aura lieu. Une
mémoire, non pas fantôme, mais transmise, héréditaire, je pense aux femmes
qui n’ont pas eu d’enfants directement, mais qui ont l’enfant quand même écrit
dans la chair, de femme en mère et grand-mère, en mère en fille en petite-fille.”

described by Berger as the “déesse pas sage du passage” [“the un-
wise goddess of passing], the “line of becoming” in Deleuze and
Guattari “is not defined by what points it connects, or by points
that compose it; on the contrary, it passes between points, it
comes up through the middle, it runs perpendicular to the points
first perceived...” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 293) If we think De-
leuze and Guattari’s “line of becoming” together with Cixous’ DS,
we approach the characteristic of Cixous’ writing that is often over-
looked, but that runs counter to its categorization as essentialist:
its anti-humanism. Cixous’ work, along with that of Deleuze and
Guattari, is engaged in an explicit project of deconstructing the
humanist subject, elaborating multiple and fragmented subjec-
tivities as its alternative. Queer theory departs from the bursting
into pieces of the humanist subject. It proposes instead mutable
and plural subjectivities; its theoretical impetus is the interroga-
tion and imagination of the mechanisms and practices by which
subjectivities form and deform.
When Cixous writes that the “corps-femme” is a “lieu doux”
(“soft place”) as well as a “lieu d’où” (“point of departure”), she
could be understood as reifying a set idea of female genitalia, as
well defining female sex organs only in terms of their reproduc-
tive capacity. Yet she corrects us:
In saying all that I have said to you, I’ve cheated, in spite of
myself, without meaning to. I talked as if the characters of this
stage were: a woman, a man, clearly. Such a scene with such
27
characters is no doubt possible, there would be a man who
would be a man-without-any-doubt, a woman who would be a
woman-without-any-doubt. But there you have it, I know from
experience (I never know except after experience, that is to say,
after the error), that so often a “woman” is not a woman, nor a
“man,” a man, an ensemble of x elements. I know a woman who
is at second glance an ensemble of five little boys and a little
girl. As for the following glances…
(Cixous 1994: 57)12
In place of a body that is normalized and normalizing - the “une
femme, un homme, de toute evidence” (“one woman, one man, clear-
ly”) - Cixous proposes a body that is an “ensemble” of various gen-
ders. The “ensemble” here is like the “agencement” (“assemblage”) in
Deleuze and Guattari’s work: an ephemeral group of elements, con-
sisting of affects as well as technological and institutional influenc-
es, organized in a mutating structure. The body that is an “ensemble”
or an “agencement” of genders and technological forces can here be
thought of in parallel with the “pharmacopornographic” body in the
12 My translation. Original text: “Disant tout ce que je vous ai dit, j’ai triché,
malgré moi, sans le faire exprès. J’ai parlé comme si les personnages de cette
scène-ci étaient : une femme, un homme, de toute évidence. Une telle scène
avec de tels personnages est possible sans doute, il y aurait un homme qui se-
rait un homme-sans-aucun-doute, une femme qui serait femme-sans-aucun-
doute. Mais voilà, je sais par expérience (je ne sais jamais qu’après expérience,
c’est-à-dire après l’erreur), que si souvent un ‘femme’ n’est pas une femme, ni un
‘homme’, un homme, est un ensemble à x éléments. Je connais une femme qui
est au deuxième coup d’œil un ensemble de cinq petits garçons et une petite
fille. Quant aux coups d’œil suivants…”

in work of Preciado. In Preciado’s “pharmacopornographic era” the
gendered subjectivities experienced by all bodies are collections
and concentrations of gendered technologies: of hormones, drugs
and medicines, of pornography, of diverse sexual practices. Cixous’
DS does not propose a place of differentiation or of reproduction,
but a movement. It is a way of thinking the imbrication of body and
language, of refusing the limiting adherence to two differences by
breaking these two into multiples, and of speaking to the capacity
to feel in oneself simultaneous and changeable concentrations of
masculinity and femininity, of gender. In this sense, Cixous’ DS dis-
plays some of the roots of today’s queer theory.
The Body as Political Trap,
and As Platform of Resistance
Departing from the idea of sexual difference as the move-
ment between concepts, as a parallel to Deleuze and Guattari’s
“line of becoming,” as a mobile point of intersection between
body, society, and subjectivity, and finally as a mutable mix-
ture of concentrations, affects, and gender identities, I want
to conclude this paper by thinking about hormones - specifi-
cally how they are theorized by Preciado - as another possible
avatar of “sexual difference” (in the moving, mutable sense of
the term that I have elaborated here). In Preciado’s work, hor-
mones are conceptualized as a subversive technology, a way of
28
disrupting the mechanisms by which subjectivities and bodies
are produced and rendered both whole and natural.
Hormones, and specifically the testosterone that Preciado
took for 236 days while writing the book Testo Junkie (Preciado
2013), are the tools capable of mutating body and subjectivity.
They are also the supposedly objective means by which gender
and gendered bodies are measured and produced. Like the ver-
sions of sexual difference that I have explored here, hormones
interrogate the interstice of body, society, and subjectivity. They
are the vibrating and molecular agents of mutation. They are at
the same time normally imagined to be solid and objectively still,
rooted in one place, in the body. As Preciado describes the experi-
ence of ingesting testosterone:
No drug is as pure as testosterone in gel form. It’s odorless.
However, the day after I take it, my sweat becomes sickly
sweet, more acidic. The smell of a plastic doll heated by the
sun comes from me, apple liqueur abandoned at the bot-
tom of a glass. It’s my body that is reacting to the molecule.
Testosterone has no taste or color, leaves no traces. The tes-
tosterone molecule dissolves into the skin as a ghost walks
through a wall. It enters without warning, penetrates with-
out leaving a mark. You don’t need to smoke, sniff, or inject
it or even swallow it. It’s enough to bring it near my skin,
and its near proximity to the body causes it to disappear
and become diluted in my blood.
(Preciado 2013: 67)

Testosterone, in Preciado’s writing, does not exist outside of its
embodiment. It gains its various meanings through and in bodies.
This is evident in the question that Preciado asks himself, and asks the
readers, referencing a pathologizing trans history: “Trans or junkie?”
(ibid.: 256) A question that has no response, outside of Preciado’s own
answer, which comes out as a statement: “I am T.” (ibid.: 140). As Precia-
do writes, “I have fallen into a political trap; the problem is that this trap
has the same form as my subjectivity: it is my own political body.” (ibid:
257) The assemblage named testosterone-Preciado, or hormone-sub-
jectivity, is, like Cixous’ DS, the unanswerable question that marks the
comprehensible frontiers of the body and of subjectivity.
Judith Butler takes up this definition of sexual difference as
an unanswerable question in Undoing Gender:
I want to suggest that the debates concerning the theoretical
priority of sexual difference to gender, of gender to sexual-
ity, of sexuality to gender, are all crosscut by another kind of
problem, a problem that sexual difference poses, namely, the
permanent difficulty of determining where the biological, the psy-
chic, the discursive, the social begin and end … As I understand
it, sexual difference is the site where a question concerning the
relation of the biological to the cultural is posed and reposed,
where it cannot, strictly speaking, be answered. Understood as
a border concept, sexual difference has psychic, somatic, and
social dimensions that are never quite collapsible into one an-
other but are not for that reason ultimately distinct.
(Butler 2004: 185-186, my emphasis)
29
Sexual difference, understood as a desire to signal an always-
uncertain connection between the body and the other-than-body,
is in a parallel relation to recent tendencies in queer theory to turn
towards corporeality, towards affect, towards sexual practices. Sexual
difference rests exactly at the dangerous collision between the haptic,
the visible and the felt; between body and language or text. Thought
in this way, sexual difference can be seen as a “new materialism,” to
draw on the title of the book by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. By
“new materialism,” I am referring to the opening of the term “material-
ism” to encompass not only the material conditions of the production
and maintenance of capitalism, but also the centrality of the body, the
incorporation of theory and politics, and the fluid links between body,
matter, society and agency. Sexual difference understood as a “new
materialism”offers a way to return to the question of the body in queer
theory, armed with the tools of poststructuralist critique. Or perhaps
more accurately, this polymorphous sexual difference signals less of
a “return” than a reorientation, an expansion of the frontier always in
question between body, the experience of having or being a body,
and knowledge, institutions, and the environment. This reorientation
represents the plugging in of an entire network of significations, of
feelings, and of feminist knowledges that are always present, but that
we, queer-feminists, have had a tendency to overlook.
What is a queer text? What can a queer text do between-
language, between-space, across spaces? What is the effect of a
queer text, a political text, a feminist text? Of a text written by and
through queer bodies, proposing a “queer writing” - an “écriture

queer”? I think that it is because of these questions that I am inter-
ested in thinking the possibility of queer writing with and against
feminine writing. Because this project suggests what I think is true
about queer texts: they are experiences, they have effects on my
body that change, and have changed, the way that I think, that I
speak, that I am political.
KEY: Testo-Rire
HC = Hélène Cixous
PBP = Paul B. Preciado
EER = “Un effet d’épine rose” (Cixous 2010)
S = “Sorties” (Cixous 2010)
RM = “Rire de la Méduse” (Cixous 2010)
TJ = Testo Junkie (Preciado 2013)
1. “In 1962, I started to write and to hope that we were going
to address Medusa’s mutilated corpse, and give her back her live
tongues.”
My translation. Original text: “En 1962, je commençai à écrire
et à espérer qu’on allait se pencher sur le corps mutilé de Méduse
et lui rendre ses langues vivantes.” (HC, EER, 23)
2. “I took testosterone (instead of providing a commentary
on Hegel, Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, or Butler); I wanted to
decapitate myself, cut off my head that had been molded by a
30
program of gender, dissect part of the molecular model that re-
sides in me.” (PBP, TJ, 424)
3. “In the end, I had had enough of these decapitations.”
My translation. Original text: “À la fin, j’en eus assez de ces
décapitations.” (HC, EER, 23)
4. “I do not want the female gender that has been assigned
to me at birth. Neither do I want the male gender that transsexual
medicine can furnish and that the state will award me if I behave
in the right way.” (PBP, TJ, 138)
5. “I had had enough.” Repetition of no. 3.
6. “I don’t want any of it.” (PBP, TJ, 138)
7. “Writing herself, the woman will return to the body that
has been more than confiscated from her, which we have turned
into the disturbing stranger on display, the sick or the dead, the
cause and location of inhibitions.”
My translation. Original text: “... en s’écrivant, la femme
fera retour à ce corps qu’on lui a plus que confisqué, dont on
a fait l’inquiétant étranger dans la place, le malade ou le mort,
et qui si souvent est le mauvais compagnon, cause et lieu des
inhibitions.” (HC, RM, 45)
8. “As a body - and this is the only important thing about being
a subject-body, a technoliving system - I’m the platform that makes
possible the materialization of political imagination.” (PBP, TJ, 139)
9. “… writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the
space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the

precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural
structures.” (HC, RM [Signs], 879)
10. “I’m taking not only the hormone, the molecule, but also the
concept of hormone, a series of signs, texts, and discourses, the pro-
cess through which the hormone came to be synthesized, the techni-
cal sequences that produce [sic!] it in the laboratory.” (PBP, TJ, 139)
11. “She foresees that her liberation will do more than modi-
fy power relations or toss the ball over to the other camp; she will
bring about a mutation in human relations, in thought, in all prax-
is: hers is not simply a class struggle, which she carries forward
into a much vaster movement.” (HC, RM [Signs], 882)
12. “In this way I become one of the somatic connectives
through which power, desire, release, submission, capital, rub-
bish, and rebellion circulate.” (PBP, TJ, 139)
13. “A world of searching, the elaboration of a knowledge, on
the basis of a systematic experimentation with the bodily func-
tions, a passionate and precise interrogation of her erotogeneity.”
(HC, RM [Signs], 876)
14. “It is a voluntary intoxication protocol, based in testosterone,
which concerns the body and affects of BP. A body-essay.” (PBP, TJ, 11)
15. “A fantastic mix of men, males, messieurs, monarchs,
princes, orphans, flowers, mothers, breasts, gravitates around
a wonderful “sun of energy,” love, which bombards and disinte-
grates these ephemeral loving singularities so that they can re-
build themselves in other bodies, for new passions.”
31
My translation. Original text: “Un mélange fantasmatique
d’hommes, de mâles, de messieurs, de monarques, princes, or-
phelins, fleurs, mères, seins, gravite autour d’un merveilleux ‘soleil
d’énergie’, l’amour, qui bombarde et désintègre ces éphémères
singularités amoureuses pour qu’elles se recomposent en d’autres
corps pour de nouvelles passions.” (HC, S, 112)
16. “Each of these life vectors could have moved in a differ-
ent direction, but they converged toward us and met here, exact-
ly, under her skin and mine.” (PBP, TJ, 87)
17. “I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires,
my body knows unheard-of songs. I, too, have so many times felt
so full of luminous torrents that I could explode - explode with
forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames
and sold for a stinking fortune.” (HC, RM [Signs], 876)
18. “I said to friends: it is up to us to laugh, up to us to write.”
My translation. Original text: “Je disais aux amies : à nous de
rire. À nous d’éc-rire.” (HC, EER, 25)
19. “Laughter is a form of resistance, survival, a way of mus-
tering forces.” (PBP, TJ, 136)
20. “It does not hide, this laughter. It says amusement with
multiple nuances, an abundance of ironies, of hilarities, of angers,
of jokes about me and about you, the irruption, the exit, the ex-
cess, I have it over my head, I have tongues over my head.”
My translation. Original text: “Il ne se cache pas, ce rire. Il dit
l’amusement aux multiples nuances, foison d’ironies, d’hilarités,

de colères, de moqueries de moi-même et de toi, l’irruption, la
sortie, l’excès, j’en ai par-dessus la tête, j’ai des langues par-dessus
la tête.” (HC, EER, 27)
21. “She is covered with my feminism as if with a diaphanous
ejaculation, a sea of political sparkles.” (PBP, TJ, 97)
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Discography
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 33

Photo by Lazara Marinković


In Drag We Trust:
Normative Drives and
Homonationalism in
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Antonia Anna Ferrante
Abstract: The goal of my paper is to analyze RuPaul’s Drag Race,
the reality competition show first aired in 2009 on LogoTV, and
now in its sixth season. RuPaul’s Drag Race features Drag Queens
as contestants, whose aim is to be awarded the title of America’s
Next Drag Superstar. The object of my analysis is the production
of a regime of visibility for drag queen, meaning the televisual
representation of the process of domestication operating on
the drag subculture and the nationalistic turn of the series.
An approach grounded in cultural studies and postcolonial
studies, both as interdisciplinary fields of research and critical tools,
allows me to analyze the Drag performance as a cultural practice and
to point out its ideological implications. Within the theoretical frame-
work provided by queer theory, I will focus on Drag as a performance
that molds the queen as the Western epistemic subject and at the
same time produces an unusual patriotic imaginary. With this intent I
will draw on some notions elaborated within queer theory, such as the
critique of homonormativity and homonationilism, meaning that the
34
queer bodies, turned docile by hierarchy and segregation, can work
within the processes of production of meaning of new hegemonic
configurations of power (Duggan 2002 and Puar 2007).
More in detail I analyze the episodes “Life, Liberty and the
Pursuit of Style” which fits for the first time the drag performance
in the frame of the Patriotic United States, introducing the possi-
bility of a homonationalist imaginary. The second text that I deal
with, is the episode “Super Troopers,” fully dedicated to the repeal-
ing of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, and its intent to rebuild na-
tional community through the assimilation of queer subjects.
Key words: homonationalism, homonormativity, regime of vis-
ibility, sexual exceptionalism, drag queens, queer subcultures
From Pride to Pride
I’m so proud we’ve got to share this with our fellows from
the military and show them what they are fighting for. They
don’t tell them that when they were enrolled that they were
fighting for our freedom to dress up in drag, this is a fabulous
country and I’m so proud to be an American citizen.
RuPaul’s Drag Race, Episode 10, Season 5
I want to begin here with my own reflection, because this
is a turning point where the word “pride” finds a new configu-

ration. Once upon a time, “pride” would have been visible, ex-
pecting recognition through the re-appropriation of the public
space. However, in this context, on the contrary, “pride” is the
sentiment of devotion to the homeland, claiming the bond
through the very state of citizenship. This analysis takes into
consideration the critical perspective of RuPaul’s Drag Race, in
order to describe the trajectory that the term Pride is following,
and its use in the homonationalist rhetoric.
RuPaul’s Drag Race allows us to observe the progress of this
evolution, and the process of domestication of the drag subcul-
ture. When it was produced, in 2008, RuPaul’s Drag Race was con-
ceived as a cross-section of a subculture, in more than one way,
destabilizing the order of the hetero-patriarchate; as a matter of
fact, its roots were to be sought in the tradition of the balls of
New York showed in the documentary Paris Is Burning (1990),1 the
overcrowded and racialized queer underclass, Latinas trans and
1 Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary about the tradition of Dances in
New York directed and shot by Jenny Livingston. It is a kind of essay in ima-
ges that introduces us to the drag world and drag performances, incorpo-
rating these experiences into a broader pattern of codes that allow us to
immortalize the internal dynamics of a subculture. Through the voices of the
protagonists themselves, the authors reconstruct an important piece of the
New York underground culture between 80s and 90s, messing and mixing
an already dense tangle of gender, sex, race and class. Besides being a glos-
sary meant to interpret the codes, Paris Is Burning is a useful tool, because it
puts on the runway a construction of subjectivity that is not primarily orde-
red by sexual difference; this difference is shaped by the norms of race, class,
and more generally those norms determining the order of a society.
35
black MAAB.2 The evolution of the seasons lets us to see how the
techniques of the discipline effectively act to build a regime of
visibility for these drag queens. What I mean is, this series allows
us to observe how you build a paradigm of tolerance/assimila-
tion of drag queens, or, more precisely, how they can become
“functional” as a part of a project, re-establishing the founda-
tions of the national community. This regime of visibility can be
qualified as “homonormative,” meaning that the queer bodies,
turned ​​tame by hierarchy and segregation, can work within the
processes of production of meaning, but in the consumption of
it (Duggan 1994). In particular, I will focus on one aspect of this
homo-normative trend, defined by Jasbir Puar as “homonation-
alism” (Puar 2007). Homonationalism is not only nationalism/
racism in the LGBTI and queer community, but a tool of politi-
cal analysis regarding the structure of contemporary capital-
ism. Therefore, according to Puar, homonationalism is a critique
of the contemporary configuration of power, setting a relation
between state, capitalism and sexuality through the disciplin-
ing and the involvement of some queer bodies. On the other
hand, moving from the opposite perspective, it is the instrument
through which queer bodies, once domesticated, made harm-
less and docile, can help to rebuild these new bio-political con-
figurations of control and global exploitation (Puar 2007).
2 This is a slang word meaning Male Assigned at Birth, it refers to trans-
sexual transgendered, genderqueer, bigendered or intersexed people who
were raised as boys.

During the course of the series, the transformation of the
regime of visibility is both gradual and continuous: see how the
representation of the intimacy switches from drag families and
biological families; we noticed that more and more attention is
reserved to the politically correct, that materializes in the censor-
ship of certain games and irreverent expressions that are typical
of the camp culture.3 One of the contestants, Sharon Needles, a
very controversial character that ends the fourth season by the
crown of America’s Next Drag Queen to Pittsburg, speaks of a
“whitewash attitude” in what she would prefer to be the under-
belly of sub pop-culture.4 However, in this dynamic constant,
there are some episodes that function as real accelerators, and
the disciplining is staged in an exemplary way. In my analysis, I
will focus on two episodes that seem to have paradigmatic fea-
tures. I refer in particular to episode 9 of series 3, which puts,
for the first time, a drag performance within the context of the
patriotism in the United States, thus introducing the possibility
3 In the fourth episode of the sixth series the drag queens are involved in a
mini challenge called “she/male.” They are challenged to recognize through
a detail of the body of the person in the photo, his or her biological assi-
gning. This challenge has been considered transphobic by the trans com-
munity, raising a controversy that has directly involved many protagonists
of the milieu drag and transsexual. As a result of this controversy, the show,
along with an official apology, committed its staff to remove all the terms
that could have been perceived as “triggering.” For an analysis of the politi-
cal manipulation of triggering, see Halberstam 2014.
4 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVsTKumk9t8 (acces-
sed 24 April 2014).
36
that the entire series could contribute to the homo-nationalist
imaginary. The second text that I will analyze, is episode 10 of
the 5th series, fully dedicated to the repealing of Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell5 with all its ideological implications.
Between Neoliberalism and Homonormativity
on the Small Screen
Before proceeding with the analysis of the content of the
series, it seems appropriate to give some references allowing
to reconstruct the Drag Race’s background and what it is part
of. The series aired since 2008 on Logo TV, and is available on-
line, produced by Word of Wonder. It has reached its sixth sea-
son, plus a series All Stars where drag queen of different seasons
would compete. Technically, RuPaul’s Drag Race is defined as a
“reality competition.” The term “reality” in this case refers to the
most sentimental TV staging, illuminating the experiences of
real life. However, we cannot overlook that the “realness” rep-
resents a chimera of the drag community (and also a recurring
theme of the ones analyzing it).6
5 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is the name of the policy of the US army about sexual
orientation, in force since 1994. Although the expression indicates a form of
disregard for sexual orientation, in a society where heterosexuality is taken
for granted, this measure forced homosexuals to remain closeted.
6 The drag performative practice produces a discourse that reveals the lie
hidden behind the reality of the genre, demonstrating that there is no sin-
gle ideal of feminine, staging an imitation without an original, because the

At the same time, this definition allows us to keep within
the competition dimension - the very traditional performative
practice of the drag community - as narrated in Paris Is Burning. I
refer, for example, to the beauty contests, the readings7 and the
tradition of balls. However, we should reframe the competitive
dimension as it is practiced in the context of modern television.
In fact, it is absolutely not a coincidence that the format is a tal-
ent show; this appears to be the congenial television format to
the mise en place of the modernity of neoliberals. The very idea
of competition
​​ is in line with a market ideology, manifesting it-
self in terms of the annihilation of the competition. So, while
traditionally drag queens fought against each other in the stag-
ing of an ideal of realness, in RuPaul’s Drag Race, the compe-
tition takes on the characteristics of the material elimination
of the competitors through the mechanism of the challenge.
From this perspective, the television representation obtained
through this format seems to bend to the lexicon of a neoliberal
hegemonic representation.
original itself is a practice of imitation as the model of the feminine is not
ontologically defined (Butler 1993; Bourcier 2000)
7 A performance is really successful when it “produces” reality and it is im-
possible therefore to give a “reading” of it. “Reading” means to make evident
the space between the performed ideal and the performance itself, betwe-
en the imagined woman and the one “realized” (Butler 1993). The Reading is
to be understood also as a practice of denigration deeply rooted in the tra-
ditional drag practice and directly taken from the Drag Queen Drag Race.
Corey in Paris is Burning says: “Reading is the real art form of insult.”
37
This contextualization of the television format in the
frame of political - economic neoliberalism, allows me to build
a general frame of sense of the analysis in regards to the issues
that I intend analyze. In particular, in 1994, Lisa Duggan started
an analysis of what were the new relations between the LGBTI
community and neoliberal policies. Homonormativity became,
since then, the term used to define not only the normative de-
sire of the more moderate homosexual community, but espe-
cially how the Capital puts to work the homosexual difference
to justify its policies of privatization and exploitation.
It is a policy that does not contest the dominant heteronor-
mative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sus-
tains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized
gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture
anchored in domesticity and consumption.
(Duggan 1994: 50)
This is the perspective I have used to define the techniques
of discipline that occur throughout RuPaul’s Drag Race as an
evolution of a homonormative regime of visibility, which radi-
cally transforms reality, or, better, empties it of any radicalism.
Identical practices shifted from destabilizing debates to gener-
ating more reassuring conversations for the order of the nation.
More specifically, I have chosen to present an analysis of two

episodes that, more than other episodes, allow us to observe
the production of new configurations of relations between the
nation and the subject of queer. Therefore, my intention is to
proceed with the sharing of episodes: “Life, Liberty and the Pur-
suit of Style”8 and “Super Troopers.” Starting with the analysis of
these two episodes, we can leave it to them to tell us what the
essence of the homonationalist theory is.
“Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Style”:
Homonationalism
“My fellow drag Americans, ask not what RuPaul’s Drag
Race can do for you, ask what you can do for RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
(RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ep.10, Se.3) This very evocative advertise-
ment introduces the main challenge of the ninth episode of the
third series, titled “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Style.” In this
challenge every drag queen is asked to produce a public service
announcement on the topic Why Do I Love USA. The best ads
were directly sent to “the brave man and women fighting for
us overseas.” The formula through which RuPaul introduces the
episode is an expression that has entered the common lexicon,
but the reference is to the inaugural speech delivered by Kenne-
dy in December 1961. The United States, during the Cold War,
9
8 The title is inspired by an autobiographical book by RuPaul: Workin’ It: Ru-
Paul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style.
9 “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you
38
just went through the Cuban Missile Crisis and entered in the
epic disaster of the Vietnam. The historical contribution, rooted
in the American popular culture, fills the entire episode to the
most traditional patriotic imagery. In this scenario, we find drag
queens, modern pin ups, contributing with their performance
to the reconstruction of one of the most glossy traditions, en-
rolling the stars to raise the morale of the troops engaged in
distant wars. This episode works as a grotesque turning point
marking the moment when pride turns into chauvinism. “Some
of you guys feel really patriotic, like you love America?” Carmen
Carrera asks the other queens, while we see all them in the dress-
ing room, getting busy to materialize their patriotic drag perso-
nas. This question, that seems to be asked in a carefree moment,
maybe even secondary in the economy of the episodes, opens
up new discursive practices in the drag race, stimulating among
the competitors an explicit reflection on their relationship with
the United States and what it might mean for their pride. From
the moment the drag queens are called to enact their sense of
pride for their homeland, we are materially participating in the
production of the sentiment.
A few of them come straight from Puerto Rico, while all
others keep their skin on and tell their stories of hybrid ori-
- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask
not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the free-
dom of man.” The entire speech is available online at: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=PEC1C4p0k3E (accessed 25 September 2014).
gins. Each of them is called to perform her nationalism, hav-
ing to make it up, sometimes from scratch. The result will be
a nationalism that is even more artifact than the make-up of
a drag queen. The competition shows the performative impli-
cations, the production of the queens’ bodies, but also a patri-
otic imaginary that is not at all the usual. The first to answer
the question about pride is Raja: from her perspective of Asian
American grown up in Thailand. She responds, “America was the
land of candy bar.” Manila Luzon, who has also seen the United
States through the stories of her migrant mother from Philip-
pines, building the myth of a dreamland within herself. But it
is none other than Carmen Carrera that expresses her displace-
ment about the shift of meaning of the signifier “pride.” “Being
an American wasn’t something that was hard for me. I was born
here. But being Carmen Carrera was. Being married to my hus-
band was. Those are things I’m really proud of.” The words of
Carmen Carrera set in a dialectical perspective, the pride for the
conquered things in opposition with the ones that are taken for
granted. She opposes the pride for drag’s visibility and recogni-
tion of the right to marry versus national pride. However, even
this last one, seems to follow tortuous paths; in fact, though she
feels to be an American citizen of New Jersey, she is repeatedly
brought back by her Puerto Rican competitors to her Latin roots
deriving from her mother’s side.
Meanwhile, in the dark dressing rooms, the drags keep
manufacturing the ideal of drag-country. Raja, after being ques-
tioned, “What are the two American values I love the most” final-
ly finds an answer: “I love freedom to dress up in drag and make 39
money with it!”, whereas Manila Luzon favors a provocative re-
construction of the dream of the melting pot: “Variety of food is
symbol of variety of ethnicity and cultures. Have an Indian. Try
something new.” The jury will later seem not to appreciate the
“fart jokes” and a public service announcement “that does not
come from the heart but between her legs.” Alexis Mateo will
eventually win this contest. Her main merit is having staked ev-
erything on the element of reality, not on traditional realness,
faking a sort of verisimilitude, but rather on a very touching life
experience. She says she did not understand the choice of one
of her ex-partners to leave for the front. The sense of abandon-
ment felt at that time forced her to close all relations with him.
Winning the competition, therefore, gives her the opportunity
let him to know that she never stopped loving him. And this
debt of love is shared by an entire nation. However, while she
runs the ad by shots of “bam” and steps of salsa, she does not
fail in pointing out that “Only in America a girl like me can have
a freaking chorizo.” The jury, anyway, decides to reward her for
her final choice on the catwalk: she performs wearing the uni-
form of her ex (which by chance she had brought with her) en-
riched with rhinestones in sign of respect for it.
Even in the more grotesque aspects of this competition, the
ambiguity of the parody plays an important metaphorical role: the
enrollment of the drag queens and the rhetoric of the civilizations’
clash. In this episode, therefore, the parody does not only function
as a rhetorical mean, but also as an ideological practice, allowing

a shift towards new configurations of power. The parody permits
rendering laughable that which should be the paradigm of the
visible, and in other words, the improbable love story between
the United States and its citizens. So, through the story of the six
drag queens, we come to find out that Carmen Carrera has several
friends in the army, Alexis Mateo’s boyfriend has abandoned her
to serve the motherland, Yara Sophia’s father is an Army Reserve
in order to obtain the citizenship, the mother of Shangela, a black
American, was in Desert Storm twice and before that in Bosnia.
Such a small statistic cannot be representative, but it is significant
because it shows the war as an awkward presence in the life of
a non-white, non-heterosexual, non-cisgender micro population.
It’s the already paid tribute to the nation: the entrance fee.
The informal discussions between competitors, the drag
queen in stars and stripes that parade, they contribute to enrich
of appealing images the discourse about gender and sexuality
at the time of the war against terror. The rhetoric behind this
episode has to be intersected with the analysis of the “Gay Im-
perialism” of Haritaworn, Tauquir and Erdem. These authors, be-
sides terrorism, identify gender and sexuality as the battlefield
where we fight most part of the war to assert a new geopolitical
order, post-9/11 and it is evident - in this episode - for the dis-
course upon the country turns into a chorus about the war, that
each of the drag knows and sings.
Although the queer subjects may be considered post-iden-
tity subjects on account their performative critique of power,
40
they do not escape the one-dimensional analysis of cultures, for
which the United States are engaged in the world to guarantee
a gay freedom of expression. Indeed, the legitimacy of the New
Order post-9/11 is needed by these individuals for the promo-
tion from the category of the “eccentric subjects” to the posi-
tion of true interlocutors in the mainstream politics. They make
themselves functional to the construction of a political capital,
unimaginable until a few years ago, crystallizing and confining
the patriarchy elsewhere (Haritaworn, Tauquir, and Erdem 2008).
It should be noted that the production of an otherness to
civilize/free is a foundational tract of the colonial experience.
Spivak in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” moves away
from this analysis of the use of the rhetoric of liberation in the
“Sati” to legitimize all the British interventions in India (Spi-
vak 1988). But the historical event is an opportunity to reflect
upon how the power is also a narrative power that, through a
violent gesture of both production and narrative, creates the
colonial object. The expression “the white man saves the white
woman from the black man” seems to be distorted by the par-
ticipation of gay, lesbian or even drag queens in this “libera-
tionist” process and yet, changing appropriately the attributes
of this expression, we easily see how the nationalist rhetoric
and the Western civilization has not qualitatively changed its
attributes. Between the patriarchal formation of the subject
and the imperialist construction of the object, it is the space of
free will, of the agency of the subject gendered as female that

is effectively canceled. The Indian woman, the veiled woman
in the Algerian war of liberation, the Palestinian gay and les-
bian Russian are pulled on one side by the expectations of
patriarchy and the other by the colonial representation; the
implication is that these individuals, reduced to mere colonial
objects, are permanently deprived of their agency, meant as
the ability to take independent word by themselves, for them-
selves. This means that, in facts, they are deprived of the op-
portunity to escape the oppression, subverting dominant dis-
courses (Spivak 1988).
The inability to speak the “racialized Other” is embodied
in Yara Sofia, the Puerto Rican drag queen that for the entire
series will be marked by the minus - she is not allowed to take
the floor. When Yara Sofia asks for advice about her “ad,” Alexis
Mateo cannot even get the general sense, because her English
is not good enough yet to make her understood. Shangela re-
fuses to listen as to maintain her own concentration. RuPaul
steps in, pronouncing each word with a paternalistic tone, and
assuming the role of “translator.” Yara Sofia can speak of her
bond with a land of which she does not even speak the lan-
guage, but that she already knows well throughout the mis-
sions abroad and through the experience of her father in Iraq.
However, throughout the recording of the episode, it contin-
ues to be a challenge for her to perform this declaration of
love for the United States: “I do not want any brand to cover
identify my ... my identity …” Spivak, through the history of the
41
British imperialism, questions us about the role of both femi-
nism and LGBTI movement in modern colonial projects taking
place simultaneously inside and outside the national borders.
This forced silence (does not) tell us about the stance on the
defense of women and LGBTI outside the United States? Is not
it a discourse about how you build the legitimacy of the war
on terror or a safety matter issue? Is not it about the creation
within the community itself of a rule of normality of the cis-
male, white, driving on the outskirts of the representation any
racialized queer?
“Super Troopers”: Sexual Exceptionalism
The previous episode we have analyzed seems tied by an
invisible bond to the tenth episode of the fifth series. In the
episode “Super Troopers,” the drag queens are given the task
“to give back to those who sacrifice so much to serve this great
nation,” dealing with a makeover for five veterans. “Thanks to
these men, we have the freedom to be fierce, you’ve got to
exercise this freedom by enlisting these men into your drag
families.” The soldiers “to drag” are six veterans of different
wars, who have experienced military life at different histori-
cal moments: compulsory military service, voluntary, and es-
pecially the transition between the previous and the next step

of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.10 They are hailed as heroes of
the struggle meant to bring down the ultimate frontier of in-
visibility. It is a seen as an epochal moment of the Obama era,
which enabled many young gay people to realize their dream
in stars and stripes. In addition to the usual radical change and
an introduction to the performing arts, as only a drag mother
can provide, an explicit request is made in terms of belonging
to the family group through the concept of resemblance. The
discourse of the Houses here seems to take an unexpected turn
and we see how it can be tamed and brought back in a new
community context: from the underground of the queer sub-
cultures and directly to the renewal of the national community.
In one short step, a drag mother becomes a motherland/coun-
try. The de-naturalization of femininity, the reconfiguration of
the bonds of solidarity and family support alternatives, can be
represented and celebrated on TV, on such a large scale, as
long as they are in some way attributable to the clear matrix of
national pride. What is required, therefore, is something more
than a family resemblance: the drag queens are made to look
alike, build family-like bonds, to confuse every level, until it
is not clear anymore if they are enrolled drag queens or if the
army was dragged.
RuPaul’s Drag Race brings the very core the new direction
the US policy is taking to the heart of the competition. In 2008,
10 In 1994, the Clinton administration instates this provision in order to not
enlist openly gay and lesbian people in the army.
42
Obama obtains his first presidential mandate. The United States
have just put behind the theocon experience of the Bush era and
are getting ready to live a new season, equally full of wars and
anxieties. The United States of Obama is a country tested by many
conflicts and scenarios, bent by the exploded economic crisis and
ravaged by poverty. At the same time the most radical area of the
country dissociates from representative politics and knows a brief
but intense period of financial self-organization and contestation
through the movements of Occupy. In this context of great social
fragmentation, a priority of the Obama presidency was to reunite
the national community. This project can only be achieved by in-
volving new voices in the dim choir singing songs of the father-
land. They are the voices of the children of immigrants, various
racialized subjects, of which Obama is the most authoritative rep-
resentative, and especially those of the homosexual bourgeoisie,
economically important but still excluded from the basic rights.
For all these reasons, much of his campaign has intersected at
equal marriage rights. However, it will take two provisions in par-
ticular to seal the love between Obama and his new supporters.
In 2009, Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act;11 in 2010, the Obama administration
11 The name of the provision was named after two victims of hate crimes.
Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one years old gay died as a result of a terrible
violence during a burglary. Even his attackers said that they killed him be-
cause he was homosexual. James Byrd suffered the same fate but for diffe-
rent reasons. In fact, he was killed by two white supremacists. The measure
expands the law on hate crimes to include crimes perpetrated on grounds

repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The repealing of the policy of “Don’t
AskDon’t Tell” has produced a number of consequences. First, the
Obama administration has made it possible to stop the history of
abuse and violence suffered by LGBTI community from the state
itself. Jinkxx Monsoon’s Vietnam War vet knows this story well and
recounts it firsthand. He met the court-martial on account of arriv-
ing at a gay club in high drag, while bearing his military uniform.
Another narrative consequence of Obama repealing the act is to
oversimplify the genealogy of violence, not questioning the ulti-
mate causes, culturally rooted, but believing that it can be erased
by assimilation. It is the kind of simplification that characterizes
the narrative story of the experience of the veteran of the House
Incunt. He was the only soldier to have served during the turn of
repealing and it seems that the violence and fear of retaliation for
being “out and proud,” had evaporated in a single day. In the end,
the main political consequence is that to produce the narrative of
“exception” of the defense of the gay rights. The Obama admin-
istration takes a clear position to grant exceptional rights to the
LGBTI people, and furthermore this state of exception takes ex-
ceptional measures to defend exceptional citizens. Jasbir Puar in
his analysis on homo-nationalism gives specific attention to the
American sexual exceptionalism.
As the US nation-state produces narratives of exception
through the war on terror, it must temporarily suspend its
of sexual orientation, gender identity, race and disability.
43
hetero-normative imagined community to consolidate na-
tional sentiment and consensus through the recognition
and incorporation of some, though not all or most, homo-
sexual subject.
(Puar 2007: 3, 4)
More specifically, we speak of sexual exceptionalism in order
to tell about techniques of controlling lives in relation to a nation
founded on an exceptional feeling of attachment to the country,
now made even
​​ more exceptional by homonationalism.
The patterns of exceptionalism are constitutively related
to the formation of the United States as a nation. This excep-
tionalism resides in the unique (exceptional here is to be un-
derstood as singular) and universal (in the teleological sense)
of the liberationist mission. In this perspective, the paradigm of
American exceptionalism is strictly tied with the Giorgio Agam-
ben’s definition of state of exception, which defines the state
of exception as a form of legitimization of the use of measures
laying outside the norm, also of exceptional violence, to pre-
serve the lives of some privileged lives (Agamben 1995). Let us
go back to the quote at the very beginning of this reflection;
basically it is what RuPaul expresses when she says:
I’m so proud to show them what they are fighting for. They
are fighting for our freedom to dress up in drag. This is a fab-
ulous country and I’m so proud to be an American citizen.

The drag queens here are the lives identified as exceptional,
deserving the ultimate protection, arbitrarily, by means of extraordi-
nary violence, committed by the very soldiers considered “out of the
ordinary” for being gay. In this sense, the “fabulousness,” the sequined
pride of a community originally identified as rebels, protagonists of
anti-police riots, shifts in its meanings and becomes exceptional in the
sense of compatibility with their citizenship. As in any grammar, even
in the syntax of the political discourse, the exception is the most in-
teresting part of the standard, because it represents the normalized
excess brought into the regulated frame. To explain the functioning of
this process of exclusion/inclusion, Agamben finds help in the image
of the Moëbius strip, where the interior and exterior merge through
a border that is reversed, resulting in what is outside and vice versa
(Agamben 1995). The Moëbius strip is an illustration of how the state
of exception works, but in this analysis it is useful to describe how the
regime of visibility of drag queens might function. This paradigm of
homonormative representation ties the TV popularity of the drag
queens to the national and international political agenda of the Unit-
ed States. Today, the drag queens are in the visible part of the elastic,
they came out as patriots in order to stay inside both the popular cul-
ture and the normative power.
Decolonizing Queer Spaces
The observation of the development of a new mean-
ing for the term pride in RuPaul’s Drag Race has represented
44
the historical evolution of this sentiment in American society.
The popularity of the show also outside the States lets us ob-
serve the consequences of this representation in terms of con-
struction of the imaginary, in a much larger area. The whole
series seems to be read as a genealogy of homo-nationalism,
understood as exceptional government of sexual difference.
Homonationalism, as I tried to describe it here, was born as
a critique of the discourse on liberal rights, while producing
new narratives of citizenship with its legal and cultural impli-
cations. This new model of belonging to the national commu-
nity is based on the inclusion of new subjects, but continues
to find its way only through the more traditional discrimina-
tory patterns of acceptance/rejection.
In rethinking my journey in this series of drag queens, I
accepted the invitation of Hilary King to rethink our complic-
ity with racism and colonialism when telling the epic of the
advancement of sexual rights (King 2014). Watching the drag
queen performing the “docile patriots” (Puar 2007) allowed me
to see how colonialism and white supremacy formed queer
identities, not only in their television representations. RuPaul’s
Drag Race, in line with the scheme of gay visibility, is volun-
tarily too generous in telling the violence and discrimination
that the queer subjects still experience; at the same time, it
produces and relegates the patriarchy elsewhere.
 45

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern
Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Homo Sacer: Il Potere Sovrano E La Speak?” Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Eds.). Marxism
Nuda Vita. Filozofski Vestnik, Vol. 24. Torino: Einaudi. and the Interpretation of Culture, 271-313. Champaign-Urbana:
Bourcier, Marie-Hélène/Sam. 2000. Queer Zones. Paris: Balland. University of Illinois Press.

Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter. On the Discursive

Limits of “Sex”. New York and London: Routledge.
Duggan, Lisa. 1994. “Queering the State.” Social Text, Vol.
39, 1-14.
Halberstam, Jack. 2014. “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-
Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma.” Bully Bloggers,
5 July 2014, http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/
you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-dan-
ger-and-trauma (accessed 25 September 2014).
Haritaworn, Jin, Tasmila Tauquir and Esra Erdem. 2008.
“Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War
on Terror’.” Adi Kunstman and Esperanza Miyake (Eds.). Out of
Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, 71-95. York:
Raw Nerve Books.
King, Hilary. 2014. “Queers of War: Normalizing Lesbians
and Gays in the US War Machine.” Maximilian C. Forte (Ed.). Norms
and Practices of Imperial Humanitarianism, 4, 90-101. Montreal:
Alert Press.
Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonational-
 46

Photo by Lazara Marinković


Pornography Must Be Defended:
Rethinking Pornography with
Lionel Soukaz
Thomas Muzart
Abstract: This article begins by discussing Foucault’s consideration
of pornography in Volume 1 of the History of Sexuality (1976).
Viewed as a power apparatus which reinforces rather than
liberates sexuality from its norms, Foucault cautions that it is not
because one says yes to sex that one says no to power. Such views
must be seen as a distanciation from the enthusiasm generated
by the sexual liberation symbolized in France by the events of May
‘68 and later with the development of pornographic films in the
1970s. The positive vision of pornography, defended by Philippe
Sollers among others, rests on the idea that it can be a medium by
which minorities may contest bourgeois society.
Instead of considering these two visions as oppositional, this
study puts them in dialogue through the analysis of the movie Ixe
(1980) by the filmmaker and activist Lionel Soukaz. As a member
of the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), Soukaz
chose pornography in order to contest a normative homosexual
identity assigned by power. Juxtaposing and superposing
images of him having sex and taking drugs alongside images of
political and religious power, Soukaz not only transgresses the
47
limits between acceptable and perverse sexualities but creates
new subjectivities and models of recognition. Pornography as a
discourse represents therefore in this case, a powerful instrument
for resistance.
Key words: Foucault, Soukaz, pornography, sexuality, activism,
speech, positions, positionality
At the end of the first volume of The History of Sexuality,
when Foucault affirms that it is not because one says yes to sex
that one says no to power, I remembered the mixed feelings I
had in reading those lines. But before expressing the issue I had
with this affirmation, I must acknowledge that I was very much
convinced by his alternative formula that challenged my views
on sexuality, views mostly influenced by the discourse around
sexual liberation from May ‘68. Indeed, Volume 1 rejects the idea
of a repressed sexuality that needs to be liberated. This repressive
hypothesis was, according to Foucault, irrelevant to accurately
describing relations of power and sexuality. He argues that since
the 18th century and the development of medicine, pedagogy,
and the law, discourses about sex, instead of being silenced, only
increase. These ever-increasing discourses assure the deployment
of sexuality as a kind of power which can control individuals.
Foucault underlines the perversity of modern societies which, in
order to control sexuality and deny its historical construction, use
the paradigm of secret and truth to incite people to speak about

sex. By presenting the notion that a secret of liberated sex is to be
found, the confession is made possible without being perceived
as extracted coercively. In the end, individuals who comply with
these criteria of true and false participate in the establishment of
sexuality which is viewed as either right or wrong, acceptable or
unacceptable.
The Case of Pornography: Power Apparatus or
Liberatory Instrument?
It is relevant to read Foucault’s contribution to the study of
sexuality through Volume 1 in the context of its publication in
1976. In France, the ideals of the sexual revolution initiated by May
‘68 were still shaping the discourses on sexuality, with the rise of
pornographic movies reflecting this tendency. In 1974, the French
government even decided to allow the unrestricted circulation of
such movies in theatres. Among the intense debates that followed
the decision, in 1976 the magazine Art Press decided to dedicate
a whole section of the issue to asking artists and intellectuals if
they were for or against pornography. Whether pornography
was perceived as a discourse in relation to prostitution, an action
responsible for the release of sexual energy, or an instrument
of counter-power, the idea that pornography, if liberalized, had
the potential to be a liberating discourse seemed to be shared
by the participants. Everyone who had to answer the question,
“Are you for liberalization?,” accepted the terms of the question,
48
arguing for or against it but not questioning the very notion of
liberalization and its potential or not to expand the possibilities of
sexual practices and pleasures.
On the contrary, Foucault’s work proposes an alternative
to if not an outright refusal of the idea of the liberalization
of sexual representation that in the end liberates sexuality.
Instead of seeing pornography as an instrument which says
yes to sex and therefore no to power, as an instrument that one
should judge in a positive or negative way, Foucault warns his
readers that it also says yes to power. Moreover, he identifies
pornography as one among many apparatuses that impose
on sex an analytical dimension and therefore works as an
instrument of incitation that actively participates in the control
of individuals. There is consequently with the liberalization of
pornographic discourse not a possibility for liberation but an
increase of control on sexuality by the power.
If I agree with Foucault that sexual representation cannot
escape power and, therefore, that it is naive to consider it
through a perspective of liberation and permanent resistance
to norms and moral codes, I find his reduction of pornography
to an apparatus of power that produces a truth of sex
problematic. Whether produced by power as Foucault argues
or liberated for the defenders of pornography, both positions
suppose the existence of this idea of a truth of sex and both limit
pornography to a stable form, thus leading to pornography’s
essentialization. In order to avoid this reductiveness, I will

suggest that pornography is an evolving genre that derives from
discourses as well as practices. This intersection of discourses
and practices, rather than distancing me from Foucault, opens
up a discussion of his conception of bodies and pleasures.
Indeed, Foucault proposes, with a return to bodily pleasures, a
sexual praxis that can counter the discourses which establish
a truth of sex. I would like to question this opposition between
discourse and practice since I believe that sexual discourses
not only bring signification to practices but also create new
forms of practices, and that these concomitant relations
challenge the supposed truth of sex as much as they impact
the subject formation. Pornography therefore interests me not
for what it signifies but for what it does, i.e. how it constitutes
subjectivities.
In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler (1997) connects practices
to discourse when she describes pornography as a performative
discourse. She shows that in a pornographic “speech,” “a certain
sexualization of speech is at issue, one in which the verbal reference
to or depiction of sexuality is considered tantamount to a sexual
act.” (ibid.: 76) But contrary to the opponents of pornography -
such as Catharine McKinnon, who sees sexual depiction working
on the same level as acts, thus the former is responsible for
degrading behavior against women and should fall under the
category of “hate speech” - Butler refuses to ascribe a pre-existing
and unequivocal meaning to pornography. It is actually the lack
of control revealed by pornographic discourse that presents an
49
issue for the institutions that seek to produce a truth of sex. She
therefore undermines the unilateral powers that pornography is
supposed to have according to its opponents:
If utterances bear equivocal meanings, then their power is, in
principle, less unilateral and sure than it appears. Indeed, the
equivocity of the utterance means that it might not always
mean in the same way, that its meaning be turned or derailed
in some significant way and, most importantly, that the very
words that seek to injure might well miss their mark and
produce an effect counter to the one intended.
(ibid.: 87)
Using Foucault’s insights in his lecture at the Collège de
France, Society Must Be Defended (1975), Butler insists that there
is no sovereign subject or sovereign speaker that can impose
a specific meaning on a targeted group. Words can, according
to Butler, be used in various ways and can sometimes have
the opposite effect of what was intended and can operate as
a counter-discourse. Ironically, she uses a Foucaultian concept
to undermine the supposed power of apparatuses producing a
truth of sex.
Moreover, she finds that reifying signification is problematic
since it presupposes the fixity of universal values which would
determine a speakable domain and an unspeakable one. Butler
insists on the historicity of universality and the fact that it is an
open-ended concept demanding a constant challenge of its

barriers. She emphasizes the importance of as yet unconsidered
speech as part of the universal, but by challenging it, participates
in its elaboration:
This kind of speech appears at first to be impossible or
contradictory, but it constitutes one way to expose the limits of
the current notions of universality, and to constitute a challenge
to those existing standards to become more expansive and
inclusive.
(Butler 1997: 89)
For Butler, excluded speech is part of the dynamic process
in which universality has to operate. While rejecting the idea of
an unequivocal pornographic discourse that degrades women,
she clearly raises the possibility for pornography to challenge
universal values, i.e., sexual and heteronormative norms.
I find Butler’s conception extremely helpful, especially in
approaching pornography in regards to the relations between the
mainstream porn industry and minorities. Indeed, I want to insist
that pornography goes beyond the mainstream cinematographic
genre which usually complies with specific rules and tends to work
within well-defined scenarios. I do not intend to undermine in any
way the possibility of such pornography to negotiate with sexual
norms, but its definition as a well-defined genre limits creative
possibilities while at the same time overshadows more marginal
productions which end up being excluded both from the porn
50
industry and the usual circulation system for movies. Unacceptable
even for the so-called “unacceptable” category, such movies suffer
a double exclusion which reveals the similarities rather than the
differences in the establishment of sexual hierarchies that Foucault
encouraged us to consider between the institutional power and the
porn industry. Jeffrey Escoffier is in a certain way right when he claims
that “pornography normalises perversity,” one sexual practice after
the other being included in the realm of normal sexuality (Escoffier
2014: 215). But what about the movies considered pornographic
that fail to enter the category of porn? Is this failure a possibility to
extend our understanding of pornography? I will argue through the
study of the movie Ixe by Lionel Soukaz, a French gay activist from
the 1970s, that this kind of pornography, unlike Escoffier’s diagnosis,
does not normalize perversity but rather represents an opportunity
not only for resistance but for creativity and for fugitivity.
Ixe (1980): A Pornographic Movie about Pornography
From censorship to active visibility:
refusing the assigned gay identity
Released in 1980, Ixe, as its title suggests, refers to the letter X
which has since 1976 served to label movies considered pornographic
in France. After a two-year period of unrestricted circulation which
allowed for the debate on pornography that I briefly described in

the introduction, French legislators decided to deny access through
regular film industry channels to movies with explicit sexual content.
Since this legislation was enacted, such movies can only be shown in
specific theatres, and they face high taxation. As a consequence, the
particular status of X rated movies deeply weakened the position
of movie directors and producers who, in order to survive despite
this economic censorship, turned pornography into a mainly profit-
driven genre, with content intending to arouse the viewer rather
than to explore and discuss sexuality.
Beyond the loss of creativity, the problem with this measure,
according to Soukaz, is twofold: first, that it relies on arbitrary and
moral judgements that determine what is worth showing or not;
second, that in the late 1970s such a measure particularly targeted
movies on homosexuality regardless of how many sex scenes they
contained. Soukaz’s filmography testifies to this with, for example,
Race d’Ep (1978), which traces the historical construction of the
“homosexual” since the invention of the term in 1869. Because of
its theme and the polemical discourse it purportedly contained,
representing the movie through normal cinematographic
channels was denied. However, thanks to the intervention of
intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles
Deleuze and Simone De Beauvoir - who all signed a petition to
criticize such decisions - the movie was allowed to be shown, but,
it must be said, with many cuts, thus constraining the director’s
artistic freedom (Fleckinger 2007: 150).
While he is aware that censorship, in its ability to control
51
representation, is not blind and, in particular, affects real lives,
Soukaz engages through his movie Ixe with his own personal story
in order to question gay identity and promote a life free of any forms
of definition. This reaction effectively translates the shift from a
passive visuality where homosexuals are marginalized1 to an active
visibility where they speak for themselves with the aim of not only
being heard but also of proposing new forms of living. Indeed, the
pornographic label here derives from the intention of the director
rather from a unilateral decision by the state. The awareness of the
fact that the political affects the personal drove marginal groups to
establish the personal at the center of their art. As Yekhan Pinarligil
describes it, Ixe is a transgression which constitutes a vital gesture
for its director (Pinarligil 2012: 50). Soukaz, indeed, lives in his movie,
filming himself naked in his bathroom shaving, then meeting
friends, wandering in the city or in the countryside, having sex with
one of many partners, and dreaming. The quick succession of all
these different images overwhelms an audience used to caricature
depictions of homosexuality and can be viewed as an artistic gesture
that opposes the social norms which try to isolate homosexuals in
assigning them a specific identity. Gay activists such as Soukaz and
Guy Hocquenghem denounce this categorical identity and qualify
it as “psycho-policière”. Indeed, they fight against the police and the
psychiatrists who work hand-in-hand to control manifestations of
homosexuality. These “flickiâtres” (conjunction of “flic” [cops] and
1 Whether it is with the X label considering them as undesirable or with
their negative depiction in homophobic movies.

“psychiatre”), as the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary
Action) calls them, are responsible for foreclosing same-sex desire
into a stable category and a minor position in society. Against this
minor position, Ixe stands in opposition.
Opposition as Affirmation and Creation
If the recurrent appearance of the word “vivre” (“to live”)
in the film states the importance of presence and existence for
marginalized groups, it certainly does not limit itself to the idea of
surviving in an oppressive world. The opposition in Ixe is, indeed, as
polemical as it is joyous. Instead of clearly separating gay modes of
existence from heteronormative ones, Soukaz aims to show how
they are already both part of the same society. What is therefore
at stake in the opposition is not to find an outside of society but
rather to redefine the rules and create new ways to live within it.
One of the tools Soukaz uses to achieve this consists in sexualizing
what is perceived normal and asexual. No matter what the cultural
references for a dominant discourse are, an appropriation through
sex is possible that, in the end, gives a voice to minorities as much
as it blurs the frontiers of normativity. Instead of being silenced or
forced to play by the rules imposed by society, Soukaz develops
an affirmative and creative opposition with pornography.
Soukaz likes to play ironically with the music and images
he chooses in order to enrich his criticism of censorship. For
52
example, well-known campy or children’s songs accompany the
scenes depicting sex, which ultimately challenges the idea of gay
people being excluded from society since they, on the contrary,
appropriate pop culture in their own way. The remix version of
“One Day My Prince Will Come” in Snow White illustrates the
scene when Soukaz dresses like a woman. “La Belle de Cadix”
by Luis Mariano is also remixed in order to insist on the final “Ix,”
introducing a whole new sexual dimension to the song. There
is also the sexualization of the song “Dominique” by the famous
nun, Sœur Sourire, where the repetitive “Nique,” which means
“Fuck”, is isolated and played along the sex scenes between men
in the movie. All material is potentially disrupted, and, as Soukaz
admits it, the voice-off constitutes one of the best instruments for
diversion, lies and masquerade (Garsi 1981: 52).
Beyond the music, the expansion of the sexual throughout
the movie is particularly noticeable in the montage that plays with
images and their positions. The term position must be considered
here not only as a reference to the placement of images, but also
to the place of individuals in society--in other words, identities
as positions. By not only positioning his images against but also
positioning them alongside normative images,2 Soukaz creates a
dialectical relation able to disrupt the so-called divide between
obscene and acceptable as well as the unity of categories.
The experimental technique of montage is to that extent
reminiscent of those used by surrealists artists like Robert Desnos
2 Images that are common in the public sphere.

and Man Ray, who were themselves very interested in the
emergence of desire. Cinema, as Linda Williams explains, allowed
the surrealists to show the artificial aspect of human unity:
Rather than simply using the identification process to create
an illusion of a fictive time, space, and character in the way
most fictional films do, Surrealist film exposes the fundamental
illusion of the film image itself to focus on its role in creating
the fictive unity of the human subject. It is thus both a visual art
form that takes into account the problematics of the subject’s
relation to the image and a very sophisiticated attempt to work
against the identification process inherent in this relationship
(Williams 1981: 14)
In the same way, Soukaz uses cinema techniques to question
the “homosexual” relation to images and the fictive unity of
such a figure. He refuses to propose a single representation of
homosexuality and rather aims to create an alternative reality
through the use of a destructive montage. In Ixe, linearity and
unity are destroyed in favor of the display of odd juxtapositions
of images which, for Lawrence Schehr, challenges an audience
usually used to heteronormative approaches of storytelling
(Schehr 2011: 248). The heterosexual realm is assumed to be the
normative and, therefore, considers its outside as non-existent
and unintelligible. It relies on fixity and linearity and usually entails
a sense of comfort for the people who are part of the dominant
group. What makes Soukaz’ attempt to disrupt the comfort of his
53
audience remarkable is, for Schehr, the process of recreating new
forms of understandings through odd pairings. The succession
of images, also called the Kuleshov effect, does not in this case
attempt to build a linear narrative but rather invites the audience
to create its own meaning. This use of pornographic discourse
shows that reality and desire are not singular but multiform and
therefore cannot be represented by one image against others.
Reality is constantly recreated and modified because of the
relations between images. Therefore, there is neither straight nor
gay images, but only queer ones.
From Juxtapositions to Superpositions: The
Emergence of Positionality
One of the first obvious juxtapositions of the movie is when
Soukaz first dresses like a woman and, as he puts on make-up,
the film switches several times to a pageant contest recorded on
TV. More than illustrating the simple identification with the world
of pageantry when he dresses like a woman, the juxtaposition of
these two images shows two different yet not dissimilar ways of
constructing feminine identity. Beauty contests’ claim of “pure”
femininity is challenged by the cross-dresser who believes his/
her gender role is as valuable as his/her pageant peers. This
mutual game of representation and gender construction both
contests authenticity as well as the artificial separation between

transvestites and women. They are both performing. Later on,
two men are tongue-kissing in a very erotic scene. Their bodies
are in contact, they gently touch themselves, and suddenly the
scene cuts to a boxing match between two virile men. What the
movie suggests is, in my opinion, the homoeroticism present in
situations such as men fighting one other. In addition, boxers, and
athletes in general, are usually considered to be gay icons. These
boxers in the movie, therefore, are the objects of desire as much
as the subjects of desire. The masturbation scene following the
juxtaposition reinforces this reading.
Another example of a typical diversion of conventionally
innocent images consists in juxtaposing official images of Pope
John Paul II with explicit sex scenes, coupled with the voice of
Sœur Sourire singing “Alleluia.” Soukaz proceeds the same way
with images of anal sex and the politician Jacques Chirac. Pinarligil
believes that by recording these sequences broadcast on TV and
then reusing them in his movie, Soukaz mediates these institutional
discourses to alter their oppressive force and to propose a direct
confrontation between a religious and/or political power and the
group that power marginalizes (Pinarligil 2012: 59). In my opinion,
however, the dialogical use of images of dominant parties and
those of dominated people through juxtaposition does not
mediate the hegemonic discourse only to cancel or denounce it,
but rather to suggest the co-constitutive aspect of these images.
The religious and political discourses are constructed in regard to
the categories they create, including the homosexual category,
54
and reciprocally, homosexual desire finds its expression against
and within dominant discourse. Juxtaposition and opposition are
not independent but are instead part of the same life, or in the
case of Ixe, the same movie.
Ixe also has a particular rhythm thanks to the progressive
acceleration of images which suggests the movement of
masturbation, a solitary production of desire. Within the last five
minutes of the movie, the display of images becomes so fast that
the juxtaposition turns into superposition. Superposition should
not be considered as distinct from the notion of opposition and
juxtaposition but rather as a joining of the two. The superposition
of images relates to juxtaposition since their emergence creates
the potential desire that juxtaposition only suggests. However,
superposition should not be read as the representation of a final
solution, or, in other words, a unity found again. It does not make
sense but instead further disrupts realities.
In a dream-like scene, for example, images of a police
intervention in what seems to be a strike, with policemen
arresting and beating other men, are juxtaposed with images
of an agitated sleeping man which first suggests an opposition
between these two realities. The sleeping man is threatened by the
oppressive force characterized by the police. With the two latter
images superposed, the sense of these two scenes disappears
in favor of the movements of bodies, forces caught in a rhythm
reminiscent of a form of desire. If superposition throughout the
movie contributes to the fragmentation of bodies and reinforces

the idea of an impossible grip on categories of identity and
desire, it nonetheless itself creates forms of desire and identity.
Indeed, one cannot fully understand what these forms are made
of, but they certainly exist, diverse and ephemeral, throughout
the movie. Because the stability of positions can never be met,
Ixe illustrates what I call positionality, a term that favors the
expression of mutliplicities and constant dynamism. The concept
of positionality, I posit, is very similar to the system of the rhizome
as defined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand
Plateaus (1980). Prior to this book, Deleuze and Guattari also
founded schizoanalysis which promotes the expression of desire
through schizophrenia, the valuation of the pre-symbolic stage.
The rhizome falls within the same refusal of a centered subject.
Indeed, in the rhizome there are no points nor positions. It obeys
the principle of multiplicity. Every time a unity is expressed,
this entails a coding, a step into the symbolic order and thus,
it becomes an imposition. Deleuze and Guattari encourage the
creation and the development of the multiple by removing the
unique from the multiplicity which is in construction. In other
words, they want to challenge the idea that there is only one
relation possible between signifier and signified. This is, I believe,
what juxtaposition and superposition ultimately offer, as they
disrupt common sense and the unique understanding of images.
By juxtaposing supposedly antithetical images, new semantic
linkages emerge which obey the principle of connection as well
as the heterogeneity of the rhizome. In addition, superposition
55
does not celebrate unity but the multiple; it changes its meaning
depending on the presence and absence of images. It is an
organization of desire which ignores hierarchy and to which the
audience can respond, or not. Since there is no clear signification
at stake, no message intended, the audience can connect to
these superpositions, these semantic organizations, the way they
want. The principle of connection in the rhizome guarantees for
the subject the power to connect or disconnect at any moment.
Another principle at stake in the rhizome system, the principle
of non-signifying rupture, also works in Ixe since it is defined by
a refusal to establish a genealogy. There is not, in the linearity
offered by the movie, a genealogy of homosexuality or any
other kind of identity. Rather, superposition and juxtaposition
operate from stable categories (homosexuality, religion, politics,
drug addiction) which are defined by a certain history and by
certain roots. In order to liberate the rhizomatic force from
these categories, “an intensive trait starts working for itself, a
hallucinatory perception, synesthesia, perverse mutation, or
play of images shakes loose, challenging the hegemony of the
signifier.” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 15)
In focusing on the interplay of identity positions and
image positions found in Ixe, my goal throughout this study
was to translate the will of Lionel Soukaz as a gay activist to link
the personal to the political and to destroy norms or positions
in favor of positionality thanks to pornography. It is possible
to consider his project a poststructuralist one, with its refusal

of historicism, of the stability of the human subject, as well
as the belief that the interaction between an audience and
a discourse functions as a kind of productivity. In that sense,
pornography and the desire it creates also models the subject.
But for Soukaz, it does not work as a constraint nor as a stable
idealized destination. The subjects of desire are multiple and
changing throughout the movie and therefore cannot belong
to a particular well-defined group. The absence of hierarchy
and the attraction to violence and the abject, which is at stake
when Soukaz subverts the official images of Jacques Chirac or
the Pope with the juxtaposition and superposition of anal sex,
also constitute a refusal of social consensus. There is nothing to
agree on, as everything appears and disappears, connects and
disconnects, just like in the rhizomatic system.
Through the sexualization of any form of representation,
Soukaz commits the ultimate transgression - one beyond repair,
beyond digestion - and his work is characterized more by
hypervisiblity than by visibility itself, the latter implying that there
is a specific identity to represent. Thanks to this pornographic
discourse, he approaches new forms of desire and subjectivities.
In escaping the normative pornography Foucault referred to, Ixe
shows another side of pornography, one in which critical discourse
is not only possible but becomes the reason why such work is
considered pornographic. Shannon Winnubst, in Reading Bataille
Now (2006), summarizes this issue well when it comes to queer
pleasure and its position in society:
56
If queer lives are not aiding and abetting the particular
closed economy of heterosexual, racist, nationalist
capitalism, they are unacceptable; and the clear evidence
for this is their perversion of its ultimate law, utility.”
(Winnubst 2006: 84)
Here, Winnubst reflects on the utility of the sexual act
which is, she argues, defined by society as the proper use of the
genitals. Furthermore, she denounces the fact that because of this
reduction of the domain of sexuality, there is at stake a restricted
mode of access to identity. In order to resist this reduction of
experiences and modes of subjectivities, she proposes to “jump
over the possibility of uselessness” thanks to Bataille’s work (ibid.:
85). Her project, which links Bataille to current issues on sexuality
and the formation of subjectivities, is particularly fruitful in making
connections between past artistic productions such as Ixe to post-
porn movements. Indeed, I believe that there is an opportunity
here to consider post-pornography not as an isolated concept that
marks a clear rupture with past pornographic productions, but as
a manifestation of the potentialities that pornography, as a form of
discourse which resists constraints, carries in itself. Pornography, as
a form rather than a kind of content, should therefore be further
explored - its past manifestations as well as its limitless potential -
and defended as a mode of expression and questioning rather than
condemned from the start.
 57

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Escoffier, Jeffrey. 2014. “Pornography, Perversity and the Winnubst, Shannon. 2006. “Bataille’s Queer Pleasures:
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Tentative Heretical Notes on
Queer “Necro” Practices and
Sensibilities
Marius Henderson
Abstract: Via a queer, “heretical” appropriation of the notion of
the “necro” from Black Metal subculture and theory - concur-
rently keeping renditions of “necropolitics” in postcolonial and
Afro-Pessimist theory in mind - I wish to make use of the no-
tion of the “necro” as a queer strategy of approaching cultural
archives, which may be regarded as an addition to thoroughly
theorized strategies and sensibilities, like camp.
I would like to invoke the “necro” as a politico-aesthetic
enmeshment and (re-)awakening of abjected, “deadened,” and
negated aesthetic figurations and intensities, as well as theo-
retical approaches, which address questions of survival; of life
and death. The “necro,” as I understand it, resembles a politico-
aesthetic practice which can be imagined as a kind of reverse
“necromancy,” as a summoning of life from the position of non-
life and/or “social and slow death.”
By drawing on exemplary artistic works (e.g. by Bruce La-
Bruce, Xasthur, Striborg) I will try to discuss how “necro” prac-
tices and sensibilities erupt into the present as “undead” materi-
58
alized traces that potentially disturb normative cultural, sexual
and socio-economic formations.
Finally, it seems promising to discuss whether the “necro”
might be envisioned as a strategy for “softening” hardened cultur-
al archives, and for letting ostensibly “new” bodily and conceptual
assemblages between the present and “undead” pasts emerge.
Key words: queer theory, black metal theory, affect theory, ne-
cropolitics, afro-pessimist theory, social death, slow death, post-
pornography, horror film, zombie film
Approaching the “Necro” via Bruce LaBruce’s
Queer Post-Porn Zombie Films
In this paper I would like to try to bring together theoreti-
cal conceptualizations from the fields of queer theory, postco-
lonial theory, Afro-Pessimist theory and the para-academic dis-
course of black metal theory, in order to tentatively explore the
notion of the “necro” as a queer sensibility and politico-aesthet-
ic practice that seems to revolve around forms of death, living
death, and death-in-life, and which might possibly also foster
the expansion of established queer cultural archives. The artis-
tic examples which I will discuss seem to employ a similar set of
“necro” practices and motifs, which reappear in newly arranged
forms throughout them.

As a first example for tentatively approaching the “necro” I
would like to turn to the queer post-porn zombie films of Bruce La-
Bruce: Otto; Or Up with Dead People (2008) and L.A. Zombie (2010).
Otto; Or Up with Dead People contains many quite obvious
inter- and hypertextual references to the works of the mid-20th
century filmmaker Maya Deren,1 mainly to her experimental
short film, Meshes of the Afternoon (from 1943). LaBruce’s film
necromantically updates and queers elements of Deren’s pre-
cursory, hypotextual film. Deren’s film has often been inter-
preted in Lacanian terms, as dealing primarily with issues of
specularity or “the gaze,” and with attempts at challenging the
phallogocentric exclusion of female subjects from the “Sym-
bolic Order.” LaBruce’s film pays tribute to these concerns,
most explicitly in form of the character of Medea Yarn, but also
expands the agenda of Deren’s film. For instance, it contains a
scene which seems to mirror the final shot of Deren’s film, in
which one sees the heavily wounded dead body of the female
protagonist, lying there motionless, covered in splints of a
broken mirror, after an ostensible attempt at smashing the pa-
triarchal male gaze. This final shot is echoed in LaBruce’s film
where the character Fritz Fritze discovers the shattered dead
body of his boyfriend, who had killed himself due to his ex-
1 The name of one of the film’s protagonists, i.e., the radical lesbian film di-
rector Medea Yarn, is an anagram of Maya Deren.
59
posure to homophobia, as his suicide note suggests (cf. Bruce
LaBruce 2008: 9:40 mins.).
However, the boyfriend, as it turns out, is not dead, but
has become an “undead” zombie who approaches Fritz in a way,
which at first seems like an attack. The zombie boyfriend starts to
rip pieces of flesh from Fritz’s body, which he devours and he also
pulls a gory mass of intestines from Fritze’s stomach. Then, how-
ever, he starts penetrating the side of Fritz’s ribcage (cf. LaBruce
2008: 17:20 mins.) with his penis. Fritz, who at first seemed to have
died, then also turns into a zombie. He responds to his boyfriend’s
thrusts, they kiss each other devouringly and continue having
queer “zombie sex” with each other.
The penetration of the side of Fritz’s ribcage may be regarded
as a deterritorialization of conventionalized, pornographic sexual
topographies of the body, since traditional porn usually focuses
on a limited range of body parts, normative so-called “erogenous
zones.” In the queer “zombie sex” that Fritz and his boyfriend per-
form it seems as if any part of the body may be eroticized. One
could say that in the process of “becoming-zombie” the bodies
of Fritz and his boyfriend are no longer bounded and coherent
containers of “stable subjects” that may be clearly separated from
other bodies. Bodily dichotomies between “inside” and “outside”,
“alive” and “dead”, or “active” and “passive” seem to be shattered
in the above-mentioned scene. With his inner organs ripped out,
the “becoming-zombie” Fritz quite literally becomes a “Deleuzo-
Guattarian body without organs,” as it seems.

Moreover, one could argue that, echoing Leo Bersani’s fa-
mous essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?” (Bersani 1987) the above-
mentioned “zombie sex scene” radicalizes Bersani’s claims.
Since in this scene it is no longer solely the rectum that be-
comes the “grave” of hegemonic, heteronormative masculine
subjectivity, but seemingly any part of the fragmented zombie
body without organs can attain this. In my interpretation of
this scene I am basically following Thomas Sikora’s reflections
on Otto; Or Up With Dead People, in his fascinating and inspir-
ing book Bodies Out of Rule (cf. Sikora 2014: 95-116).
The graphic depiction of sex in Bruce LaBruce’s zombie films, as in
the scene mentioned above, could be regarded in terms of “post-por-
nography” or “post-porn politics,” a term which most likely was coined
by the performer, artist, and activist Annie Sprinkle, and has been tak-
en up by queer theorists like Tim Stüttgen and Katja Diefenbach. Katja
Diefenbach defines “post-pornography” in the following way:
[P]ost-pornography could … stand for having and show-
ing sex while insisting that it is not the real thing, the hid-
den truth or living energy of one’s life. Post-porn politics
presuppose the knowledge that bodies have been educat-
ed and capacitated, through centuries of disciplining tech-
niques, toward becoming a mobilized entity that is ready
to work and - in a tricky double movement of repression
and production - has been gendered and sexualized along
a dualistic male-female, active-passive, axis.
(Diefenbach 2010: 76)
60
Diefenbach goes on to claim:
At its best, post-pornography would be this non-utopian
movement to another economy of bodies and pleasure …
From this post-pornographic perspective the body is de-
sexualized and intensified at the same time. On the one
hand, post-porn detaches itself from practices centered
round the reproductive organs and the primacy of the or-
gasm; on the other hand, it invents new ways of using vari-
ous parts of the body for having sex.
(Diefenbach 2010: 76-77)
It should also be noted that to a certain extent it is difficult
to classify the intense bodily encounters of the zombies in Bruce
LaBruce’s zombie films as “sexual” at all. For the notion of “the
sexual,” at least traditionally, seems to be so closely linked to or
even presuppose the category of “the human” and/or “life.” Yet, the
zombies, precisely due to their “undead zombieness,” seem to be
neither clearly classifiable as “human” nor as “alive.”
Zombie Figurations and the Traces
of (Post)Colonial “Necropolitics”
Turning now to a connection between Otto; Or Up With Dead
People and postcolonial theorizations of “necropower” and “nec-
ropolitics,” as for instance developed by Achille Mbembe (2003), it

can be said that these connections can be forged via the intertex-
tual references to Maya Deren’s works, since these references also
carry the traces of the history of the genre of the zombie film itself.
The history of the zombie film is haunted by remnants of colonial-
ism, slavery and exoticism; for the earliest zombie films, like Victor
Halperin’s black and white film White Zombie from 1932, which is
mainly set in the Caribbean, the zombies were often depicted as
colonized or enslaved black bodies; and as such as embodiments
of Blackness as a kind of “social death,” a term coined by Orlando
Patterson and further developed in the work of Black Studies and
Afro-Pessimist scholars like Jared Sexton (2011), Saidiya Hartman
(2008) and Christina Sharpe (2010; 2014). In these early zombie
films the origin of the “zombie curse” was usually attributed to ex-
oticized Haitian voodoo practices. This is another enmeshment
with Maya Deren’s work since she also did written ethnographic,
and filmic, documentary research on voodoo in Haiti.2
There are further instances in LaBruce’s zombie films
where issues of both biopolitics and necropolitics, as theorized
in postcolonial theory and queer of color critiques come into
play. Both Otto, the protagonist of Otto; Or Up With Dead People,
and the nameless zombie protagonist of Bruce LaBruce’s second
queer post-porn zombie film, L.A. Zombie, tend to be patholo-
gized by discursive instances according to established norma-
tive psychological categories; for instance as “a zombie with an
2 E.g., in form of the monograph Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti
(1953) and a documentary film of the same name.
61
identity crisis,” as “schizophrenic,” “mentally disordered,” or “bi-
polar.” Yet, none of these categories seem to grasp their fleeting
affective positionalities. As homeless zombies they appear to
be excluded from humanity altogether and thus inhabit a kind
of “social death,” or a phantom-like “death-in-life,” and they thus
pose the question of how to render their affective constitution.
Whereas Otto, and also the zombie protagonist in L.A. Zombie,
in certain instances seems to share moments of sociality with
certain persons who are marked for social death, there is one
instance in Otto; Or Up With Dead People which stands out quite
controversially in terms of its depiction of embodiments of so-
cial death. In one scene Otto is wandering through the streets
of Berlin, and then he is attacked and bashed by a group of
teenagers, who are visually marked as stereotypically racialized
“migrant youths” of color probably with a Muslim background.
Jin Haritaworn (2013) has criticized this scene from a queer of
color point of view. Haritaworn objects that Otto’s desire for
death is enabled by his previous, white privileged vitality and
his ascendancy is based on the social death of racialized oth-
ers, like the migrant youths, which appear deindividualized,
i.e. only in a group, and they have no names, they also seem
muted, as they are incapable of emitting decipherable speech,
and are seemingly rendered as being essentially homophobic.
Furthermore, Haritaworn reads Otto’s flaneuring through quar-
ters that are primarily inhabited by working class migrants, as a
form of white privileged “slumming.”

The “Necro” and Black Metal Theory
The affective manifestations of the “necro,” which I men-
tioned above, could perhaps be related to still another rendition of
the “necro,” namely the “necro” of black metal theory. In the black
metal subculture the notion of the “necro” is invoked as an index
of an ostensibly authentic “rawness,” as exemplified by, e.g.: bad
recording quality, so-called “blast beats,” unintelligible, screechy
vocals, illegible band logos, and grainy black and white record
covers. Moreover, the “necro” can also be related to Black Metal’s
general infatuation with death, as for instance in the wearing of
“corpse paint.” At this point I would also like to point to Drew
Daniel’s work and his practice of queering Black Metal, through
his musical project The Soft Pink Truth’s latest album, called Why
Do the Heathen Rage? (2014), which among others also contains
a collaboration with Antony Hegarty, and which is labeled as a
collection of “electronic profanations of Black Metal classics” (The
Soft Pink Truth 2014). I am strongly indebted to and very much
adore Drew Daniels’ efforts towards queering black metal, this
genre of “extreme music” which has such a notorious history of
racism, fascism, anti-semitism, misogyny and homophobia. Very
noteworthy and influential in the context of attempts at adding
queer, feminist, and critical race perspectives to the field of Black
Metal Theory are also Daniel’s article “Corpsepaint as Necro-Min-
strelsy, or Towards the Re-Occultation of Black Blood” (2014), the
epilogue of his monograph The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect
62
and Epistemology in the English Renaissance (2013), and the work
of Michael O’Rourke and Aspasia Stephanou.
In his reflections on Black Metal and its theorization, in form
of a “cosmic pessimism,” Eugene Thacker, however, evokes the no-
tion of the “Planet,” as the “world-without-us,” referring to the non-
human aspects of planet earth, which evade our epistemological
grasp and seemingly assume a more or less indifferent stance to-
wards humanity (cf. Thacker 2011: 2-9; 20-21). However, the plan-
et, as a “world-without-us,” is not conceived as a pure externality
by Thacker, it also resides in ourselves, in our bodies, for instance
in the bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that inhabit us. In his
rendition of black metal theory Thacker calls for a confrontation
with this “world-without-us” and according to him it is musicians,
who work at the fringes of black metal, whose musical aesthetics
touch upon aspects of the “world-without-us,” and let the “world-
without-us” resonate (Thacker 2011: 20-21). Perhaps one could
say that the zombies in Bruce LaBruce’s films, are part of a “necro
practice” that produces these bodies as temporary hosts for reso-
nances of the “world-without-us.”
Examples of a potentially queer “necro” practice from within
the context of black metal itself, seem to be detectable especially
in the black metal subgenre that is referred to as Depressive Sui-
cidal Black Metal (short form: DSBM). The songs of artist of this
genre are usually built around very few, monotonously repeated
guitar riffs, which sound more or less almost the same and fre-
quently tend towards a “dark ambient” sound.

DSBM acts, like Xasthur and Striborg, might be rendered
as “Dead Men Working,” to borrow this term from Carl Ceder-
ström’s and Peter Fleming’s book of the same name (Ceder-
ström and Fleming 2012), in which they analyze a new type
of “undead” labor force, which is typical for today’s neoliberal,
capitalist economies, and which denotes persons who become
one with their work, whose entire life consists solely of work.
The immense output of the DSBM artists mentioned before
seems to hint at this. Xasthur and Striborg have both released
more than 20 records in the last 15 years. One might be prone
to ask whether this immense output in combination with their
exhibited depressiveness, could be regarded as an expression
of an “exhausted self,” to use a term coined by the French soci-
ologist Alain Ehrenberg (cf. Ehrenberg 2008), for subjectivities
who collapse due to the neoliberal imperative of permanent
productivity and the performance of a seamless public per-
sona, as exceptional individual.
To a certain extent Striborg and Xasthur embody this de-
pressive exhaustion and the erasure of humanized liveliness;
they appear “undead,” and their immense musical output, per-
petually evokes the excavation and effacement of the self.
Drawing once more on Cederström’s and Fleming’s Dead Man
Working, one could argue that they perform a “de-working” of
the body - a refusal to treat one’s body as a resource for “useful,”
and calculable labor (Cederström and Fleming 2012: 72-73).
According to Cederström and Fleming this subject position
63
recedes from normative neoliberal interpellations towards a
form of becoming-imperceptible (Cederström and Fleming
2012: 74-75). The unproductive productions of Xasthur and
Striborg ostensibly resonate with these strategies, as they not
only hover musically at the fringes of what might be termed
“music” at all, but also in commercial terms, since they tend to
produce music, which almost nobody wants to hear, and thus
they seem to perform a useless expenditure of time, energy
and their own labor power. Drawing on the work of the art-
ist/theorist collective Claire Fontaine, one could perhaps also
render Striborg’s and Xasthur’s de-working of the body and
their “useless” expenditures as a kind of “human strike” (or with
regards to their “undeadness” as “inhuman strike”). With refer-
ence to reflections by Italian autonomist feminist theorists
and activists from the 1970s, like Silvia Federici or Mariarosa
Dalla Costa, Claire Fontaine define the “human strike” in the
following way: “Human strike can be a revolt within a revolt,
an unarticulated refusal, an excess of work or the total refusal
of any labour, depending on the situation.” (Fontaine 2013: 29)
This notion of the “(in)human strike” then again seems to reso-
nate with queer theoretical reflections, like the idea of an eth-
ics of “self-shattering” and “unbecoming,” as already voiced by
Leo Bersani in his essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?” (1987), and
which has also been taken up again more recently by Judith
Jack Halberstam (2011: 129-136) and Lynne Huffer (2011: 523-
525) for instance.

Slow and Social Death and “Necrotic”
Enmeshments of Black Metal Theory,
Queer Theory, and Afro-Pessimist Theory
Furthermore, the meandering, non-progressive and osten-
sibly “pointless” repetitiveness in resonance with figurations of
exhaustion and death of Xasthur’s and other black metal artists’
music is frequently transposed to their visual representations, not
only via the wearing of corpse paint, but in Xasthur’s music videos
for instance (cf. Xasthur 2010; 2012), through the way in which
his repetitive and slow wandering around seems to mirror the
video footage of the wandering of homeless and other marginal-
ized and debilitated people, who face social and/or “slow death,”
to use a term used by Lauren Berlant and Jasbir Puar. Drawing on
Berlant, Puar describes “slow death” as: “the debilitating ongoing-
ness of structural inequality and suffering.” (Puar 2011: 149) Is this
wandering of Xasthur amongst subjects who are marked for social
and/or slow death evocative of “a way of being together in bro-
kenness,” (Halberstam 2013: 12) and the potential basis for, speak-
ing with Cathy J. Cohen, a queer “politics where the non-normative
and marginal [italics in original, M.H.] position of punks, bulldag-
gers, and welfare queens, for example, is the basis for progres-
sive transformative coalition work?” (Cohen 1997: 438) Or should
one, taking into consideration Xasthur’s privileged white male
positionality, interpret Xasthur’s wandering alignment with the
64
socially dead as a form of “slumming” as well? A possible counter-
example from the field of Black Metal itself might be the Japanese
all-female Black Metal band Gallhammer, in whose music videos
and lyrics wandering in slowness also plays a major role, along
with explicit calls for patricide, which could be read as potentially
anti-patriarchal statements (cf. Gallhammer 2007).
However, to return to an earlier train of thought, perhaps the
“necro” could also be regarded as a queer sensibility, which might
be relatable to José Esteban Muñoz’s reflections on “minoritarian”
feelings, as feelings, which are not legible in relation to normative
affective categories (Muñoz 2006: 677-679). The “necro” could then
be rendered as a way of dwelling in these unnameable feelings
without being able to “work through” them “properly,” and also
through the inclusion of instances of affectlessness. Following the
zombies on screen, the “necro” could be imagined as a gesture of
repetitive wandering around, digging into and exploring the raw-
ness of these feelings without pathologizing them and forcing
them into established hegemonic terminologies of negative affect.
Reflections on the “necro” might perhaps also be helpful in
facilitating answers to the question of how theoretical concerns
with non-human or inhuman non-life, like in black metal theory,
might be supplemented by reflections on the exclusion of mar-
ginalized and debilitated bodies from the realm of human life, and
their captivity in a state of social death and/or slow death.
As a sensibility, the “necro” could probably be compared to
other queer sensibilities like camp. Like camp, the “necro” seems to

exhibit a particular relation to the past, however, a far less optimis-
tic one, more like a turn towards and residing in the particularly vio-
lent events and scenarios of the past that nonetheless leaves space
for the development for other, less hurtful, intensities, and also for
the exploration and appropriation of artifacts of the past whose
queer potentials may be necromantically summoned, like in Bruce
LaBruce’s integration of Maya Deren’s work into his films. Further-
more, perhaps the “necro” might even allow the “world-without-us”
to dis/identificatorily pose in a kind of “drag of human life.”
As a queer sensibility and an assemblage of politico-aesthetic
practices, the “necro” does not seem to follow a simple logic of op-
position or transgression. And with regard to the dispute between
renditions of queerness as either relational or anti-relational in the
field of queer theory, the “necro” seems to be marked by an un-
decidable enmeshment of relationality and anti-relationality. This
becomes visible for instance in the zombie films of Bruce LaBruce,
where graphic depictions of violent, risky or “extreme” sex acts are
combined with scenes of shared everydayness, like hanging out on
a couch, having a coffee or sharing a smoke. Scenes from the affec-
tive sphere of the everyday are cut into scenes of body horror and
explicit sex. This also leaves room for the exploration of the inten-
sity of boredom or dullness for example, and other “minor feelings.”
I would like to conclude by pointing out that besides Bruce
LaBruce’s films and the DSBM acts that where mentioned there are
most likely further, and perhaps less obvious, aesthetic artifacts
and practices that might be included in a possible queer archive
65
of the “necro”: e.g., the experimental poetic works of Unica Zürn
and the German second-wave feminist magazine Die Schwarze
Botin (transl.: “the black messenger/summoner”), or also M. Nour-
beSe Philip’s ZONG!, Matana Roberts’ COIN COIN project, as well
as boychild’s and Mykki Blanco’s (Post-)Drag performances, which
due to the latter artists’ positionality as people of color also render
the evocation of renditions of “necropolitics” from black studies far
more convincing and their necro practices might perhaps (tenta-
tively) speak to the pressing question raised by Saidiya Hartman:
[H]ow does one rewrite the chronicle of a death foretold and
anticipated, as a collective biography of dead subjects, as
a counter-history of the human, as the practice of freedom?
How can narrative embody life in words and at the same time
respect what we cannot know? How does one listen for the
groans and cries, the undecipherable songs, the crackle of fire
in the cane fields, the laments for the dead, and the shouts of
victory, and then assign words to all of it?
(Hartman 2008: 3)
What occurs to me towards the end of this article - writing from
the position of a mixed-race Black Metal aficionado - is that any fur-
ther exploration of the “necro” inevitably seems to call for responses to
the open question of how to render the relation between Blackness
as a trope of negativity, death, and “non-life” in predominantly white
counter- or sub-cultural contexts, like Black Metal (queer and/or oth-
erwise), and Blackness as a social positionality and social reality.

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 68

Photo by Lazara Marinković


Hard To Swallow: Porn Star
James Deen’s Arousing Work
аnd Young Women’s Fandom
Jennifer Vilchez
Abstract: In her seminal work Hard Core (1999), Linda Williams ar-
gues that pornography shows through its form a response and
reaction to changing gender relations, reflecting a certain status
and understanding of these relations in society. In this study, I
discuss some ways women may be using pornography for their
own purposes by looking at recent media discourses surround-
ing the popularity of contemporary porn star James Deen and his
supposed young women fans. I consider what is being said about
women using pornography and how women are speaking about
sex. When talking about porn, it is easy to believe that it is still
mostly for men and about women. How pornographic content is
being shared by Deen’s online fandom seems to demonstrate how
this is a minimizing and erroneous assumption. By looking at on-
line Deen fan sites and the interaction with the mainstream het-
erosexual pornography genre in which he is situated, I discuss and
compare related contemplations in current media of female sexu-
ality and the expressions of female sexuality by his online fans. I
concentrate on the socially communicated pleasure from women
- supposedly younger women - who are connected to the online
69
social media platform Tumblr. How are young women expressing
their sexuality online and what are its possible greater implica-
tions in regards to understanding pornography? How does Deen
fit in all this and what does it mean that he is a polemical figure
in porn? Deen has been called both a feminist hero and a sex-
ist, pointing to his almost-romantic approach to sex-on-camera
and his BDSM work as evidence of both positions. The discourses
around Deen and his fandom point to the continuing anxiety sur-
rounding female sexuality as well as the possibility of new consid-
erations regarding its taboo.
Key words: James Deen, porn, pornography, social media, female
sexuality, online fandom, gender
Introduction
In the forward to her seminal work Hard Core (1999), Linda Wil-
liams points to an “invidious” double standard that presents itself if
she would admit to having enjoyed any part of the pornographic
scenes she studied (Williams 1999: xi). She writes that with an ad-
mission she could risk her authority and credibility but not doing
so could also feed into the notion that the nonsexual woman is the
good, credible one. These assumptions continue to occur, even with-
in the study of porn that still finds itself often divided between “anti”
or “pro” positions well after the porn wars of the 1970s and 1980s.

Porn is one of the biggest industries in the world and
one of the most profitable markets online. Communities are
forming out of online porn and it is “consumed, used, inter-
preted and integrated into the everyday lives of different indi-
viduals and audiences” (Lindgren 2010). When I first encoun-
tered porn star James Deen’s online fandom, I was surprised
to see how open his female fans were in discussing what they
liked about him and his work. On Twitter, a search of recent
top public tweets mentioning James Deen include comments
such as “I absolutely love his face,”, “i just watched like 3 james
deen vids and maaan california in a drought but i sure as hell
am not”; and “pretty sure I’m in love with @JamesDeen.”1 There
seems to be little shame in these honest and sometimes ex-
plicit admissions of enjoyment of Deen and his work. Such
openness did not stay unnoticed for long by those outside
of these social networks and in the past few years Deen has
become a controversial figure because of his supposed young
female fan base.
Various televised, print and online media outlets in the
US, UK and Australia began to report to parents about the pos-
sible dangers to their teenage daughters if they viewed por-
nography and the threat of Deen’s attractiveness and acces-
sibility. This media discourse seemed to be promoting proper
2
1 For a live search of James Deen on Twitter, visit: https://twitter.com/
search?q=james%20deen&src=typd.
2 All news media coverage, reports and profiles used in this study come
70
young female sexuality that enforces the notion of good and
bad women and girls. The bad woman was somehow too in
touch with her sexuality. As Williams’ remarks, the good wom-
an is the nonsexual one. These are the persistent and recog-
nizable gendered stereotypes and expectations linked to
femininity and women involved in the female sexuality taboo.
When it comes to girls and young women, this is even more
enforced. The younger a woman is the stronger this split be-
tween good and bad can seem to be and this has become a
“crucial aspect of societal denial of female adolescent sexual
desire.” (Tolman 2009: 12) These young women fans seem to
be reworking these stereotypes and demonstrating their fal-
libility, consciously or not, when sharing Deen’s porn online.
By looking at Deen, his supposed online young women
fans and the genre of heterosexual pornography in which he
works, I wish to contribute to the project of recognizing a fe-
male sexuality that refutes the good and bad dialectic as well
as one that affirms women as consumers of porn. I consider
how women, young or not, are using pornography for their
own purposes. How are Deen’s young women fans expressing
sexual desire and interest online in the pornography in which
he stars? Much of it has to do with his perceived unpresuming
attractiveness and approachable personality.
from these English-speaking regions.

The Boy-Next-Door
James Deen has been called “the boy-next-door” by news
outlets and magazines such as Metro, ABC’s Nightline, GQ, and
The Hollywood Reporter.3 Esquire magazine even goes as far as to
nickname him the “Ryan Gosling of Porn”, reporting that “[a]t five
eight and 140lbs, Deen is the anti-macho stud, a slender, nerdy
boy-next-door… a stark reprieve from the anabolic sex brute who
became the porn norm.” (Bhattacharya 2013) Calling Deen the
boy-next-door suggests his apparent approachability and what
is referred to repeatedly as a more “nerdish,” “nice guy” look com-
pared to the “typical” porn masculine stud who is overly macho,
muscular and large. Descriptions include:
In adult films, as the people who make and sell them like to
call them, male performers traditionally have an out-on-parole
look: they’re all brawn and chain bracelets and middle-distance
stares. Deen is different.
(Cadzow 2014)
With his curly brown hair, soft blue eyes and fit body, this
25-year-old porn sensation from Pasadena, Calif., looks like he
3 Metro’s Smallman calls Deen “eloquent, skinny and boy-next-door hand-
some” (2013); Nightline refers to him as “Porn’s Boy Next Door” (Vega 2012),
GQ calls him “The Well Hung Boy Next Door” (Tower 2012), and The Hol-
lywood Reporter tags Deen “The Hardest-Working Boy Next Door in Porn”
(Miller 2012).
71
could be your neighbor, your classmate or that cute guy at the
bar you’re hoping will catch your eye.
(Vega 2012)
Deen’s approachability is designated as something “differ-
ent” in porn but ordinary outside of it. This makes him both ac-
cessible and provocative. He is referred to as a unique success as
a male porn star while also accused of luring young girls to porn
with his very success.
According to these media sources, much of Deen’s likabil-
ity stems from his public image and personality. Deen is known
to update his Twitter account various times daily, maintaining his
own blog and even responding personally to followers. His online
personality is seen as flirty, open, funny which encourages his fol-
lowers to engage with him constantly. On Twitter, his public pro-
file includes tweets by the actor such as:4
Sep 29: GIRL!!!!!! you’re like ice cream in the morning... i know i
shouldn’t but i’m gonna do it anyway and no one will be able
to stop me
Sep 27: i really dislike drugs... like all of them
Sep 21: what does it mean when reading someone’s name
makes your dick hard?
4 His Twitter handle is @JamesDeen.

Although Deen does sex for a living, his online posts are not
exclusively sexual and his followers and fans enjoy this.5 Deen
tweets frequently, over 12,000 times since joining the network in
January 2009. This is part of his public image, not only a porn star
and an idol but your online friend.
Deen grew up in California around the San Fernando Valley -
acclaimed capital of the porn industry - and has frequently shared
he always knew he wanted to be a porn star. Born Bryan Sevilla,
6
he took on the stage name “James Deen” as an homage to James
Dean, American actor, cultural and sexual icon. Like Gosling men-
tioned above, Dean was a masculine Hollywood male figure who
was highly sexualized, marketable and identifiable. This stage
name provides Deen recognizability. It is a nickname he had since
an adolescent because he smoked cigarettes and wore a leather
jacket. (Spitznagel 2013)
According to the Internet Adult Film Database, Deen has
performed in over 1894 titles since 2004 and has directed 29 titles
since 2008. He is found throughout online pornography sites and
communities, featured on his own site JamesDeen.com and ap-
pearing frequently at Kink.com, Burning Angel, Brazzers, New Sen-
sations and Woodrocket. His debut was in Art School Sluts (2004), a
feature-length narrative porno with indie rockers, goths and other
5 For example, @RonBites tweets to @JamesDeen: “I love how you’re a porn-
star yet none of your tweets are sexual. #coolguy.”
6 In an interview for Men’s Health he shares that in elementary school his an-
swer to what do you want to do when you grow up was porn (Haller 2013).
72
scenester university types. This is one example from his growing
repertoire that includes hard-core and soft-core narrative parodies
and alternative themes that may also represent BDSM, role play,
anal and group sex. Deen has covered various porn genres but he
has always been exclusively heterosexual. Therefore, his fans con-
sume directly from the mainstream heterosexual pornography he
works in.
Porn Consumption
Both women and men are consuming porn but women
are yet to be the main audience to whom it is marketed or
created. Men are considered the main audience of pornog-
raphy because it is mostly and specifically produced with his
pleasure and gaze in mind. In its heterosexual form, it is the
woman who is in the center, her body is acted upon and she
acts upon his body. She demonstrates her reaction to the man,
be it pleasure or not, for the bodies of women on screen have
“traditionally” been the “embodiments [her emphasis] of plea-
sure.” (Williams 1991: 4) As also noted by Foucault (1978), the
“sexually saturated female body” arouses such reactions. It
is the “confessions” of such a saturated body in pleasure that
pornography desires to provide. (Williams 1991: 48-50) Typi-
cally, porn aims to show female pleasure for a male gaze and

the male’s proof of pleasure (the “money shot”7) for his gaze as
well. This is the same formula in the majority of Deen’s work al-
though he does act in soft-core scenes such as for X-Art.com.8
If mainstream porn is directed towards the adult male, how
are Deen’s female fans consuming the porn he stars in?
Since much of the controversy of Deen lies in his sup-
posed teenage female fans, it is important to consider what is
known about young persons consuming pornography. When it
comes to young people, online pornography is often seen as a
risk to their well-being and their sexual development. (McKee
2010)9 In a US study using data from the Youth Internet Safety
Survey,10 characteristics associated with “self-reported por-
nography seeking behavior” by youth online and offline were
found to be “significantly more likely to be male, with only 5%
7 The convention of external penile ejaculation, often in the open mouth
or on the face, is known vernacularly inside and outside the industry as the
“money shot.”
8 X-Art.com promotes itself as a site of “beautiful erotica.”
9 Although the internet is seen as the potentially most available means to
access porn, a recent study suggests that traditional, offline pornographic
media (magazines and television) was seen to be associated with greater
amounts of pornographic consumption by adolescents. (Ybarra, Strasburg-
er, and Mitchell 2014) As this is contrary to popular belief, such research
demonstrates that there is still much left to be understood about how
youth are consuming and affected by internet pornography. Online porn
appears as more consumable and accessible, but this may not be the case.
10 The Youth Internet Safety Survey is a nationally representative, cross-
sectional telephone survey of 1501 children and adolescents (ages 10-17
years).
73
of self-identified seekers being female.” (Ybarra and Mitchell
2005: 473) In another study, a survey of some 500 New Eng-
land undergraduates in the US showed that 72.8% of its par-
ticipants (93.2% of boys, 62.1% of girls) had seen online por-
nography before the age of 18. (Sabina, Wolak, and Finkelhor
2008: 1) In this same study, although gender was considered,
the discussion remarked on how more research is necessary
as the “diversity both between and within genders, [suggests]
that relying on gendered stereotypes about reactions to on-
line pornography can obscure the full picture of how youth
respond.” (ibid.: 2)
Like young people, women are overlooked as consumers of
porn. Although still significantly less in number than men who
claim to use porn, the numbers of women are rising. In a study
of US women and pornography from 1973-2010, data suggested
there was a “a slight overall increase over time” of its consumption
by women and that increased internet access “resulted in a more
stable percentage” of 18-30 year old female pornography con-
sumers since the mid-1990s. (Wright, Bae, and Funk 2012: 1136)
According to the Pew Research Center, 8% of adult females in the
US watch adult-rated videos online. (Purcel 2013: 11) Whether or
not these statistics provide adequate or realistic numbers is be-
side the point. What is significant is that women are slowly being
recognized as porn consumers. This alongside new ways of en-
gaging socially online has given rise to an active body of female
porn viewers sharing their fantasies and desires.

Young Female Fandom
According to media sources, young women and adolescent
girls are the main fans of James Deen and they are talking about
what they like and want to see.11 Their online fandom provides
platform for this dialogue. When discussing online fandom in his
study of the mainstream heterosexual porn forum FreeOnes and
its almost exclusively male users, Simon Lindgren (2010) points to
the rise of a homosocial subculture formed through online inter-
actions with community members and how these men use porn.
Deen’s online fandom demonstrates that women also watch and
engage in pornography as a means to express their desires and
sexuality. They share online content that depict sexual acts that
highlight their favorite aspects about Deen as do the men who
rank, catalogue and follow female porn stars on FreeOnes. By visit-
ing a highly visited Tumblr fan blog of James Deen (jamesdeen.
tumblr.com), one can observe the media content being shared is
comparable to that in Lindgren’s study but more hard-core than
FreeOnes’s “rather straightforward, and established heterosexual
11 I was unable to confirm any actual numbers of young women fans of
Deen on popular social media sites. Disregarding gender, he has 25,000 fol-
lowers on social media giant Facebook and over 180,000 followers on Twit-
ter. Although I was unable to secure quantitative date or statistics through
online searches on specific James Deen fan sites (apart from data about
jamesdeen.tumblr.com provided by email), various media sources have
gone along with the notion that there exists a large young female fan base
who network with one another online.
74
porn regime… rooted in a taste for somewhat soft core imag-
ery.” (Lindgren 2010: 181). The Deen fan Tumblr shows BDSM with
Deen as dominant, girl-on-girl with Deen present, close-ups of
Deen receiving fellatio and tableaus of Deen having anal sex with
a female porn star. There is a network of content exchange related
to sexual desire and pleasure with the purpose of celebrating its
star. It is often far from soft-core.
According to this Tumblr’s about page, the site is run by a 24
year old named Lauren from New York.12 Lauren’s fan blog content
is varied but consists mostly of visual media. There are images of
Deen caressing and kissing women, but also shots of him shov-
ing his hands in their crotches and over their mouths. Oral, vagi-
nal, anal, group and rough sex as well shots of Deen at red carpet
events or from magazines are posted and liked by the blog’s fol-
lowers. Comments on these images range from simple approval
(“Fav”) to graphic responses (“I want your handprints on my ass”).
In a reblogged image posted of James Deen and female
porn star Karmen Karma, a screen shot from Learning the Hard Way
(2014), Deen is putting his hand inside Karma’s mouth.13 She is na-
ked and bound, with her arms behind her back. Deen is dressed all
12 My gratitude to Lauren for responding to my email inquiries regarding
her Tumblr blog. According to her email response, she has about 14,724 fol-
lowers in total gaining around 600 to 900 additional followers per month.
She receives approximately 10,000 notes (likes and reblogs) per month on
from her visitors.
13 This image can be accessed at: http://jamesdeen.tumblr.com/
post/97442955375/james-deen-and-karmen-karma-learning-the-hard.

in black, kneeling down over her. The image contains 192 notes.14
Two users who reblogged this image themselves shared the fol-
lowing comments:
msdoctorlewis: I really liked this.
madnesssanityhellparadise: update could never be a lesbi-
an based on my body’s reaction to pretty much anything
James Deen. i mean fuuuck.
According to their Tumblr sites, both of these Deen fans
are likely female. They both repost this image of Deen and ex-
press their approval but one goes as far to say it affirms her het-
erosexuality. Deen fans may be stating what they like and at
times affirming their heterosexuality as in the case of madness-
sanityhellparadise but this does not address this Tumblr blog’s
core theme. These supposed young female fans are interacting
to celebrate Deen and his performance. In an animated GIF of
Deen spanking a women with her hands holding her hair above
her head with 3,770 notes, comments included:15
cbrandy69: yes…just like that, I been such a naughty little girl…
domesticgoddesses: You worshiped her, but your neighbor
14 See Footnote 40.
15 This GIF can be accessed at: http://jamesdeen.tumblr.com/
post/97177365275/xpin-up-girlx-wont-you-do-this-to-me-please.
75
made her strip just to suck his cock and then spanked her for
being such a silly…
princess-rachelx3: Love this!
By creating a narrative fantasy around the image, these
female users are speaking a sense of pleasure and desire while
addressing some preference of sexual activity in their cele-
bration of all things Deen. The notion of being a good or bad
woman for viewing porn does not function here. Sexuality can
be openly expressed. The proclamation of loving what is be-
ing shared can be understood in two ways. It speaks to both
sexual and pornographic tastes. These users are speaking
about sex while exchanging and interacting with mainstream
heterosexual porn - regardless of whether they are the actual
marketed audience. Perhaps they are able to do so because of
their online social spaces.
Deen’s fans are accessing X-rated content and moving it
off of its conventional platforms to share them on social me-
dia sites like Tumblr. When Deen’s fans change the platform
of where his porn work is being consumed, is it a “cleaning
up” to make it accessible outside of a mainstream masculine-
charged environment? One can argue whether or not hard-
core pornography has “cleaned up” its act or revised itself un-
der the “scrutiny of female eyes.” (Williams 1991: 232) Although
women are also now making and marketing porn addressed

to themselves, the market is still fairly male-centric and one
may even question whether “women’s porn” is actually pref-
erable. Perhaps the exchange of pornographic Deen content
on platforms like Tumblr is not a “cleaning up” but a remodel-
ing of content for more accessible consumption that reconsid-
ers how mainstream heterosexual porn can speak outside of
a dominant male economy. Doing so may be creating a more
accessible space for young people and women to share what
they like outside of actual porn sites geared mostly toward
adult male viewers like PornHub, RedTube and Brazzers.
Unlike the forum Lindgren studies, Tumblr is not a so-
cial media blogging platform where many comments are ex-
changed. There are only likes and reblogs. This platform re-
lies mostly on visual content than text. Many Tumblr users do
not need to have individual profiles (although some do have
biographies or about pages) and avatars are not of personal
photographs. According to the GlobalWebIndex,16 around 34
million internet users around the globe say they contribute to
or use Tumblr on a monthly basis. They have a very active user
base with 46% of users being between the ages of 16 and 24.
It is highly probable that users on jamesdeen.tumblr.com are
in this same age bracket.
According to statistics, users may be young but are they
mostly female? I have approached my study of the Tumblr
page with this assumption because it is the treated as fact in
16 As reported by Cooper Smith (2013) for Business Insider.
76
media discourses; however, I encountered some discrepan-
cies in my research. For one, this Tumblr site never provides
a direct articulation of a community, we or gender of its us-
ers. Secondly, when clicking on users on this Tumblr site one
quickly notices some visitors to the site may actually be male
users as based on usernames and avatars that directly include
masculine references like juancarls and badboy164. Males are
also engaging with this James Deen fan site. Does this change
the idea of a young female fandom of Deen? I think not, it in
fact provides a more complex reading of what young female
fandom represents rather than its actuality. There are young
female Deen fans on this Tumblr site, but how young and how
many is unknown.17 However, it is observable that they are in-
teracting with male fans. Indirectly, there is a space in which
male and female users can freely and openly like and share
content amongst themselves without context, shame or polic-
ing of gendered expectations.18
17 Anonymity online will always obscure statistics and data that provide
numbers for gender, sex, age, etc. to a certain extent.
18 Of course, sexual preference may be referenced as did madnesssanity-
hellparadise; however, this was not shaming or policing but affirmation of
self-identity. In looking at heterosexual mainstream porn, I am not referenc-
ing pornography directed towards LGBT or fetish communities. They are
not elaborated upon within the scope of this study but this is not intended
to invisibilize their consumption and interaction of this pornography or
pornography in general or to disregard their alterity in front of heteronor-
mative gendered expectations.

Young Female Sexuality
In media that profile Deen and his work, his performances
are discussed as both positive and negative towards women. He
has been called both a “feminist hero” (Baker 2012) and “sexist”
(Oswaks 2012), pointing to his almost-romantic even vanilla ap-
proach to sex-on-camera (kissing, holding hands, gazing) and his
BDSM work as evidence of both positions.19 These arguments try-
ing to address female sexuality are falling back into the trap of
good/bad and clean/dirty sexuality.
In 2012, Amanda Hess reported for Good Magazine that
Deen is an “almost exclusive example” of a “young, heterosexual,
non-repulsive man” in the industry that demonstrates what wom-
en want. She is one of the first journalists to provide a profile on
Deen that discusses young female fans - many whom are teenag-
ers - and their active porn consumption and use of social media to
19 Very recently, Jordan Taylor (2014) at the New York Observer discussed
why it did not matter if Deen does not identify as a feminist despite others
giving him the title. Taylor warns that “[t]he fault lies with us, for wanting so
badly [author’s emphasis] for there to be some kind of feminist porn hero,
that we assigned Mr. Deen a role he never set out to play,” but this “doesn’t
change the fact that his work is, for many, much more palatable than a lot of
the other stuff out there. The style of his videos might not be fueled by any
passion for gender politics, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are
[author’s emphasis] uncommonly sensual, and that Mr. Deen does [author’s
emphasis] seem to enjoy pleasuring his female costars more than a lot of
male porn stars out there, and that’s all really cool. Simply put, he’s still re-
ally good at making porn. But let’s just leave it at that.”
77
promote their fandom.20 Hess interviews a young fan named Em-
ily, an 18 year old with an active online Tumblr blog about Deen.
Hess reports that for his teenage fans like Emily, Deen is “a window
to a world of sexual expression that had previously been no-girls-
allowed… it’s an aspect of their sexuality that they’re exploring
exclusively on the internet.”
Through fan interviews, Hess shares how Deen’s female
fans like his intimacy and personality in porn performances
pointing to Deen’s charm and connection to his female co-stars,
not really engaging with the more hard-core aspects of his work.
Although this is done with the positive aim of approaching the
question of what women desire and want in porn, Hess feeds
into the notion that mainstream porn as such is not the porn
women want and that Deen is desirable because he appears
dateable even marriageable. This seems in contrast to what she
reports Deen says himself:
“I don’t know a single woman that watches any of these porn-
for-women Playgirl type of things,” Deen says. Most women?
“They want to see porno. They’re watching what they want to
watch, regardless of what’s marketed toward them.”
20 ABC’s Nightline special on Deen is often cited as a preliminary source
that reports on his teenage female fandom; however, many point to the
absence of credit of Hess’s work that preceded the primetime special. Tra-
cy Clark-Flory (2012) points to how Nightline’s report on Deen is a “rip-off”
of Hess’s profile and Washington Post’s Erik Wemple (2012) also discusses
whether or not Hess should have been credited by Nightline.

Porno is sex-on-the-screen and I consider what Deen says to
be true. Deen may be celebrated because he performs intima-
cy but his work is there to show sex in all its aspects.
Many of these media discourses are guiding discussions in
specific ways that continue to intentionally exclude female en-
gagement with pornography as such. For Nightline, Deen’s ap-
proachability is not welcomed but dangerous because it dem-
onstrates that the porn industry is trying to reach a teenage girl
demographic, “evidence” of this being the internet “sensation”
around Deen. Young women and girls are not supposed to be
the targets of the porn industry, but they are consuming it and
parents might find this “disturbing”. However, Deen is simultane-
ously described to be likable and non-disturbing because he is
“a porn star who holds hands with his leading ladies, who gazes
into their eyes and is quick to be romantic.” (Vega 2012) According
to Nightline, young women are not supposed to be a target porn
demographic but they do like porn, especially if it shows affection
and romance. Even with the hesitant and problematic acknowl-
edgement of the existence of a young female porn audience, their
tastes are assumed in very gendered ways that place romance on
a desirability hierarchy.
Deen’s accessibility is polemical not only because it appar-
ently lures in young women but because it is could be understood
as a possible “softening” or “cleaning up” of the traditional male
porn star persona. His public personality seems to make him seem
78
less offensive while still sexual. It is okay to like the boy-next-door
but not the macho man. What does this reveal about expectations
of young female sexuality? If young women (and girls) are expect-
ed to have proper sexualities - to desire charming, less macho men
who don’t mind kissing and eye gazing - what does it mean when
they desire bondage or rough sex? Are they bad girls? Is this dirty
sex? More needs to be said of those female fans who celebrate
this aspect of Deen and his work within mainstream porn and out-
side of a study of BDSM or fetish subcultures.
Molly Oswaks (2012) for The Atlantic asks in her article on
Deen: “[w]hy at this late date are we still reinforcing the idea that
women are modest and fragile and in need of gender-specific ac-
commodations?” Although Deen does do BDSM work, Oswaks dis-
likes Deen because she does not find him hard-core enough.21 Still,
her question is compelling. Even Deen says women want porno
yet when women and porn are discussed together it seems porn
takes on another role. Only when pornography is approached in
21 Baker (2012) reports Oswaks’ email response regarding Deen perform-
ing “vanilla” sex and “lady porn”: “I know plenty of woman, including my-
self, who don’t get anything from the more ‘respectful’ angle of ‘porn-for-
ladies.’ I like very kinky shit, I’m into BDSM, I’m also a feminist - people have
a very hard time accepting that those aren’t all mutually exclusive. Which is
a shame.” Although what Oswaks says is assuring and provocative, her out-
spokenness is not reflective of all women - perhaps plenty of women, but
most likely not openly so. If calling oneself a feminist currently still meets
criticism, misunderstanding and/or opposition, so does the open admis-
sion of kink and BDSM which are often related to discussions of violence,
trauma and psychological issues.

the same manner when discussing men and women will there
open a moment when it may be more illuminating to discuss what
women want as porn consumers. It provides a means to discuss
pornography as such in relation to female sexuality and desire.
But first, female sexuality needs to move away from the good and
bad dialectic. As Linda Williams rightly notes,
If those “sexual things” are no longer dirty, if sexual desire and
pleasure are no more unseemly in women than in men, then
perhaps pornography will serve women’s fantasies as much as
it has served men’s.
(Williams 1989: 277)
Conclusions
The discussions around Deen’s repertoire and persona dem-
onstrate some ways porn may be moving away from the idea of
being mostly for men and about women. Even if this movement
is difficult to follow, Deen’s fandom signifies how the pornogra-
phy he stars in can be considered for women and about him (even
if done so in stereotypically gendered terms). Most significant is
that through fandom of Deen, his fans - young and/or female -
are directly engaged with mainstream pornography as it exists al-
though it is redisplayed and reinterpreted.
The fandom of Deen is a potential catalyst through which his
fans openly like and comment on sexual desire and preferences.
79
By being his fans, liking or desiring Deen, they are moved to talk
about sexual desire and fantasy. In this paper, I was hoping to di-
rect attention to the polemical figure of Deen in order to promote
a discussion of how women use and speak of porn.
Media discourses said that women want more Deen in porn,
his charm and his accessibility. I find this to be a very limited read-
ing as this feeds back into stereotypical gendered ideas that wom-
en only want good sex: soft, nice and loving sex. When visiting
his fan sites, the content is hard-core but this is mostly discussed
when it is related to the “disturbing” rise of teenage female porn
viewers instead of what they get out of viewing it.
Although much of the work and analysis represented here
only provides a partial overview of the possibilities for further
considering young people and women as porn viewers, my inten-
tion was to reflect on the necessity of such research and to open
discussions on how women may express their sexuality. Female
sexuality may not be as taboo as it once was, but there are still
highly gendered and stereotypical ideas regarding it. There is still
a very masculine economy to discussing preferences and explic-
it sexual desires when in the realm of mainstream pornography.
Media discourses have shown this continues to be reinforced.
Overall, I wished to bring attention to the necessity of consider-
ing young women as users of pornography. This is needed to more
thoroughly understand what is at work in the study of pornographies
and its viewers, keeping in mind gendered perspectives and social
expectations of sexuality. To this day the taboo notions of good and

bad women and sex exists. Fandom of Deen provides one way that
women are beginning to move away from such roles. Mandie Wil-
liams (2013) at The Gloss wrote “an angry feminist letter” to Deen that
concludes: “keep making ladies feel good about their sexual desires,
like more men should.” When it comes to porn, women should feel
good about their sexual desires but it is not just up to Deen or men. It
is also up to women themselves.
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Photo by Lazara Marinković


[ the space in between ]:
The Power of Contemporary Art
to Reimagine Gender
france rose
Abstract: An invaluable tool in LGBT-related activism is contempo-
rary art, but lacking is scholarly literature focusing on how and why
queer art can challenge heteronormativity, particularly gender norms.
Though artists have without a doubt had an impact on queer rights
for many decades, the author argues that art’s potential has not yet
been met. Artistic practices, the author contends, need to better ex-
amine the parallel between the process of gendering between indi-
viduals and the process of artistic production and experience. In both
cases, meaning is created through socially-informed interpretative
processes. In order to effectively address gender issues, artists must
understand how to construct artwork with the greatest chance of im-
pact. This is not a solitary effort, however; art’s capacity to destabilise
heteronormativity relies on collaboration. The author hopes to inspire
dialogue and motivate experimentation by others, so that together
artistic practices can contribute greatly to the LGBT movement.
Key words: trans, transgender, art, Art [] Gender [] Art, activism,
“the space in between,” queer, identity
83
The body is a canvas, on which a multitude of identities are
constructed through adorned signifiers. One of the most impact-
ful identities one carries is gender. Employed almost universally1
as an indication of one’s biological sex and therefore one’s as-
signed social position, gender is embodied and performed in a
complex myriad of ways, all of which are informed by the person’s
particular socio-cultural context. The metaphor of the body as a
“canvas” is appropriate in this way, as it is a tabula rasa which lacks
intrinsic meaning. Rather, from within and without, meanings are
from the moment of birth inscribed on the body, shaping it into a
particular social being (Douglas 2005).
The Enlightenment Period of the 18th Century fuelled
the conceptual conflation of gender and sex (Foucault 2012)
in the global West, as gender as an identity and embodiment
was pathologized as an inevitable by-product of one’s biologi-
cal sex. However, after two centuries of perpetual feminine/
masculine dichotomisation in every societal domain, we are
finally beginning to unravel some of this heteronormative2
1 Some scholars contend that gender is not a central component to all so-
cial groups. For example, Nigerian academic Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí argues
that the Yoruba tribe in Western Africa has not historically employed gen-
der as an organising concept. However, this appears to be changing now
due to colonialism.
2 Heteronormativity is a system of power relations, upheld by wide-ranging
and tacit societal consent, which governs the systematic and unquestion-
able alignment of gender, sex, and sexuality. Those who do not comply are
punished through social devaluation and often ostracisation.

mess. The rise of poststructuralist thought over the past half
century has given way to increasing gender norm deconstruc-
tion, both in theory and practice. At the forefront of this phe-
nomenon has been the feminist movement, which ignited an
enduring series of battles to strike down the monolithic hier-
archy of gendered power relations and place women on equal
footing with men. Though this movement has been a neces-
sary precursor since it has brought to question the legitimacy
of gender inequality, the erupting transgendered and non-
normatively gendered3 movement focuses on destabilizing
this man-woman binaric structure. In the West, particularly re-
gions like Scandinavia which emphasize secular-rational and
self-expressionist values over traditional and survival values
(World Values Survey 2010), gender is being increasingly di-
vorced from sex and consequently gender identities as un-
bound by bodies’ formations are able to begin gaining validity
as complete and self-sustaining.
With the framework in place for trans* identities to be rec-
ognized and eventually accepted on a broad social scale, the
question is reformulated as to ask how this can be achieved.
Despite the progress the queer4 movement has made in terms
3 Henceforth termed “trans*.”
4 “Queer” in this writing is used as an umbrella term for anything non-heter-
normative. Please keep in mind that it is sometimes used to describe people
or things in a particular period or context that did not in fact use the term. For
the lack of a better term, and for the sake of brevity, “queer” is used.
84
of giving due weight to the “T” in “LGBT,” there remains a het-
eronormative undertone which pervades society by maintain-
ing the status quo of normative gender forms. This power is in-
sidious and ubiquitous, materializing surreptitiously through
“technologies of biopower” in Foucaultian terms (Foucault
1988). The measures taken to address this, therefore, must be
specifically formulated for exposing, challenging and altering
such pervasive power relations. As an artist and activist, I have
accepted the challenge of devising an effective approach for
just this cause and accordingly have turned to contemporary
art as a likely contender. The following writing unfolds the pro-
cess through which I have explored contemporary art as a tool
for combatting these heteronormative gender constructions,
leading to my central argument, which is that art has a unique
and often overlooked capacity for doing so. Finally, to put this
theory to practice, the thesis will close by examining a collec-
tion of my artwork.
Art as Activism
Art as a tool for generating discussion, prompting reconsid-
eration and, eventually, creating awareness around a social issue
has been used for quite some time. A notable example is artwork
created as a response to women’s socio-political devaluation in
the art scene of the 1960s and 70s. Women artists produced and
exhibited works which brought to question the legitimacy of art-

works given primary visibility, since validation through exposure
depended on the identity of the creator. Their work also highlight-
ed homophobia and racism, as it brought to the fore the perpet-
ual monopolization of the art world by white, heterosexual men.
Resultantly, many regard this period as having paved a path for
the emergence of contemporary art as activism in the 1980s (The
Art Story Foundation 2012).
However, as a good number of queer art historians would
quickly argue, art as “queer” - or otherwise termed - activism
existed long before the 1980s, with some insisting it started as
early as the 1920s (Blessing 1997). What differs about this art,
however, is that it was not, according to current definition, “con-
temporary” in style or execution (ibid.). Nonetheless, it was an
engaged response to existing social discourse and action around
queer (non-heteronormative) identities, drawing on what are
today regarded as the seedlings of queer theory (e.g. the work
of Sigmund Freud). Focusing on gender and sex were artists
such as Man Ray, Claude Cahun, Alice Austen, Cecil Beaton and
Brassaï, whose work primarily was produced in the 1920s and
30s. They created photographic works that (re)presented indi-
viduals in gender-bending clothes, positions, body part combi-
nations, and activities. Marcel Duchamp and Hannah Höch also
contributed similarly themed pieces, using media such as mate-
rial items and collage (respectively) for exploration.
Whether one classifies the works by such artists as “activ-
ist” in nature depends on how one defines “activist art.” This
85
term is sometimes substituted by alternatives, such as “protest
art,” “social movement art,” or “resistance art” (Protest Art n.d.),
but, semantics aside, the intent is the same: To impact upon its
viewers in a particular way.5 While there is no one single way
of doing so effectively, this text argues that understanding the
constructedness and artificiality of gender is imperative if one
is to unravel it through art.
Gender as an Artform
As written in this paper’s first lines, the body is like a can-
vas, a blank slate upon which signifiers are inscribed and from
which meanings are shared. Accordingly, gender can be regard-
ed as an art form in itself, as it drapes the body in material and
immaterial ways. It signifies outwardly the contents it serves
to represent. Its message informs others of the gendered in-
dividual’s positionality within a broader social fabric, and this
determines one’s supply of power in any given situation. Inter-
actions, whether interpersonal or indirect, are built on this es-
tablished power dynamic, and subjectivities are formed within
the posited parameters. We are who we are because of who we
are seen to be, and this is conditioned uniquely from moment
5 Arguably, one could venture so far as to say that all art can be regarded as
activist, since all art impacts in some way. However, for the sake of clarifica-
tion, activist art here concerns art that is socially and politically motivated
and intends to create change in a particular issue.

to moment, place to place. In other words, our gender only ex-
ists because of the gaze of others (indirect reference to Lacan
1978). It is in the space between the viewer and the viewed
that gender is both created and perpetuated as a system of
identification. This interchange between the viewer and the
viewed, Stuart Hall writes, “[is] mutually constitutive. Each is
implicated in the other; neither could exist without the other.”
(Hall 1999) Without the gaze, our bodies and everything on
them would be meaningless. Here lies the parallel central to
my thesis: in the same way that gender is constructed in the
space in between, so is the meaning of an artwork. To quote
Rancière, “the spectator makes the picture.” (Rancière, Car-
nevale and Kelsey 2007) Until the artwork is perceived, experi-
enced and interpreted, it is not complete.
Once I arrived at this point during my MFA, I began in-
vestigating whether this parallel could be manipulated for the
purpose of creating effective activist art6. My thesis question
developed into, “How can contemporary art reimagine gen-
der in such a way as to destabilize existing heteronormative
frameworks and make visible its alternative formations?” First
I had to determine what is different about encountering rep-
resentations or recreations of non-normative gender embodi-
ments in the gallery as opposed to in the general public space.
I suspected that there was a key difference and that it was this
6 I plan to delve deeply into this when I do my PhD. For now, I must limit my
scope.
86
difference that allowed for art to impact in a way that non-
art could not. Indeed, research uncovered sufficient evidence
to this effect, including an apt concept, termed the “willing
suspension of disbelief” by Samuel Coleridge in 1817 (Jack-
ons 1985: 314). Within an allocated exhibitory space, namely
galleries and museums, we as viewers lower our expectations
and allow ourselves to consider new ideas which our defense
systems would preclude elsewhere. Doing so “awaken[s] the
mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom,” according to
Coleridge (ibid.). The agency we have as a viewer in such a
space is also key, since we are empowered with the option of
terminating the engagement at our own volition. Overall the
result is, as Rancière had explained, that creative productions
have the capacity to create “modifications in the fabric of the
sensible.” (Rancière, Carnevale and Kelsey 2007) Art viewer-
ship has the potential to foster broadening modes of percep-
tion around gender, rendering seemingly contradictory ideas
into newly formed coherencies (Gordon 2009). Ingrained ex-
pectancies around gender norms are disrupted as new formu-
lations penetrate the opened mind and provide alternative
understandings. In sum, the “space in between” enables an in-
sidious approach to addressing an insidious social ill.
Queer art has of course been produced in a vast range
of ways, so it is important to explain that the proposed hy-
pothesis refers to a particular production method. Firstly, art
which seeks to subvert a viewer’s internalized notions requires

that it be relatable enough to draw the viewer in, but differ-
ent enough to challenge, on a subconscious level, what is ex-
pected.7 Familiar representations of the products of hetero-
normative processes serve well as the basis of an art piece, as
they allow for a viewer to engage with the work. However, it
is the strategic divergence from the adopted template which
disrupts one’s cultural practice of seeing and penetrate[s] the
viewer on a subconscious level, activating psychic responses
through meanings which cannot be expressed in words (Hall
1999). As W.J.T. Mitchell writes about a perceived image such
as a photograph, it should be regarded as “a complex interplay
between visuality, apparatus, institutions, bodies and figures.”
(Mitchel 2005) Therefore, impactful art relies on the systematic
re-articulation of social formations in such a way that renders
them self-contradictory. For example, the sexed body which
serves in general as a social site of political monopoly would
be appropriated and reformulated as a site of political protest.
This is done when it is reproduced within an artistic produc-
tion which uncovers the body’s virtuality (Halberstam 2005)
by exposing the material subjugation of gendering processes.
It is on this point that I now turn to my collection of artwork.
7 Refer to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development theory: McLeod
2010/2012.
87
Master Project
Throughout my master project, my works have consistently
employed dualities of sexed or gendered bodies. Eventually sev-
eral of the simpler works amalgamated into more complexly refer-
ential versions, as can be seen in my portfolio of works.
To begin, Self-Made is a set of two white shadow boxes, each
with a framed glass cover. In the glass, each has a printed trans-
parency featuring a silhouette, one of a male and the other of a
female. They sit on a stool with a solid but empty background,
holding a pencil to their body, evidently in the process of draw-
ing on oneself (see image below). Each figure’s genitalia and chest
are sketched out, in contrast to the otherwise featureless bodies.
Inside each box, three objects are displayed: a lipstick tube, razor,
and bra behind the female, and an undershirt, tie and deodorant
behind the male. Initially, the viewer could fairly infer that each
person’s act of drawing oneself into existence is the result of indi-
vidualized agency for self-production. However, with only the ba-
sic sexed features drawn, and the collection of typical gendered
objects visible through the empty bodily space remaining, there
seems to be a disconnection between the individual and its sup-
posed agency. Additionally, the boxes force a physical and spatial
polarity between the two individuals, a literal enactment of being
cubby-holed. Another conclusion begins to emerge that perhaps
the agency is just an illusion.
 88

viduals appear to creating themselves, they are in fact recreating

themselves within the parameters set by heteronormative con-
structions. Furthermore, their positioning (on a stool in an empty
space) suggests that they invite, perhaps even unconsciously, the
gaze of others. Just as their sex identities are not complete until
recognized and validated from the outside, the piece itself is not
complete in its meaning until the viewer interprets it. Accordingly,
this work seeks to underline the perpetuation of sexing the body
through the appropriation of the process itself.

The inspiration of this piece comes from poststructuralist re-

sponse to feminist metaphysics, whereby theorists (namely Judith
Butler [Zupančič 2012]) counter ontological claims by the latter
who argue that sex precedes gender since it is intrinsic and there-
fore not constructed. Butler contends that the “materiality of the
body [is] achieved through the performativity of gender.” (Butler
1993) In other words, sex as a distinguishing category is meaning- Self-Made
Two boxes with glass tops & printed transparencies 23 x 45 x 13 cm
less without gender; bodily variations materialize and are given 2015
significance through gender embodiment. So, while the indi- france rose
 89

Similarly, the work Untitled (Silencer Redone) presents

sexed bodies in an unusual and interesting way, with an end-
less line of alternating male and female bodies which actively
cover the chest and groin area of their sex counterpart. The
models look straight forward with little expression, ridding the
performance of emotional engagement in a way that suggests
it is a mechanical or perfunctory act of minimal consideration.
Indeed, subjectivities are generally formed without much con-
scious awareness. In this piece, the pair are caught in a cycle
of “othering,” whereby one covers the sexed parts of the other
while being simultaneously covered in equal measure. This
simple representation refers to rather more complex, age-old
tenant that the two sexes cannot exist without one another.
In this work, the opposition of the signifiers inscribed on each
subject (through bodily difference) constructs the binary sys-
tem through which each is made visible. Therefore, it is inev-
itable that the concealment of one’s most overtly sex-based
bodily traits (chest and groin) would lead to the dissolution of
the other’s socially-recognizable presence. Rather than being
intrinsically situated, this piece asserts, sex is actually a con-
ceptually constructed way of being identified.
Untitled (Silencer)
Print 200 cm x 100 cm
2015
france rose

 90

Done/Undone further delves into the question of the binary’s When I am behind the curtain, I am barely visible, only recognizable as
validity, both in terms of gender and sex, through a performance. To a figure that must manoeuver itself to the other side by choosing the
be provided at the opening of our exhibition (by MFA KiT/NTNU, 21 right clothes and adopting the appropriate mannerisms before it can
May 2015), I will perform a continual process of self-gendering. I had become visible again. It is a space of liminality, a necessary transition
once done this before, at Galleri Bokboden in Bergen form 6-8 March in order to become material again. Immediately after coming out, I
this year (2015), with my male-to-female colleague, Helle Grøndahl.8 work to complete my gendering process, before resting to allow for
In the upcoming exhibition, the performance will be identical except the public to see and accept me.
that I will perform alone. The organization of the performance is quite
simple, as depicted by the sketch below. There are three main spatial
elements: the masculine, the feminine and the center screen. On the
right side are men’s clothes, shoes and beer; on the left side women’s
clothes, stool, make-up table, mirror, wig and shoes; in the middle
stands a translucent room dividing screen behind which shines a
bright lamp. I repeatedly move from one end to the other, from man
to woman, using the screen (and the projected silhouette from the
lamp) as a changing space. When I emerge on the feminine side, I put
on the shoes and wig, sit on the stool, and don myself in jewelry and
make-up. I stand up, assess myself in the mirror, attend to errors, and
sit again for a while, still and quiet. Eventually, I wander behind the
screen, remove the dress and put on the pants and undershirt. Emerg-
ing on the masculine side, I use a face wipe to remove the make-up,
put on my vest, tie and coat, sip my beer, and pace or stand still and
quiet until it is time to begin again. The screen acts as the space in
between, completing a literal interpretation of the gender binary. Done/Undone
Performance ca. 55 minutes
8 Helle and I run a joint project entitled Art [] Gender [] Art, with which we 2015
give presentations, seminars and exhibitions on gender and art. france rose

This act of self-gendering is most often a private ritual, con-
fined to the home, and here I will make it accessible to the public.
What will be most compelling, I imagine, is that it is the same body
which achieves acceptable manhood then, moments later, wom-
anhood. As K. Hayles writes:
Embodiment is akin to articulation in that it is inherently per-
formative, subject to individual enactments, and therefore al-
ways to some extent improvisational. Whereas the body can
disappear into information with scarcely a murmur of protest,
embodiment cannot, for it is tied to the circumstances of the
occasion and the person.
(Hayles 1993: 156)
When read through a Foucaultian lens, Hayles’ statement
refers to the biopolitical powers which implicate the body in a
complex web of intersecting power relations (Foucault 1988).
This is embodiment - the constantly mutating inscription of sig-
nifications. As a transgender man in the early stages of physi-
cal transition, I can relate to this greatly. Whether I am seen
as a (butch) woman or (sometimes effeminate) man changes
up to several times a day depending on the context. In fact, I
at times have no idea how I am being regarded, and I find it
curiously enjoyable to try to figure it out by interpreting how
others interact with me. With this work, I seek to draw viewers
to question the legitimacy of gender as an impenetrably de-
fining element. I wish that they come to see it as a cloak that
91
we all strategically and often unconsciously wrap ourselves in
before stepping out into the world.
Finally, my most extensive and challenging piece is Conver-
sations with Myselves. It is a mixed media piece, involving two large
monitors flanking the short ends of a dining table. The table is
draped in a table cloth, with a tea set and plated snacks arranged.
Chairs are available for viewers to seat themselves and experi-
ence the work. The dynamism comes from the videos playing on
the monitors (refer to the mock-up image below). Each monitor
features an individual, one a man and the other a woman, who
are engaged in a conversation with each other across the table.
Both are played by me, employing somewhat stereotypical gen-
der embodiments. They have a casual, friendly discussion about
their experiences of gender/sex, sometimes breaking into debate.
What inspired this piece is a theory by Hubert Hermans, called
Dialogical Self Theory (DST) (Hermans 2001), which applies a psy-
chological concept that interlaces self (internal) and dialogue (ex-
ternal). According to this, individuals have the capacity to imagine
the positions of multiple participants within a dialogue, and the
positions are informed by the external (society) but are applied
as they are interpreted within the individual. In other words, we
can have debates in our minds because we do not have singular
understandings. Within each person, there is the understanding
of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man,
since gender is a learnt experience and not intrinsic to our be-
ing. The discussion between the presented man and woman in

the piece is meant to reflect some of the typical elements of the
debates held between men and women, but it is very personal as
well (which is why I use myself as the models) because I find my-
self pondering the same issues.
Conversations with Myselves
Video 35:00 [Video Stills]
2015
france rose
Further Research
There are two important points to make, I believe, before
closing this paper. I would like to propose two ideas for further
research, in order to demonstrate that I am aware of many of the
holes in my work so far and am keen to address them. To begin,
92
there lacks sufficient intersectionality in my work. While my prac-
tice’s primary focus is indeed gender, I must recognize that it is
because I am otherwise privileged (white, middleclass, Western,
well-educated) that I am able to not examine anything further
about myself. Aside from my gender and sexuality, I am the
“norm.” This must be changed - I truly have little excuse, especial-
ly as a sociologist with a MPhil from South Africa, to ignore such
intensely intersecting factors such as race and class. Something
else I must take into consideration is the extent to which my
work may be relying on gender realism, the view that all women
(or all men) share some trait(s) that are common to their gender
group. Even whilst attempting to deconstruct the gender binary,
I may very well find myself falling back on it. This is a tricky chal-
lenge to overcome, but it is one I should not stop addressing. In
order to create truly impactful art, I must submit myself to ac-
cepting that I myself have internalized heteronormative notions,
and as long I do not address them, I will find myself contributing
in some degree to the perpetuation of destructive social norms.
In Closing
Over the past two years, it has become clear that art has
the capacity to address and destabilize existing gender norms, if
the artist vigilantly maintains an understanding of the nature be-
hind gender as an identity and embodiment. There is much to be

gained from taking advantage of the parallel between gender and
artwork, since both are products of the dynamic space residing
between the viewer and the viewed. Done properly, art can con-
tribute greatly to the movement for breaking down heteronorma-
tive structures, though there is still quite a lot to be uncovered.
Therefore, I hope this thesis serves as a starting point for exploring
contemporary artistic practices as a tool for trans* activism.
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and-ontology (accessed 4 February 2015).

Intense, Animal, Imperceptible:
Vera Mantero’s a mysterious
Thing, said e.e. cummings*
as a Queer Dance Solo
Mónica Guerreiro
Abstract: Vera Mantero (b. Lisbon, 1966) is a distinguished Por-
tuguese choreographer. Her solo piece, a mysterious Thing, said
e.e. cummings* (1996) has been presented extensively around the
globe, for the past 18 years, serving an ever-new audience with
her audacious, polemic and confrontational body and voice piece.
This postcolonial, melancholic, political and violent work has
earned a series of in-depth analysis, especially by Isabelle Ginot
(2004) and André Lepecki (2006), who have addressed Mantero’s
achievement as a landmark dance piece in Europe. However, Man-
tero’s proximity with continental philosophy, critical theory and
José Gil‘s thought brought forward the need of a renewed out-
look on the implications of this work when considering the danc-
er’s body as a becoming-animal, a hybrid shifting identity, a tran-
sient goat-woman or an underdressed drag queen. Agamben’s
The Open offers some keys to introduce us to this work, built from
intensity and imperceptibility, where an animal identity is closely
inscribed as a correspondent with the non-human, wild, “ways” of
the feminine. Deleuze and Guattari brought over these concepts,
95
with which critical feminists have been fighting. Ambiguously de-
scribed, the character flows between realms, much to the liking
of e.e. cummings - the full quote of the title is: a mysterious Thing,
neither primitive nor civilized, or beyond time, in the sense that emo-
tion is beyond arithmetic. In this essay, closer to a critical report
then a theory paper, we will show excerpts of the piece and offer
additional material for discussion of its pertinence, today, as a dis-
course of queerness.
Key words: queer performance, becoming, Portuguese contem-
porary dance, Vera Mantero, Josephine Baker
Outlining the Research
This paper intends to be a step forward in my current search
for a vocabulary and for a critical methodology to apply in a PhD
investigation under way. It should be understood as a work in
progress rather than a finished proposal. So, feedback and sug-
gestions are appreciated.
My project is to employ queer theory to dance and perfor-
mance analysis in order to understand the current artistic pro-
duction and representation of gender and sexual orientation in
Portugal. This line of questioning aims at the growing recognition
that Portuguese dance and performance, over the last decades,
has taken onto stage the realm of sexuality and its nonconformi-

ty, transgressive, polymorphic representations. I intend to expose
such daring artistic endeavours through a systematic analysis of
its aesthetic choices and also their communication strategies.
This critical method resorts to a multitude of disciplinary
fields (philosophy, sociology, literary studies, visual cultural stud-
ies) with social and political implications (and also an interven-
tional/activism approach), intrinsically connected with feminism
and gender studies. Transversal and multiform, the impact of
queer theory to cultural products is much broader than the field
of human sexuality or the concerns of the homosexual commu-
nity. Relating to artistic creation, it involves all things human - hu-
man complexity and finitude, bodily forms, subjectivity, ways of
living, experiences and aesthetics that constitute an alternative to
those usually considered expected, natural, traditional, “normal.”
Such investigations have already paved the way for young
scholars, such as me, but I have found that, in Portugal, it is more
frequent for queer theorists to approach other artistic expres-
sions, such as cinema, music or literature (in any case, popular
culture), then dance or performance (or any type of the so-called
“high culture”). The relevance of queer theory to the analysis of
cultural phenomena when addressing the live arts is somewhat
unexplored. Also, in Portugal one cannot help to sense there is
a deficit in terms of studying and documenting creative work by
artists, especially performing artists, and I feel compelled to help
invert the tendency through promoting the recognition of that
work as fundamental for understanding our culture.
96
To install this dialogue between the study of artistic mani-
festations and queer theory might also allow me to put forth an
innovative proposal, in my context, shedding some light over re-
subjectivization and the situation of drifting identities in an in-
creasingly defragmented world.
Artists in Portugal, regardless of their gender, sexual orien-
tation or relationship preferences, have introduced queer bodies,
dynamics and imagery in the performing arts with their works
by creating vibrant, polemic pieces. They risk being political, al-
though most of the discourses of queer politics are not expressed
directly, literally, but through metaphor and allegory. They oper-
ate under a queer paradigm by breaking the mould of hegemonic
gender-typified representations, adding hybridism where there
used to be a binary approach and challenging conservative mor-
als and a catholic majority.
Simply put, one must consider the extraordinary effect
that dance and performance can achieve while investing in a
queer disposition, that is to say, when such artworks acknowl-
edge the traditional set of dichotomised behaviours and pre-
established conventional roles concerning males and females,
which are embedded in society, and subvert them. Or when
performance and other artistically charged gestures and prac-
tices offer a distinguished approach to human sexuality that
goes beyond monolithic essentialisms concerning gender.
When it refrains from referring a specific characteristic as be-
ing inherent to a person because of their gender or sexual ori-

entation. Art, being a contested and non-consensual activity
par excellence, occupies in contemporary society a truly privi-
leged position to broaden discussions about relevant issues
that do not get enough attention in the media and in schools.
Freud’s famous assertion, “When you meet a human be-
ing, the first distinction you make is ‘male or female’ and you
are accustomed to make the distinction with unhesitating
certainty” (in Femininity, 1933) is still resonating... Biological
pre-determinacy had for long been the “natural” scapegoat
for cultural, sociological, psychological and clinical frames of
analysis of the so-called irreducible differences setting men
and women aside. Dominant medical discourse considering
gender bending, transgenderism and sex-changing was and
continues to be a pathological one. The last decades have al-
lowed for both the medical sciences and the social sciences
to understand self-identification, affirmative action, choice,
activism and visibility of the former called “deviant” individu-
als and collectives as a fundamental human right and as a set
of strategies in coping with gender oppression and fixation,
in the context of contemporary post-identity politics. This re-
vealed the very nature of such operations, which are indeed
socially and culturally produced and performed as an employ-
ment of subjectivity. That is to say that gender is an intended
practice that, much like language, has a performativity, in the
sense that it enforces the very effects of what it enunciates,
through successive and intentional utterances.
97
In this 25-year period that I am studying, from 1990 (the year
Judith Butler’ s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Iden-
tity came out) to 2015, I have found approximately 120 premieres,
every year, of Portuguese contemporary dance (which means we
will be looking into almost three thousand pieces in that quarter
century). A few dozen works may be featured in this investigation,
allowing scanning through all kinds of works, from the more con-
ventional to the edgier.
But how can we acknowledge and develop the proper
methodology to identify, address, analyse and typify queerness
in a dance show or in a performance? To find the right, the better
questions to ask the works? Some of the questions I’m currently
tackling include:
Why and how can an art work be considered queer?
Are queer performances always gay? And feminist?
Where do these queer performances take place?
Who is their audience?
Can a queer performance be unsettling to a hetero-
sexual viewer?
Is queer also a synonym for provocative and radical?
What would be the attributes in a checklist to verify
queerness in a performance?

Is nudity or sexual content a given in a queer perfor-
mance?
And who is to say that such a work is queer: the au-
thor, the critic, the audience? Who is qualified to
make that claim?
Can someone, like a social scientist, contradict the au-
thor that has stated that he/she does not consider the
work queer?
Could you unintentionally, to serve your own point,
generate other forms of subjugating discourses that
do not agree with yours?
I believe that, first and foremost, one has to make sure that, both
methodologically and ethically, the critical theory tool does not fall in
its own trap, generating grey areas or giving into prejudice anyway. A
queer theorist should always, in its exercise, simultaneously reflect on
the theory’s conditions of possibility and on its limits (this implicates
defining what are the limits to critical theory and why).
Scratching the Surface
After the outline of this work, some examples can be used
to illustrate one possible roadmap to this investigation. The case
we will present is yet to be resolved, but for now a few paths have
98
been identified in the empirical research and some connections
between them may be traced. One of the more eloquent exam-
ples in the corpus, so far, seems to be Vera Mantero’s a mysterious
Thing, said e.e.cummings*.
First of all, I wish to unfold the title.
This piece was created by Vera Mantero, a dancer and cho-
reographer born and based in Lisbon, as a response to a com-
mission to create a dance piece to honour Josephine Baker, a
20th century internationally known dancer, singer and actress.
It was a triple commission: besides Mantero, two other chore-
ographers premiered their tribute proposals, Mark Tompkins
and Blondell Cummins.
Josephine Baker was born in 1906 in America and be-
came a superstar in the entertainment world, having moved
to France and achieving notoriety in the stages and in cinema.
She passed away in Paris in 1975 just four days after celebrat-
ing 50 years in show business. She was the first African-Amer-
ican woman to star in a major motion picture (Zouzou, 1934).
But she was most famous for her live performances as a danc-
er, becoming known as the Black Pearl, Bronze Venus or the
Creole Goddess. For anyone familiar with the history of civil
rights movement in America, she is an important figure: Baker
refused to perform for segregated audiences in the States.
One of the dance moves she was notorious for was her
legendary banana dance, where in a jungle-like set she tanta-
lized men with a shake of her hips (the footage we easily find
 99

online is circa 1927). A reference to the animalistic nature of

this show is due since it constitutes arguably one of the finest
examples of correlation between the representation of objec-
tified women, sexual exoticism, feminine blackness and the
scopic regime installed by a white, male, educated, bourgeois
audience.
Her dancing was considered somewhat polemic specifically
because she seemed to be aware of this gendered gaze and of the
implicit racism, but the question is still asked today: was she per-
forming sex politics and empowering women’s sexuality, owning
it? Or, on the other hand, was she performing a degrading show
for women in general, and for people of colour in particular, with
this “banana dance”?
Vera Mantero accepted this commission and choreo-
graphed a 25-minute solo dance piece that she performs her-
self. Researching about Josephine Baker’s polemic life and
work, Vera came across this quotation from the American poet
e.e.cummings. But if we are attentive, we notice the title has
an asterisk. Here is the full quote: “a mysterious Thing, neither
primitive nor civilized, or beyond time, in the sense that emo-
tion is beyond arithmetics.”
Not to adventure into literary analysis, I would just point
out that there is a very specific usage of capital letters by this
poet and that the only capitalised word is Thing, which could
imply at least some degree of reification of the “phenomena”
of Josephine - one that, nonetheless, excites the emotions and
stands on its own, beyond temporality and beyond a binary of
civilized and primitive. So, there is already unequivocal queer-
ness about Josephine: her identity is not fixed, it surmounts
the gender role assigned to women - and black women, and
woman in show business, who underwent similar bigotry - at
that time. Something Mantero’s piece will surely intensify.
Though I have yet to intertwine the multiple effects of this
work, both on the diegetic level and relating to its context, I have
found a mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings* to be a key work on
interest in this research, mainly for two reasons:
1. Circulation and endurance: The piece premiered in 1996
(18 years ago) and it has been performed over one hundred times
(always by Vera) in 56 cities of 21 different countries. Is it by far the
most international Portuguese dance work ever.
Also because of this, it has received unprecedented criti-
cal and theoretical attention. In his chapter “The Melancholic
Dance of the Postcolonial Spectral: Vera Mantero Summoning
Josephine Baker,” André Lepecki (2006) analyses a mysterious
Thing, said e.e.cummings* as a powerful political counter-per-
formance against racism and colonialism: “the choreographic
resurfacing of a particularly haunting, a particularly iconic im-
age that once filled the European imagination regarding Afri-
can Americans, dance, and black femininity.” For Isabelle Ginot,
whose essay “Dis-identifying: Dancing Bodies and Analysing
Eyes at Work” came out in 2004, the piece brings a discussion
about hybridism, calling upon an “equivalence with Josephine 100
Baker’s life and work (a ‘not-too-black’ American dancer mak-
ing a career in colonialist France by accepting, or manipulat-
ing, the French stereotypes about blackness: blacks as wild
animals, coming straight from the jungle, etc.)” as well as the
reference to Portugal’s history of colonialism, “since Vera Man-
tero is Portuguese.”
Other references I would like to keep close are Helena
de Castro Amaral Vieira’s PhD dissertation (2012) O Corpo Re-
voltado: Considerações acerca da dimensão política em algumas
obras de Vera Mantero, where this and other solos by the same
choreographer are studied under the concept of feminist de-
mand, and the Deleuzian becoming is articulated in a myste-
rious Thing, said e.e.cummings* as “becoming-animal, becom-
ing-women and becoming-Portuguese.” Such an investigation
is greatly rooted in the writings and thoughts of José Gil, a
philosopher who (in an interview annexed to the dissertation
above referenced) also calls upon metamorphosis and mic-
ropolitics as operative concepts for analysing this piece.
2. Queerness. The second main reason is directly concur-
rent to the multiple layers of meaning that Vera Mantero acti-
vates during the piece, conveying a construction of a complex
subjectivity, which I would call queer, despite the fact that the
many theorists approaching the work have not formulated
that concept in relation to it. I would also like to recall the work
of Sílvia Pinto Coelho (whose PhD dissertation, Corpo, Imagem
 101

e Pensamento: Da pesquisa coreográfica contemporânea, ou da

produção de imagens de corpo enquanto discurso de dança: os
exemplos da prática e do pensamento de Lisa Nelson, Mark Tomp-
kins, João Fiadeiro e Olga Mesa is to be presented in 2015). In an
essay intituled “Melancolia e Coreografia,” Sílvia Pinto Coelho
already walked that road:

The body that Mantero presents in her solo a propos Josephine

is not her body, nor Josephine’s (it is the sum of both dancers’
characteristics, suggesting a third body). It is neither black nor
white (it is dark brown, except the hands and the head). It does
not look naked (the tinge ends at the wrists and the neck, pro-
ducing a sweater-like effect) but it is not dressed either (one
can see the pubic hair). You cannot tell if it is all there; with
Vera Mantero in a mysterious Thing, said e.e.cummings*
dim lights, it gets confused with the shadow and not all of it Photo: Jorge Gonçalves. Courtesy Jorge Gonçalves/O Rumo do Fumo.
is showing. It is half human and half animal, because her legs
end in goat’s feet. … It is opaque but sweat draws vertical lines
across the torso, unveiling white beneath the dark skin colour Producing the gender of women has taken thousands of
- also dark as in dirty or as in a goat. Dark as in hidden, dreary, years and is still ongoing as we speak. Queer theorists have exten-
haunted; a devil-goat, or just rebellious women with different sively explained how this was a process within a politics of mis-
skin tones. … A body that does not move about, but that is
representation or no representation at all, through the action of
never still. It is present, but it looks like an apparition. It fades
patriarchal power systems. Once women finally conquered the po-
into the shadow, but its image and sound linger in the memory
with its repetitive litany: “atrocious.” … It is a becoming body. It litical and social realm, the performing arts ban on women came
allows for agency in many ways. as yet another struggle. Then, women were given permission to
(Coelho, 2007) perform, but not to direct; to sing, but not to write the songs; to
act, but not to edit. (The equivalent in the visual arts was: to pose,
not to paint.) Women were reduced to subjects of the male hier-
archy, ownership and desire, of male decisions politically and cre-
atively. And drag has been described (by Alisa Solomon, Jill Dolan
and Peggy Phelan) as a disappointing continuing of this storyline.
This traditional caricature of mythical, unchallenging females and
their stereotyped appearance and temperament, draws parody
from an “essentialist” womanhood that arguably reiterates a mi-
sogynistic gaze.
It would appear that not just race and privilege are at
stake here, but also gender questioning, since the choreog-
rapher and performer operates an accumulation of crossings
that redirect to the very core of role-playing. She is emulating
Baker’s skin complexion with a dye but her hands and face are
purposely left non-painted, with this whiteness exploring a
kind of reversed minstrelsy (thus addressing and denouncing
a history of racism); she is also highly made-up, with exagger-
ated glow and sophistication, suggesting the vampiristic na-
ture of show business and its artificialness. I would argue that
hers is a make-up we have become accustomed to associate
with typical drag queens, parodying a female mask. So gen-
der stereotypes are addressed but bent over again and again.
At first we can only see her face, then her upper body; but
when we can finally see the whole body, we discover the rea-
son behind her instability from the get-go: she is standing in
demi-point, on what are supposed to be goat clogs, unveiling
a beastly quality that reinstates other ambiguities.
André Lepecki tackles primarily the post-colonial implications of
the work, while also reading into national references and history:
What we have with Mantero’s use of makeup in her black- 102
ening of her body is the marking of both whiteness and
blackness as forces of tension for the mutual construction of
women’s identities across the colour line - and particularly
the construction of a white woman’s sexuality as already in
dialogue with blackness. … The doubly racialized woman
uncovers yet another trap of colonialist, patriarchal, and cho-
reographic subjectivities - her body is also bestial. The beast
is the lurking danger of woman’s genitalia, it is the “savage”
animalization of the body in the racist view of blackness, and
it is the savage image Mantero uses as her explicit body in
performance. The image of the animal she chooses to pros-
thetically incorporate into her nakedness has a very specific
connotation in Portuguese - that ultimately makes this solo
bend over itself in its stream of signification as it gets layered
on Mantero’s composite figure and this figure’s imbrications
with Portuguese colonial history, and with Portuguese cur-
rent efforts of forgetting that history as the country moves
after a desirable “Europeanness.” The she-goat is, in Portu-
guese, cabra, the coarse synonym for whore.
(Lepecki 2006: 114-115)
I do not suppose many dance works have so eloquently ac-
complished to engage in what has become known as queer of co-
lour critique, along the writings of Roderick Ferguson (Aberrations
in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique) and José Esteban Muñoz
(Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics),
this one actively summoning live artists and performers into the
discussion and so particularly appropriate to bring and further
analyse how it may offer productive comparisons in this research.

In The Open: Man and Animal, Agamben also offers a take into
this association, by explaining the nature of the “dark [relationships]
which separates us from the animal” (Agamben 2011: 16). Referenc-
ing becoming-animal, a hybrid shifting identity, a transient goat-
woman, or an under-dressed drag queen, a mysterious Thing, said
e.e.cummings* is arguably the embodiment of queer.
Apart from what Lepecki has to say - that a mysterious
Thing, said e.e.cummings* is a touching reflection on anti-
racism and on postcolonial conflict, introducing European
“amnesia” as the brutality of its colonialism - in that solo
we find the construction of female identity struggling with
the poverty in spirit of that time. Mantero is trying with her
body to fight, without the shame of desire or of being sex-
ual, against that poverty in a blend of becoming-animal,
becoming-woman and becoming-Portuguese
(Vieira 2012: 115)
Portuguese philosopher José Gil brought forward a renewed
outlook of this work when considering Vera Mantero as someone
who dances but is also able to articulate theory, and then:
… creating spontaneously, which is something only Vera can do.
What’s extraordinary is that she inaugurates this new Portuguese
dance, being one of the pioneers, in such a way that choreogra-
phy creates a space that is Portuguese, where images of madness
may appear, images of anti-dance, contesting a culture of habit,
103
of conformism, a traditional and conservative culture, appear-
ing as a rebellious body. … André Lepecki mentions this piece
as very political and antiracist, but there is more to it, something
that Deleuze would call a becoming, a becoming-animal. Her
naked body with goat clogs, plus the gestures that are hard to
read, all of that could be seen as a micropolitics of the body. For
her it is natural to be naked, but that was not common in Portu-
guese dance. And then there is the becoming, a becoming-goat,
a metamorphosis of the self, which is something Vera discov-
ered, that her body should become something. And becoming
is such a great source for renewal and critique, exactly because
hegemonic forces want to maintain a status quo, want to stay the
same. And she takes unpredictable paths.
(Gil apud Vieira 2012: 212)
So unmistakably one needs go back to the beginning - to
Deleuze and Guattari’s chapter from A Thousand Plateaus, “Becom-
ing-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible.” Albeit
we can understand Donna Haraway’s resistance to it, it persists as
a source of operative concepts that feed us to understand our way
amongst this myriad of significations. Not forgetting how sex and
gender are also at stake when discussing these categories, and
how that links with show business, the role model syndrome that
comes with stardom, the role of women in the cinema industry
and the idea of agency in this realm. And how, in some inspired
manner, Vera Mantero manages to create a work that is a homage
not only to women of colour, not only women dancers, but to all

of those whose identities have been silenced and oppressed by
the gags of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination:
Why Baker? Because, as an African-American, she represents
the colonized negro in the movies; because in those movies
the characters she plays wobble between wild spontaneity
and profound melancholia; and because the awkwardness of
her agency is built on its own silent understanding of what is
at stake while playing those roles. By summoning the ghost of
Baker, Mantero is dragging along all of those references into
the stage at Culturgest (and many other European capitals’
theatres) and engaging with her own life story and portrait as
a dancer and choreographer.
(Coelho 2007)
From personal to universal and back to personal again.
While never not being political. Gender, ethnicity, race, class,
economic status, stage, stardom, beauty-ugliness, human-ani-
mal, civilization-savagery are all put into discussion in a myste-
rious Thing, said e.e.cummings*, allowing multiple hypothesis
of how it may be perceived as a discourse about the objecti-
fied and reified Other. The words Vera Mantero is muttering
and speaking, in English, would be: “An impossibility, a fall, a
mal-de-vivre (pain of living), a sadness, an absence, a sorrow, a
bad will, an abyss. Atrocious, atrocious.”
104
Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. O Aberto: O Homem e o Animal,
tradução de André Dias. Lisboa: Edições 70.
Coelho, Sílvia Pinto. 2007. “Melancolia e Coreografia.” Melanco-
lia (online project), ed. Maria Augusta Babo, http://melancolia.eusou.
com/TEXTOSHTML/silvia.html (accessed 22 October 2014).
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1996. Anti-Édipo. Capitalis-
mo e Esquizofrenia, tradução de Joana Varela e Manuel Maria Car-
rilho. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim
Gil, José. 1996. A Imagem-Nua e as Pequenas Percepções. Lis-
boa: Edições Relógio d’Água.
Gil, José. 1996. Metamorphoses of the Body, translated by Ste-
phen Muecke. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ginot, Isabelle. 2004. “Dis-identifying: Dancing Bodies and
Analysing Eyes at Work: A discussion of Vera Mantero’s a mysteri-
ous Thing, said e.e. cummings*.” Discourses in Dance, Vol 2, No. 1.
Lepecki, André. 2006. “The Melancholic Dance of the Post-
colonial Spectral: Vera Mantero Summoning Josephine Baker.”
Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement, 106-
122. New York: Routledge.
Vieira, Helena de Castro Amaral. 2012. O Corpo Revoltado:
Considerações acerca da dimensão política em algumas obras de
Vera Mantero. PhD dissertation, unpublished, available at: http://
www.helenavieira.com.br/files/tese_helena-vieira_121015.pdf
(accessed 20 October 2014).

Grieving as Political Action:
Contesting Austerity Politics
Through Narratives of Loss in
the Disability Rights Movement
Anna Wates
Abstract: This chapter explores grieving as political action in
the UK through examples of activist groups holding open vig-
ils in public spaces, to grieve visibly friends who they believe
have died as a result of what is cast in terms of biopolitical vio-
lence, or at the least political failure. These examples will be
examined in terms of affective politics, with historical parallels
being drawn to early AIDS activism in the US during the 1980s.
Both queer and disability communities have struggled to be
remembered, in their diversity and nuance (rather than sim-
ply as stereotypes), and with value. When lives are valued con-
trastingly across a differential scale of grievability, the need to
reassert their value loudly and clearly through protest emerg-
es. In the final part of this chapter, I will analyse discussions
surrounding the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill in the
UK, which evoke another angle on the varying ways in which
death is used for political gain to revitalise other, sometimes
contradictory, projects.
105
Key words: activism, austerity, disability, memory, mourning, ne-
cropolitics, protest, vigils
Introduction
On Tuesday, 8th July 2014, a group of disability rights activ-
ists representing the Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN)
gathered outside the front entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice,
London, to hold a vigil. Inside, a judicial review of the Work Capa-
bility Assessment for Mental Health Claimants was underway. The
purpose of the vigil was in part to highlight the groups’ misgivings
regarding the fairness and legitimacy of the Work Capability As-
sessment (WCA) for those with mental health concerns. A second,
linked, purpose of the vigil, was to honour the deaths of friends
and family members, either through suicide or because of basic im-
poverishment, who had, this group claimed, been wrongly found
”fit for work” by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and
therefore had their benefit cut under the new benefit scheme.
The naming of this protest and others like it as “vigils” conjures
an idea of ecclesiastical devotional watching, of maintaining alertness
against a lurking malevolence. It is also a public display of mourning. I
will explore this in relation to forms of affective politics in which the af-
fective positions of grief and anger produce meaning and identity. The
use of affect is not limited to disability rights advocacy and activism in
the UK, however, and indeed, the logic of “austerity” is often justified at

the state level through reference to shame and other moralized forms
of negativity, whereby the lives of benefit claimants are frequently
devalued through the portrayal of claimants as “scroungers,” “cheats,”
and “frauds.” The need for activists to mourn publicly ghostly subjects
thus manifests an attempt to reassert the value of lost friends where
this loss may otherwise remain invisible. The use of vigils as a form of
political action has in this sense many parallels across a range of social
movements, not least during early AIDS activism in the US.
Yet the result is a sometimes morbid politics in which the ex-
tremes of life and death have come to play a central role in contem-
porary political debate. This is echoed in recent debates surrounding
the controversial Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill in the UK
Parliament, in which those against the proposed legislation speak of
protecting a “right to live,” and those for the bill speak of protecting
a “right to die.” Groups who support the bill often conjure up images
of the ill, dying, or disabled body to emphasise the suffering of those
wishing to die. This however plays into prevailing societal attitudes
which consistently devalue the quality of life for disabled, terminally
ill, and elderly people. Meanwhile those opposing the bill, includ-
ing both pro-life Christian groups and disability rights activists, warn
against a future eugenics.
My analysis here stems from a larger project questioning the
shifting definitions of “disability” in the context of austerity politics
in the UK, particularly looking at the implementation of the Coali-
tion Government’s Welfare Reform Act 2012. I conducted a small pi-
lot study over the course of 2013/14 with a group of London based
106
disability rights activists, where I attended protests, was involved
with a user-led forum for self-identifying disabled people, spoke to
a range of activists, and participated in various social media and on-
line activisms, as well as analysing a variety of policy documents and
media sources. Through so doing, I hoped to attend to the multiple
orderings of disability that manifest in a variety of different modes
(in policy, media representations, lived experience, and so on).
Austerity Politics
The UK context in which my discussion unfolds is one of
“austerity politics.” For Lauren Berlant, the political climate in the
UK, and indeed many other parts of Europe, has found a new af-
fective register with the financial crisis (Helms et al. 2010: 3). It
has enabled a public discourse in which “austerity” can be cast as
necessary and prudent. In line with this, the UK coalition govern-
ment has since its election engaged in a radical restructuring of
the benefits system, both disability-related and otherwise. These
reductions have been framed in such a way which perpetuates
the myth of a disability benefit crisis, the idea that welfare might
be a “lifestyle choice” - to quote Conservative Chancellor George
Osborne from an interview in September 2010 - a rhetoric argu-
ably rooted in scaremongering (in Briant et al. 2013). Thus we see
responsibility being shifted away from the state and onto individ-
uals themselves, subsequently portrayed as “lazy” and “undeserv-
ing.” Disability, arguably a social artefact which is either sustained

or undermined by the discursive and material nexus of knowl-
edge and power, is especially vulnerable to such reworkings. Ac-
cordingly, disability has increasingly come to be defined in eco-
nomic terms which emphasize the cost of ill-health through days
lost from work and so on (Rose 2001: 5). As David Harvey notes
in Spaces of Hope, “under capitalism sickness is defined as the in-
ability to work.” (Harvey 2000; cited in Berlant 2007: 754) Many dis-
abled people are now being reclassified in terms of whether or
not they are “fit to work” through a Work Capability Assessment,
for example, signaling that entitlement to support should derive a
measurement of labour capacity (recognizing only a certain kind
of “contribution,” namely an economic kind). Most under scrutiny
are those impairments whose effects are less visible, such as men-
tal illness. This follows that certain types of impairment are given
more value over others in a scopic politics of recognition which
privileges the visibility, measurability, or quantifiability of symp-
toms, though this does not adequately reflect the experience of
individuals. For Berlant, “austerity sounds good, clean, ascetic: the
lines of austerity are drawn round a polis to incite it toward aske-
sis, toward managing its appetites and taking satisfaction in a self-
management in whose mirror of performance it can feel proud
and superior.” (Helms et al. 2010: 3) The idea of “self-care” here jus-
tifies the withdrawal of the state (a functioning of governmental-
ity) (Lemke 2001: 201).
For Jasbir Puar, neoliberal demands for bodily capacity rest
on the binaried production of the disabled versus the nondis-
107
abled, wherein a distinction is made between debility and capac-
ity (2012). Yet as Puar argues, slow death is constitutive to debility,
when demands for bodily capacity are made even as larger num-
bers of the population are simultaneously decapacitated through
structural inequalities (2012: 154). The demands of “austerity” ob-
scure an uneven distribution of risk and vulnerability across the
population by reframing the individual body as a moral landscape.
This is the point at which biopolitics becomes ethopolitics (Rose
2001: 17), with the maintenance of health comprising an ethical
duty; when good health becomes a virtue possessed and culti-
vated by individuals (through technologies of the self ) rather than
a condition always already contingent on a necessarily social rela-
tionality, and the organisation of social and political institutions.
The Politics of Mourning: Vigils and AIDS Activism
In the politics of mourning, public vigils serve as a form not
only of honouring the dead, but of protesting a situation where
people are seen to have died as a result of political failure. For this
reason, such strategies have been used in a variety of activist con-
texts such as in India after the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, as well as
in Palestine. During early AIDS activism in the US, activists staged
candlelit vigils and memorial services to lament those lost to AIDS
in order to draw attention to the Government’s lack of response to
the epidemic - seeming to be motivated by systemic homophobia
and a lack of political concern for those communities most effect-

ed by the disease - through mass displays of public feeling. On the
13th of June 1983, a candlelit vigil was held in Central Park, New
York City, the stated purpose of which was “to recommit our ener-
gies and renew our resolve to conquering AIDS.” (in Roman 1998:
33) These protests were not simply about sending a message to
political elites, but also forging a sense of community and soli-
darity through expressions of communal grief. Later that year, a
National AIDS Vigil was held in Washington, D.C. Arty Felson, who
co-founded the New York-based support group People with AIDS,
described this as “a coming together to share our support with
each other, to share ‘war stories,’ and happiness at being alive” (in
Roman 1998: 36). Coming together on a particular day to show
support possessed a certain kind of strength, but the duration of
these protests also varied. The ARC-AIDS vigil lasted a whole year,
from 1985 to 1986; initiated by people with ARC (AIDS-Related
Complex, a term no longer in clinical use) and AIDS, who camped
outside the Federal Building on UN Plaza in San Francisco to spot-
light Federal Government’s consistent exclusion of people with
ARC from public health policy.
Yet the use of vigils as a form of protest was not a tactic unani-
mously supported. Deborah Gould notes how direct-action AIDS
activists’ criticisms of grieving rituals like vigils and quilt showings
were often scathing, influencing the direct action and advocacy
group ACT UP’s later decision to turn to a different approach to grief
(Gould 2009: 227). The following passage expresses the somewhat
disparaging opinion of Bradley Ball, founding member and long-
108
time administrator of ACT UP/New York, after a Memorial Day AIDS
candlelight vigil that occurred in 1987:
A handful of people clustered at Sheridan Square and sang a
pretty song and lit candles... I had intended to participate, but
I simply could not. The opening lines of the pretty song [are]:
“we are a strong and gentle people. Singing, singing for our
lives...” How can we be singing for our lives? I’m so upset... I’ve
spent this weekend [handing out leaflets] on streetcorners and
in barrooms confronting apathy and hostility, and now I find
out we’re singing for our lives... Oh God, I’m tired and angry.
I’ve been living AIDS for so long... Stonewall was supposed to
bring us out of the closet and into the streets... And now there’s
this awful disease that is knocking us over like dominoes... And
we’re lighting candles and singing song.
(Goldberg 1997: 63-64; cited in Gould 2009: 227)
A year later, Ball continued his criticism: “We have spent
many years mourning and bereaving, and have developed that
into a high art. A lot of AIDS benefits like candlelight vigils have
pretty names, but they don’t express the fact that massive sectors
of society are dying and that no one seems to care.” (Anger 1988:
10; cited in Gould 2009: 227) A founding member of ACT UP/Chi-
cago, Jeanne Kracher commented on vigils in Chicago that “they
were very sad, they were very solemn. It was heavy... It was a mov-
ing experience. But on another level... we were trying to figure out
politically what all of this meant.” (Gould 2009: 227) Indeed, some
found the vigils too passive, punctuated with a defeatist attitude,

and “kind of tame” (ibid). Gould’s social and emotional history of
direct action AIDS Activism during the early 1980s and 1990s,
notes a distinction between the vigils as calm, yet downbeat and
somewhat discouraging, as pitted against the anger and energy
of direct action. It remains to be seen whether such tensions will
emerge in relation to the contemporary practice of holding vigils
within the UK disability rights movement.
Grievability
There are commonalities here between disabled and queer
communities which converge around the fear/feeling that - as al-
ready marginalised fractions of society - they will not be mourned
for in the same way as other groups. There appears to be a differ-
ential scale of value attached to certain bodies, and their precari-
ty, which creates a situation where certain bodies come to be seen
“expendable.” This is often expressed through the idiom of illness.
During the AIDS crisis, mainstream media tended to equate ho-
mosexuality entirely with disease, making reference to AIDS as a
“gay plague.” In the late 1980s, British Chief Constable of Manches-
ter, James Anderton, abused gay people as “swirling around in a
cesspit of their own making.” (Tatchell 2012) This built on a histori-
cal discourse in which queer bodies have historically been seen
as intrinsically debilitated, a point of commonality with disabled
people (Puar 2009: 165). Lee Edelman notes the case of Walter
Jenkins - chief of staff under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration
109
- arrested in 1964 for performing “indecent gestures” (homosexu-
al activity) in a Washington, D.C., men’s room. Edelman observes
that already in 1964, Jenkins could be construed “as the victim of
some illness, physical or emotional, whose transgressive behavior
did not symptomize his (homosexual) identity but rather bespoke
an exceptional falling away from his true (heterosexual) identity.”
(Edelman 1994: 162-163; cited in McRuer 2006: 11) Likewise, dis-
abled bodies can be seen as “already queer” both in their bodily
debilities and capacities, but also in their sexual practices regard-
less of sexual object choice (simply by virtue of the fact that they
have a sexual object choice, contrary to a long discursive tradition
in which disabled people have been depicted as non-sexual be-
ings) (Puar 2009: 165). Both disabled and queer subjects share a
pathologised past and lack a redemptive future. As Edelman ar-
gues, “the queer” is positioned against a “reproductive futurism” as
the embodiment of a relentlessly antisocial, and future-negating
drive (Edelman 2004). Meanwhile disabled people are sometimes
overtly dissuaded from having children. Robert McRuer outlines
the ways in which compulsory able-bodiedness and compulsory
heterosexuality are hereby mutually constitutive (McRuer 2006).
The former, “which in a sense produces disability, is thoroughly
interwoven with the system of compulsory heterosexuality that
produces queerness: that, in fact, compulsory heterosexuality is
contingent on compulsory able-bodiedness, and vice versa” (ibid.:
2). Both heterosexuality and able-bodiedness are defined through
invocation of the supposed opposite, that is, homosexuality and

physical disability respectively (ibid.: 8). Yet if this binary suggests
the appearance of choice, this is illusory since heterosexual, able-
bodied identities are preferable (idem). Where Jack Halberstam
argues that queer people are steeped in failure from an early age
(consistently being punished, in both subtle and overt ways, for
rendering this impossibility of compulsory heterosexuality pal-
pable) (Halberstam 2011), I would therefore claim the same pro-
cesses are at play for disabled people in relation to compulsory
able-bodiedness.
This leads us to Judith Butler’s work on the differential griev-
ability of lives (2009) which raises the question of whether those
people, who are otherwise invisible, absent or misrepresented in
broader public discourse (itself a selective and differential framing),
are seen as having value and are grievable? Do vigils of the kind be-
ing discussed here, which make people known instead as friends,
partners, and relatives, constitute a moving protest in which these
lives are reclaimed as those which matter? Butler looks to different
modes of regulating affective and ethical dispositions through par-
ticular framings of violence (Butler 2009). She asks: how is affect pro-
duced by the structure of the frame? What is the relation of affect to
ethical and political judgement and practice? At stake is the recog-
nisability of certain figures of the human, the norms that determine
questions of humanization as well as dehumanization (ibid.). That
is, if one cannot refer to “being” outside of the operations of power,
then “specific lives cannot be apprehended as injured or lost if they
are not first apprehended as living” (ibid: 1). Grieving, and the poli-
110
tics of mourning are central here, since, as Butler writes, “[w]ithout
grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that
is other than life.” (ibid.: 15)
In this sense, language inaugurates the subject; the utter-
ance is constitutive in that an important means by which valuation
is asserted pertains to the naming, and thus bringing into being,
of the subject. One UK disability rights activist who participates
in the strategy to which I am broadly referring in this chapter - of
grieving as political action - will tell you the names of people she’s
lost due to the welfare cuts. In naming them she will conjure up
an image of a person rather than a number or statistic. One such
figure is David Clapson, a person with diabetes who died last year
from an acute lack of insulin (a situation caused by the fact that his
electricity had been cut off meaning the fridge where he kept his
insulin was not working). Contrary to many others, his death was
memorialized in a left-leaning national newspaper, The Guard-
ian, under the caption: “When David Clapson was found dead
last year, his was stomach empty, his electricity off and he had no
cash. Beside him was a pile of CVs.” (Gentleman 2014) The article
continued, “[w]e know that David Clapson was actively searching
for work when he died because a pile of CVs he had just printed
out was found a few metres from his body... But officials at the Job
Centre believed he was not taking his search for work seriously
enough, and early last July, they sanctioned him - cutting off his
benefit payments entirely, as a punishment for his failure to at-
tend two appointments.” (ibid.)

Yet on what basis is value being claimed here, by virtue
of what qualities does it become intelligible? Clapson, seen as
a “scrounger” by Job Centre officials, is notable in this newspa-
per article for his whiteness (a photo accompanies the piece),
nationality (British) and gender, a man who, crucially, served
in the army, took time off work to care for his elderly father
and subsequently found reentry to the labour market chal-
lenging. Does having “served for your country” and “cared for
your ailing father” render the tragedy of your story more pal-
atable, more pursuasive? Commentator Jasmine Banks offers
a wry observation on US left-wing media trends in reporting
on the deaths of unarmed youths of colour at the hands of po-
lice (2014). The so-called ”redeeming” qualities of these young
people are typically lauded, often with emphasis on things like
their educational status, or other evidence of their respectabil-
ity or “good-ness” (for example, as the media showed pictures
of Michael Brown - the 18-year-old shot by a white Ferguson,
Missouri police officer - the refrain was repeated: “Brown was
supposed to start college on Monday”). Banks writes: “Let me
be clear: Unarmed college hopefuls don’t deserve to be shot.
Unarmed kids heading to work or trade school don’t deserve
to be shot. Unarmed kids floundering aimlessly through life
don’t deserve to be shot. Unarmed kids who have been in
trouble - even those who have been nothing but trouble - don’t
deserve to be shot.” (Banks 2014) The point is, she argues, rec-
ognition should not have to be framed in terms of a person’s
111
worthiness for their death to be deemed lamentable. I would
question, however, whether an emphasis here on “unarmed”
likewise remains implicit within a logic that reckons lives ac-
cording to a scale of value (that is, by evoking defenselessness
to elicit sympathy).
The question of who gets remembered, then, and for
what reasons, reveals the political dimensions of mourning,
resistance, and survival. Che Gossett notes that in the history
of Stonewall in 1969, for example, the role of poor urban queer
and gender-variant people of colour is often absent in official
accounts (Gossett 2013). Likewise in the UK labour movement,
the roles of people of colour are frequently elided from offi-
cial accounts. Ken Loach’s recent feature-length documenta-
ry about the creation of the welfare state and its legacy,  The
Spirit of ’45 (2013), is a case in point. Loach’s vision of the Brit-
ish working class is almost exclusively comprised of Britain’s
white population, disregarding the many people of colour
who contributed to the 1945 which the film celebrates, such
as black RAF  pilots who flew during WWII; Chinese firefight-
ers in Liverpool who fought the flames ignited by Luftwaffe
bombs; and Nepali Gurkhas and Indians who fought for Britain
in two world wars, making up the largest volunteer army in
world history (Chen 2013).
Memory is integral to our sense of who we are as indi-
viduals, and as communities. In his ethnographic study of gay
men living with HIV infection in the US during the mid-1990s,

Frederick Bloom looked at the cumulative effect of the loss
of friends due to AIDS in terms of life-story narratives. What
emerged was the experience of liminality among those he
worked with, the feeling of being half alive, half dead which
defines a transitional phase between culturally meaningful
states of being. In the words of one interlocutor, Jerry: “HIV is
not living sometimes. I lost most of my friends… I have no sense
of history anymore… They don’t call back so you can’t say - ‘re-
member when we did this, went there?’” (Bloom 1997: 461) Re-
membering here is inherently social, embedded in friendship;
enacted through the capacity of one’s friends for reflective
interaction. When Jerry says “I have no sense of history any-
more” it emerges that his sense of history was dispersed in and
among his network of friends. Jerry is aware of the past, but it
has lost its meaning; the people who could confirm, augment,
or even disagree with aspects of his memory are gone. This
presents “an interruption in the continuity of the self through
time.” (ibid.: 461) That is, the idea of an inviolable self rests on
the supposed continuity of memory and its meaning over ex-
tended periods, which is expected to remain constant and in-
dependent of the memories of others. Yet in the life stories ex-
plored by Bloom, an argument can be made for the processual
narrative of selves, which are integrated and partible. Bloom
writes: “The horror for Jerry is that the continuity of his self is
not inviolable. It has been violated. The death of his friends
has been accompanied by the loss of meaning of the memo-
112
ries were once part of his history.” (ibid.: 462) This is what is at
stake, then, in holding a vigil, because it concerns the way in
which memory constructs community, and performs value.
If we think of activism as a kind of performativity, in that
it is often performed with the aim that it will make public those
private concerns of the individual, the power inherent in a
street vigil is its capacity to manifest utopic alterities: the idea
that contrary to media representations, these lives are griev-
able, and that they will be mourned. Through performance and
performativity (here used more in the sense that Erving Goff-
man intended it than that proposed by Butler) human beings
make culture, affect power, and reinvent their ways of being in
the world, especially those who have limited or no access to
state power (Bailey 2009: 257). For the latter, performance can
become an important method in subversion particularly when
it adds value and meaning to the lives of those rendered oth-
erwise valueless and meaningless (ibid.: 271). In the disability
rights movement, purposeful displays of immobility, such as
using wheelchairs to literally blockade a space and prevent
the passage of people and traffic, utilise a radical negation
of movement which would in other circumstances have been
disabling. Through occupying and filling space in this way,
the everyday exclusion of many disabled people from public
space due to issues of accessibility is made palpable. Likewise
protest vigils make manifest the distinct lack of grievability
otherwise shown to those being mourned.

Necropolitics
Departing from our earlier discussion somewhat, I want to
turn to another aspect of the politics of mourning, namely to
highlight when death is used in a broader discursive context to
give weight to sometimes paradoxical causes, becoming a kind
of necropolitcs (Mbembe 2003). This can be further explored
through looking at discussions surrounding the Assisted Dy-
ing Bill, a piece of legislation proposed by Lord Falconer this
year (2014) which aims to make it legal for doctors to end the
lives of those they judge to be terminally ill, if the dying indi-
vidual requests this intervention. It marks the re-emergence of
a discussion begun 10 years ago, when a similar proposal was
dropped following a House of Lords committee enquiry which
concluded the time was not right for a change in the law. Then
and now the proposed Bill is similar to legislation which legalis-
es physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands as well as in the
US states of Oregan and Washington. When the Bill was debated
in the House of Lords this year, both sides standing for/against
brought up personal experiences of illness and mortality. Janet
Royall, the shadow leader of the Lords, and Jeremy Beecham,
a senior Labour peer, both said their late spouses “would have
wanted them to support the bill” (Mason 2014). In this way, they
conjured spectral subjects as justification for present action.
Likewise placards held by protesters belonging to the Dignity-
in-Dying campaign who were gathered outside the House dis-
113
played pictures of people who had starved themselves to death
as evidence of what this group viewed an “undignified” end.
The Assisted Dying Bill is interesting considered in relation to
Margaret Lock’s comparative ethnography which looks at how de-
bate surrounding ”brain death” is elaborated in radically different
forms in Japan and North America (1996), since this highlights the
ways in which death is not simply a biological, but a socially ne-
gotiated, phenomenon. Lock charts how, with the development
of organ transplant technology in the 1960s, it became necessary
to agree upon a diagnosis of ”brain death” that could be clear-
ly pinpointed in time as an event rather than an indeterminate
process (because the likelihood of a successful organ transplant
being carried out depended on the continuation of integrated
biological activity in the donor, possible only in cases of “brain
death”). The question emerged of where/what constitutes life/liv-
ing and dying? The fact that “brain death” is notoriously difficult
to determine, however, in that it is not immediately discernable to
the untrained eye complicates matters exceedingly. Indeed, the
diagnosis of “brain death” requires specialist medical equipment,
with the person otherwise simply looking asleep. In relation to As-
sisted Dying, the group Not Dead Yet UK (NDY UK) - a network
of disabled people in the UK who oppose the “legalised killing of
disabled people” - likewise argue that definitions of ”terminal ill-
ness” can never be precise (NDY UK 2014). Attempting to fashion
a dividing line between living, dying, and death is thus governed
by ideological motivations.

For some philosophers, the debates surrounding definitions of
‘brain death’ are deeply worrying. Norman Fost notes how it invites
constant redefinition whenever utility requires it, creating “not only
instability, but the perception and possibility that unwanted per-
sons can be defined out of existence [whenever] it serves the greater
good.” (Fost 1988: 7; cited in Lock 1996: 593) The parallels with Assist-
ed Dying seem to converge around this point - what Lock describes
in terms of a “slippery slope of truth.” (Lock 1996: 593) Indeed, the
idiom of a “slippery slope” is frequently evoked by those standing
against the Assisted Dying Bill, who argue that this legislation may
have repercussions for groups of people beyond those it is intended
to effect, incorporating more and more sections of the population.
From this perspective, it is argued that if physician assisted suicide
were to be legally sanctioned then limiting access to such assistance
to die could be said to be discriminatory. For this reason the right
could be extended over time to more and more people in the name
of equality. Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower makes apparent
those operations whereby some fraction of a population is marked
for death even while other fractions are deemed suitable for life-
enhancing investment (1997). Foucault writes that the sovereign’s
right “to make live and to let die” (ibid.: 241) is manifested not nec-
essarily in any overt way, but rather in “the fact of exposing some-
one to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite
simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.” (ibid.: 256)
Vulnerability to loss is thus not equally distributed across society. In
the context of massive and debilitating cuts to social welfare in the
114
UK, the offer of assistance to die seems to represent for some activ-
ists a sinister development whereby the only assistance to dignity
a disabled person can expect appears to be in achieving their own
dissapearance. NDY UK again question whether in this way “assisted
dying could all too easily become an attractive ‘treatment’ remedy.”
(NDY UK 2014)
What is the relationship, then, between the figure of the dy-
ing, suffering subject and the surviving, suffering subject? Who gets
pushed out when others are recognized as deserving of a “dignified
death” (something we arguably should not have to request)? What
are the contested grounds on which certain socially disempowered
communities make themselves visible? It becomes necessary to
question whose “right to life” might be undermined by establish-
ing the “right to die.” Riley Snorton and Jin Haritaworn note how, in
a similar necropolitical scenario, value extracted from the death of
trans* people of colour subsequently vitalises projects as diverse
as inner-city gentrification, anti-immigrant and anti-muslim moral
panics, homonationalism, and white transnormative community
formation (Snorton and Haritaworn 2013: 66). If these deaths “act as
a resource for the development and dissemination of many different
agendas” (Snorton and Haritaworn 2013: 66), a similar analysis could
be applied in relation to the (supposedly voluntary) deaths of those
choosing assisted suicide when these are used to imply that the lives
of disabled, terminally ill, and/or elderly people are not worth living,
indeed that the latter are burdensome not only to themselves, their
relatives and friends, but also to the state.

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, I have attempted to explore the uses to
which notions of death, dying, and grievability are put in a variety
of different activisms, media representations, and political rheto-
ric. What emerges is the way in which so-called “negative” affects,
such as grief and anger, can produce meaning and identity, repre-
senting an important potential for political action. Yet this can give
rise to a form of necropolitcs when communities build on ghostly
subjects. Thus whether through employing the hypothetical pos-
sibility of death, levied as a political tool with which to engage an
economy of recognition in which rights are the currency (and I
evoke the lexicon of economics here on purpose), or in revoking
the past to inform the present, there are deeply political reasons
for remaining witness in relation to loss.
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When a Woman Loves a Woman:
Lesbian Love and Homosexual
Desire in Ajla Terzić’s Novel
Mogla je biti prosta priča
(Could Have Been a Simple Story)
Melisa Slipac
Abstract: This paper focuses on the depiction of lesbian love and
female sexual desire, which are still widely unexplored in the do-
main of post-Yugoslav literature and are presented in Ajla Terzić’s
novel Mogla je biti prosta priča (Could Have Been a Simple Story).
The novel narrates about the love affair between two young
women from Bosnia, Esma and Roza, who meet on a train in Aus-
tria. The work does not only introduce the neglected aspect of
lesbian sexuality into the literature of the former Yugoslav coun-
tries, but it also questions the prevailing concepts of femininity.
The story includes a number of other current issues that consider
the position of individuals, and especially women in a society in
transition in the post-war period in the Balkans.
The novel illuminates the issues of self-discovery and self-
definition of a specific generation of young people who are caught
up between conservative and liberal views, and search to define
117
their own identity. The primary goal of the author surely has not
been only to address the issues of homosexuals as a marginalized
group, but she also tries to offer a criticism of a society full of cli-
chés and prejudices and create a frame for analyzing the issue of
different life choices. In a patriarchal society lesbian love can sym-
bolize an act of resistance, liberation from the chains of assigned
social norms, and subversion of typical gender and sexual roles.
Key words: Balkans, contemporary literature, desire, homosexu-
ality, former Yugoslavia, lesbian love, female sexuality, transition
Introduction
Although 21st century has brought some new thematic chal-
lenges for literature, in the countries of former Yugoslavia, some
topics are still widely treated as taboo, and therefore are not to
be easily found in works of authors from this region. One of such
taboo topics is homosexual and especially lesbian love, which is
almost completely unexplored in the domain of post-Yugoslav
literature. Precisely because both male and female authors from
this region so rarely write about female homosexual desire, my
attention was attracted by Ajla Terzić’s last novel titled Mogla je
biti prosta priča, which could be translated as Could Have Been a
Simple Story, and which deals with same-sex love between two
young women from Bosnia.

Queer Love Story and Female Sexuality
The novel can easily be put into genre of gay or queer lit-
erature, because one of the main issues that the third novel by
Bosnian female writer Ajla Terzić tries to deal with is the marginal
status and stigmatization of homosexuals. The fact that the two
main characters, Esma and Roza, are lesbians introduces into the
literature of the former Yugoslav countries one still neglected as-
pect of female eros and sexuality, and it questions the prevailing
concepts of femininity. The choice of the author to depict this kind
of love, which is widely ignored or avoided in literature written in
Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian language is what makes this novel a
novelty and rarity in that literary scene.
However, this is not just a simple story for several reasons. It
does not only tackle the controversial subject of female sexual de-
sire in a predominately patriarchal society, the story is also com-
plex because it includes a number of other interesting current is-
sues that consider the position of individuals, and especially of
women in a society in transition in post-war period.
Although the story is a third person narrative, it is told from
the point of view of the main protagonist Esma. The novel starts
with the description of a typical family meal during which Esma’s
family is questioning her about her love life. In their eyes Esma, in
her thirties, has reached the age when she is supposed to get mar-
ried, so they are trying to hook her up with Meša, a successful and
118
handsome young dentist, who earns well and fits the traditional
standards of an ideal partner. This scene is an excellent illustra-
tion of stereotypical attitudes of society that pressure women into
marriage when they have reached certain age, because according
to the patriarchally- oriented mindset marriage is seen as a sanc-
tuary for women.
Immersed into a sullen daily routine of a city in the period
of social and economic transition, Esma leads a pretty boring life,
without any ambitions or hope of sudden change. Employed in
a social sector, with all her ideals destroyed, she works and lives
almost automatically. When she travels to Austria on business, she
does not know that this short trip will totally change her monoto-
nous life. During the train ride from Vienna to Graz Esma meets
Roza, an unusual girl from Bosnia who lives in Austria and Esma
is very intrigued by her. They get to know each other and Esma is
very confused because she starts feeling sexually attracted to a
woman for the first time in her life. Esma tries to ignore the feel-
ings that Roza awakens in her, but not very successfully and soon
the two of them start a love affair.
Even though Esma and Roza are quite different from each
other according to their interests, attitudes, habits, life style and
dressing style, a passionate romance develops between them.
Neither of them fits the stereotypes about lesbians, nor does their
relationship correspond to the clichés about lesbian couples,
which usually include one partner who takes over the “male” role
and the other one who is expressively feminine. Esma and Roza

are presented as opposites, but due to the fact that they possess
completely different personalities and lead different lives, not due
to their sexual roles. They stand for two different worlds and dif-
ferent life styles.
Roza, who lives in Vienna, represents Western individuality
and ambition. She knows what she likes, she has a number of hob-
bies and interests and she wants to make her dream of becoming
an artist come true, while she is working in gastronomy in order to
pay her bills. In contrast, Esma in many ways stands for the men-
tality of a typical small town and symbolizes the collective spirit of
traditional, closed Balkan society.
At the beginning Esma seems like a liberal person, who does
not correspond to the image of the stereotypical and traditional
Bosnian mentality, but with the development of the story she ap-
pears less and less special, and the deeper the relationship with
Roza goes it becomes more obvious that she is actually quite com-
mon and conservative. She is only desperately trying to stand out
from her surroundings, although it is an integral part of the soci-
ety that she despises and refuses to belong to. Maybe that is the
reason why for Esma the unconventional Roza represents a femme
fatale that radiates a fairy-like beauty and stands for everything
that she herself would like to be.
This romance works well until the reality knocks on Esma’s door.
The problems surge when Esma’s obsession with Roza starts caus-
ing her inner conflicts. Despite the fact that Esma tries to act like an
emancipated woman, she is very indecisive and it is very important
119
to her what other people think. Her fears and dilemmas are not only
the consequence of predominately antagonistic attitudes of society
towards homosexuals, but they also reflect Esma’s own insecurities
and doubts. Through the relationship with Roza she discovers new
dimensions of herself and her sexuality, but she does not know how
to position herself in connection to these new discoveries.
For her, sexual desire and love towards another woman is
a completely new and unexpected experience, which, as excit-
ing as it is, also makes her afraid. Even though she feels sincere
love towards Roza, she is unable to liberate herself from the fear
of negative reactions of the people from her surroundings, their
condemning attitudes and loathing stares that influence her be-
havior and her relationship with Roza. She cannot help feeling
that by having an intimate relationship with another woman she
is doing something forbidden, something that cannot end well.
Esma is aware of the antagonism towards homosexual relation-
ships that is deeply rooted in the society in which she lives, and
she does not only have to fight her own fears and confusion, but
also prejudice of other people.
That is why Esma is in constant conflict with herself and she is
not sure if she should follow her inner needs or follow the rules of
the society and adapt to the expectations of her family. That would
mean that instead of deciding to stay in the relationship with Roza
she should choose to marry an educated and well-doing man, who
could offer her social stability and security. For that reason, Esma is
still seeing Meša and she is considering his marriage offer.

Balkanism in the Balkans
The contrast between Rosa’s liberated lifestyle and sup-
posedly tolerant, progressive and open West represented by
Austria and the conservative and small town mentality and
the grey, sullen, and almost pathetic everyday life that Esma,
the members of the LGBT community, and other people in
Esma’s city in the Balkans lead, is more than evident in this
novel. This contrast between the Western Europe and the Bal-
kans reflects a specific sort of colonialist discourse that Maria
Todorova termed Balkanism in her famous work Imagining the
Balkans (Todorova 2009).
Although the Balkan region is geographically an integral
part of Europe, for centuries it has been constructed as a sym-
bolic place of otherness, a place in-between that is neither com-
pletely the West nor the East. Through a number of different
discourses the Balkans came to represent a symbolic Other of
Europe loaded with negative images, stereotypes and connota-
tions, upon which the positive, civilized, and self-congratulato-
ry image of Europe has been built.
Balkanism has had a crucial role in creating the pejorative
images about the Balkans and its people. On the one side this re-
gion has been mythologized as a bridge and a meeting point of
cultures, but on the other side it has been stigmatized as a pow-
der keg, a site of constant conflicts and wars.
120
However, the cultural and political discourse that creates
images and stereotypes can also transform political and cultural
reality and have a significant impact on the lives of people. There-
fore, it seems that the ideas and negative images that construct
the Balkans are also reflected in the literary discourse as well as in
the attitudes of the people, who start accepting the constructions
which are put upon them by others and they start identifying with
them, and thus become the representations of the ideas and im-
ages that have been imposed on them.
Although some of the situations described in this novel are
not far from the real life of people in the Balkans, such as the pres-
sure that some families make on their daughters to get married
when they reach a certain age, lack of opportunities for young
people to use their potentials, or the difficult situation of the
members of the LGBT community who are still marginalized and
stigmatized, one should also be aware of the discursive nature of
these constructions of reality and various cultural connotations
that they carry.
The idyllic depiction of the progressive Western Europe, rep-
resented here by Austria versus the hard, poor, monotonous real-
ity of the Balkans and primitivism, backwardness and intolerance
of the people can also been seen as cultural constructions that are
partly a consequence of a long-term Balkanism discourse. Even
though the characters themselves idealize the West as a dream-
land, a world of possibilities, freedom and tolerance, one should
always keep in mind that this image of Western Europe is also a

constructed image of the West, often built at the expense of a
constructed otherness of “other” spaces such as the Balkans.
Only here the otherness of the Balkans is not the only other-
ness that Esma is fighting with. In a patriarchal society in which
she lives she does not only have to deal with her otherness of be-
ing a woman in a male-dominated society, but moreover another
kind of feeling of otherness is trying to invade her identity. Esma
is profoundly scared of being labeled as the sexual “Other” for her
homosexual tendencies and this fear is what leads to denial of her
lesbian identity.
Lesbian Identity and LGBT Community
Despite the many differences between Esma and Roza, the
biggest difference between them is that Esma is not capable of
defining her sexual identity, or accepting her homosexual affini-
ties. In contrast to Roza, who defines herself very strongly through
her sexual orientation, Esma does not see herself as a lesbian. Tak-
ing into account that Roza is the first woman she has ever had
sexual relationship with, Esma is convinced that she is in love with
Roza’s personality, and that the fact that she is a woman does not
have any importance or influence on her sexual desire.
The different sexual identifications of the two characters
and their different attitudes towards their own sexuality shows
that being a lesbian or generally homosexual is not a fixed and
121
unchangeable category, but that sexual identity depends on the
self-identification of the person with their sexual orientation as
well as definitions and meanings that one culture assigns to the
categories of sexuality in a certain period of time. The relationships
between men and women can include a whole range of feelings
and expressions of love and attachment, and therefore we must
ask what can be defined as lesbian love and which women can be
called lesbians.
It is also important that this love story does not start in Bos-
nia but in Austria, a space which is different from Esma’s everyday
environment, and where people can express their homosexual
preferences more freely and openly, so it seems that Esma at first
experiences this love story as an exciting adventure during which
she explores her sexuality and femininity.
Similar constructions of mobility are often found in the con-
structions of lesbian and gay sexual identities. For example, Hughes
in his article “Holidays and Homosexual Identity” (Hughes 1997),
emphasizes that there is a connection between travelling and con-
struction and acceptance of homosexual identities. He claims that
the person’s acceptance of his or her own homosexual identity of-
ten relies on moving away from the familiar surroundings or be-
ing a tourist, because the journey includes removal from the usual
surroundings. According to him a big part of the search for sexual
identity lies within the traveling to new, unknown places because
due to the social marginalization of homosexuals in some places,
many of them are forced to find another place for themselves.

However, it soon becomes clear that if she wants the relation-
ship with Roza to develop into something more than sexual experi-
menting, Esma has to face her own, as well as other people’s prejudice
and to question her own ideas about love and relationships. Due to
her constant dilemmas and fear of social stigma their relationship is
full of jealousy and distrust. Roza realizes that Esma has doubts and
Esma’s meetings with Meša cause her being jealous, which eventual-
ly leads to a break up. For Roza, who has been aware of the fact that
she prefers women ever since she was a young girl, and who openly
shows her homosexual inclination, Esma’s hesitation is not accept-
able. Homosexuality does not only determine Roza’s life style, but
also her political and social attitudes. Roza identifies very strongly
with her sexual identity, fights for her rights and defends her beliefs
by being active member of a LGBT activist group.
The scene that takes place in a claustrophobic space in an at-
tic, where the small group of LGBT activists meet is very interesting
because it addresses many important issues and shows the diffi-
culties which the LGBT population in the Balkans faces on a daily
basis. LGBT activists are depicted as a marginal group of people
who try to deal with their difficult position with the help of black
humor, so all over the walls there are X-ray pictures of their bro-
ken bones, as a reminder of their coming out of the closet. In this
way the novel shows the gap between the West where people are
more open and tolerant towards sexual minorities and society in
the Balkans, which is full of prejudice and in which homosexuals
are stigmatized and live in constant fear of being attacked. While
122
in Austria, a country that symbolizes the West, there are gay city
guides with gay-friendly locations, and in the Balkans - violence
against homosexuals and hate speech are still very present. How-
ever, the LGBT activists can also be unfriendly towards the people
who are not part of their circle. When Esma meets Roza’s ex-girl-
friend Lidija, who is very hostile towards her, she becomes even
more aware of the dangers that her homosexual relationship with
Roza brings along.
Coming-of-Age and Transitional Novel
Although one of the main focuses of the novel is on queer
issues, analyzing this novel exclusively in the light of its dealing
with the main protagonist’s sexuality would be too simplified an
approach, because this novel touches upon many more impor-
tant topics that can be reflected upon.
Even though Esma sometimes seems as an outsider in her
home country, according to many aspects she actually personifies
the specific spirit of the age, and the problems of young people
in the period of transition, who during the time of big social and
cultural changes from one political and economic system into the
other have lost their compass and are trying to find their way and
position in the society.
Therefore, besides categorizing this novel as a queer novel, I
would dare to describe it also as a sort of contemporary coming-

of-age novel (generacijski roman), and a transitional novel (tran-
zicijski roman), because it does not just tell the story of only one
young woman, who is trying to position herself in a society that
has undergone enormous changes during her growing up, but it
is a story of a whole generation of young people who feel lost due
to these transformations, and that have often been named the lost
generation. In a way Esma is the voice of the generation of people
who were born in the times of former Yugoslavia and who spent
their childhood influenced by the ideals of Tito’s Yugoslavia, but
whose youth ended with the war and whose lives were shaped
by the political and social changes in the West Balkans during the
1990s. Many of them spent their younger years experiencing the
horrors of the war or ended up as refugees, while their early adult-
hood is impacted by transition and economic crisis.
The stories of Esma’s friends also tell the readers a lot about
the specific problems of this generation of the people from the Bal-
kans, who in short time have experienced many difficulties such as
war and poverty, and the ways in which this lost generation is try-
ing to deal with transitional reality. This very specific experience can
be defined as a transitive state, a state in between. They are caught
up in the time in-between the socialist past, confusing transitional
present and insecure future, and in the space in- between, in the Bal-
kans which are constructed as the place between the West and the
East. In this in-betweenness opposite sets of values can be found.
On the one side there is the local nationalism, conservatism and
traditions, and on the other side there are the ideas and tendencies
123
coming from the West, which include global trends and popular
culture, consumerism and modern technologies.
A Female Voice
However, even more than the spirit of her lost generation,
Esma represents the voice of women who are, even more than
men, trapped in the contradictions. The novel illuminates the
issues of self-discovery and self-definition of women in a soci-
ety in transition, who are lost somewhere in between conser-
vative and liberal views and opposite sets of values. It tells the
story of Esma’s coming to terms not only with her homosexual-
ity but also with her own femininity and position as a woman
in a male-dominated society. Caught in between the restrictive
patriarchal norms and traditional ways of thinking on the one
side, and the Western ideals of individuality and sexual free-
dom on the other side, the women of this generation search to
define their own identity, and often find themselves in conflict
with different stereotypes, ideals and norms of behavior, and
feel the burden of socially determined gender roles and social
conventions. In their inability to define and understand them-
selves and the society they often get lost in dilemmas between
opposite ideologies and values offered by politics, religion,
culture and media, which can result not only in ideological, but
also sexual disorientation, as it is the case with Esma.

Minor Characters
Although some of the minor characters are depicted in quite
stereotypical and superficial way, as for example some members of
Esma’s family or Esma’s work colleagues, the characters of Esma’s
friends are interesting, because in their difficult and complicated life
circumstances we recognize the typical problems of the lost genera-
tion in the times of transition, such as lack of perspectives and lim-
ited possibilities in a post-war society.
The character of Meša, a young successful dentist stands for
those people who think that professional success and money can
make a person happy, so he spends most of his time working in
order to earn more money and buy a luxurious place for himself
and his future wife. His utilitarian attitude towards life can be seen
in the fact that he thinks that his money and success are enough
to impress and seduce a woman who does not love him and has
nothing in common with him.
For showing the tragedy of war and the consequences it had
on the lives of many young people who have been heavily trau-
matized and therefore cannot find their way in the new society,
the author introduces the character of Esma’s friend Ismar (or Iki).
Iki used to dream of becoming a theater director, but after fight-
ing as a soldier during the war in Bosnia, he is not able to adapt
to the everyday life, so he volunteers to go to war in Afghanistan,
where he eventually gets killed.
124
Conflicts as well as fusions of different ideals and life styles
in this novel can especially be detected in the differences be-
tween the two main characters Esma and Roza, but also in the
differences between Esma and her freind Dada, as well as in the
contradictions that Esma carries within herself, her attitudes
and her choices.
Dada is Esma’s college friend and Esma stays with Dada
and her family during her trip to Graz. In comparison to Esma
who seems pretty confused, Dada’s life seems perfectly orga-
nized. She has left home during the war and she came to Austria
as a refugee, but in the meantime she became a successful doc-
tor. She has a nice home, and she and her husband Petar, who
seems very nice and full of understanding, have a son. Every-
thing in Dada’s life seems perfect at first sight, but soon we find
out that Dada’s happy marriage is just an illusion, because her
husband leaves her for another woman. Although she leaves
the impression of a liberal and emancipated woman, Dada is
nothing of the kind. When Esma tells her friend about her love
affair with Roza, Dada does not show any understanding and
she starts preaching about her own ideals of love and marriage,
although they did not even work for her.
These three characters represent the possibilities that the
young people of this post-war generation had in a society in tran-
sition: to constantly work as Meša in the belief that material se-
curity can ensure happiness, to emigrate like Dada and live a mo-
notonous bourgeois life or to choose total escapism like Iki did.

Publication of the Novel
It is very interesting that the novel, whose author is from
Bosnia and Herzegovina, was published both in Croatia by the
publishing house Sandorf from Zagreb and in Serbia by Rende
from Belgrade, but has not yet been published by any publish-
ing house in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We could ask ourselves
if that fact attests that Bosnian and Herzegovinian society,
loaded with numerous socio-political problems, is still unwill-
ing to deal with the issues of same-sex love. Does this tell us
that the homophobic attitudes are even more spread in Bos-
nia than they are in Serbia or Croatia?
In a country which is still politically divided and unsta-
bile, which is troubled by nationalism, unemployment, lack of
perspective and social inequality, where corruption and nepo-
tism rule, where the majority of people, and not just the ones
on the margins, live precarious lives, where homophobia is
still widespread and many people hide their homosexuality in
order not to be ostricized, even some liberal people consider
LGBT activism as something that is not of crucial importance
for the moment. So far no pride parades have taken place in
Bosnia, and there are just a few political initiatives or projects
that deal with the issues of the LGBT community, and there
seems to be no place for homosexual topics on the Bosnian
literary scene.
125
However, the fact that a work by Bosnian female writer had
to be published out of her country and literary circle tells us some-
thing about the literary scene and publishing industry in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. The example of this novel could be used to think
about the dominant attitudes and power positions on the literary
scene and publishing industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Who is
getting published, where and for what reason is not just a matter
of the works’ quality, but is more a question of access to publish-
ing, media and power relations.
The novels of the transition period need to be analyzed in
the context of a political and cultural shift from one totalitarian
ideological concept to another one, in which the communist set
of ideas and themes was replaced by the nationalist one, but some
of those who were on the margins in the old system, still remained
on the margins in the new system without the possibility to reach
a better position within the new set of power relations and values.
In both cases women, homosexuals, and minorities find them-
selves in underprivileged position, where their problems and con-
cerns are ignored and not seen as relevant for the interest of the
broader audience.
Even this novel as a rare example of literature dealing
with lesbian love and desire that did get published in Croatia
and Serbia was not written by a lesbian woman, but by a fe-
male writer who declares herself as heterosexual, which could
also be an indicator of the fact that lesbian writers have even
less access to mainstream media and publishing than hetero-

sexual women. If we look closely at the literary scene in the last
twenty years in Bosnia and Herzegovina we can easily detect
the omnipotent presence of male writers, of mostly the older
generation, who keep the strings of the literary stage and the
publishing industry in their hands.
Conclusion
It seems that the main question for understanding and in-
terpreting this novel is why the author has chosen the topic of
lesbian love between two young women from Bosnia. The prime
goal of the author surely has not been only to address the issues of
lesbians and homosexuals as a minority and marginalized group,
but, by problematizing the position of people who have in some
way a “different” identity in comparison to the mainstream, to try
and offer a general criticism of a society which is full of clichés,
prejudice and suppression.
By describing a problematic homosexual relationship,
which can provoke conflicting reactions, this novel creates
a frame for contemplating the issue of different life choices
and possibilities to change your position in your own envi-
ronment. In a patriarchal society in which norms of behavior,
gender and sexual roles are predetermined, and alternatives
often seem limited and risky, homosexuality can symbolize an
act of resistance to the mainstream social expectations and
126
a liberation from the chains of assigned social rules. Lesbian
love in this case can stand for a subversion of typical gender
and sexual roles and a redefinition of stale stereotypes, and
also represent a way of transgressing all rigid social norms
and reconsidering borders of identity. However, in the scene
in the LBGT center, it becomes obvious that even people who
do choose the alternative path are not necessarily free from
their own prejudice, which is also a sign of intolerance and an
indicator of attitudes of exclusion in local policies.
Another interesting aspect of the story is a different view on
female sexuality, since most of the literary works, especially the
ones written by male authors offer a phallocentric view on female
sexuality according to which women are idealized, mystified or
demonized. The patriarchal view does not define the woman as
an active sexual subject, but rather as a passive object of men’s
lust, which only reinforces the subordinate role of women in so-
ciety in general. Lesbian love is offered here as another existing
aspect of female sexuality, as a possibility for women to be ac-
tive sexual agents in intimate relationships, a way to explore their
sexuality outside of the narrow social frames and expand their in-
sights about who they really are.
The author leaves the end open for interpretation, so it is
left to the reader to decide whether Esma accepts lesbianism as
her life choice or decides to take a less painful path of adapting
herself to social expectations and leaves the love affair with Roza
behind as some momentary whim. Therefore, it is also open to
 127

discussion if the attempt of transgression or subversion in the Bibliography

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and place in society in difficult times of transition and crisis. The Todorova, Maria. 2009. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford
novel reflects upon the issues of self-determination and self-posi- University Press.
tioning of a specific generation of women in a society in transition Hughes, Howard. 1997. “Holidays and Homosexual Identity.”
which is divided between conservative and liberal views and sets Tourism Management, Vol. 18, No. 1, 3-8.
of values, between the individual wish for self-definition and the
collective identity and mentality of the community.
Through Esma’s story and the stories of other characters the
author shows us that life is unpredictable and that we never know
where our paths may take us. Finally, the novel reminds us that all
of us constantly need to reexamine our own life choices and atti-
tudes in attempt to find the answers to the eternal questions such
as: who am I, which is the right path for me, where do I belong,
and is it, despite all the social barriers and rules, worth believing
that love has no borders and you have to fight for it.
 128

Photo by Lazara Marinković


Biographies
Ferrante, Antonia Anna earned her MA in International Re-
lations and Politics at the University of Naples L’Orientale,
defending a thesis in Postcolonial Anthropology entitled Ho-
monationalism. Postcolonial Criticism of New Discriminatory Dis-
course. She is currently a PhD student in Cultural and Postcolo-
nial Studies of the Anglophone World at the same university,
and is working on a project entitled Gay Skin, Hetero Masks:
For a New Regime of Visibility Out of the Closet. In 2014 she has
published the article “Homo Skin, Hetero Masks. A Represen-
tation of Italian Homonationalism” in Les Online Journal. Work-
ing at the intersection between queer theory and postcolonial
studies, she focuses on popular representations of homonato-
nalism, and on nationalism in TV programs. In particular, her
research investigates the process of normalization aiming at
establishing new forms of cultural hegemony within queer
subcultures.
Finch, Claire is a student in creative writing at the University
of Paris 8 in France. She recently received her MA in gender
studies at the University of Paris 8. Her MA thesis focused on
the circulation of queer theory between France and the Unit-
ed States. She has a BA in Literature from Duke University, in
North Carolina, USA.
129
Guerreiro, Mónica (b. 1981) graduated from Faculdade de Ciên-
cias Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa with a major
in Communication Sciences and a minor in Communication and the
Arts. She is a researcher in Portuguese contemporary dance history
(1990-2015), criticism and dance appreciation and gender studies.
She is currently working on a doctoral thesis regarding queer practices
and discourses within the performing arts in Portugal. Since 2004 she
has been a consultant for the national General Directorate for the Arts,
specifically for the fields of dance and cross disciplinary public politics,
and since 2011 she has been a department director at this office. She
taught Cultural Management (Escola Superior de Educação Jean Piag-
et, Almada, 2007-2009) and Dance Analysis (Escola Superior de Tecno-
logias e Artes de Lisboa, 2006-2007) at post-graduate level courses.
Working as a journalist and critic until 2003, she published regularly
in Portugal’s specialized press (Blitz weekly newspaper, Número Mag-
azine, Duas Colunas newspaper, Agenda Cultural de Lisboa, Sinais de
Cena magazine and Obscena magazine). She has sat in various award
panels, such as the ACARTE/Maria Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão
(assigned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), the Critics Prize
(awarded by the Portuguese Theater Critics Association), the Author
Awards (awarded by the Portuguese Society of Authors) and the Por-
tuguese Golden Globes (assigned by Impresa/SIC). Mónica published
numerous papers about Portuguese contemporary dance and edited
the CAPITALS catalogue (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) and André
Lepecki’s bilingual anthology (www.sarma.be). She is the author of
Olga Roriz (Lisbon, 2007: Assírio & Alvim, 286 p.).

Henderson, Marius studied Gender and Queer Studies, English
and American Studies, and German Studies at the University of
Hamburg, Germany, and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,
USA. Marius Henderson holds a MA and a BA in English and Amer-
ican Studies. Currently he is a PhD Student as well as a research
and teaching assistant at the Institute for English and American
Studies at the University of Hamburg. In his dissertation project he
analyzes poetic responses to scenarios of crisis by contemporary
North American, mainly feminist, experimental poets by taking
into account current shifts from trauma theory to affect theory in
contemporary critical theory. His other research interests include
African American studies, critical race theory, queer-feminist the-
ory, avant-garde studies, and zine culture.
Koncul, Ana is a semiotician and a researcher and project coordi-
nator at the Center for Cultures, Politics and Identities and is a doc-
toral fellow in the field of Body and Culture. Her research interests
also include semiotics, cognitive semiotics and posthumanism.
Marinković, Lazara is a “warrior” in media and culture. Commu-
nicologist. Occasional photographer. One of the founders of the
queer cultural organization IDAHO Belgrade. Since 2008 she par-
ticipates in the promotion and implementation of different art
and cultural projects in Serbia and abroad; in her professional ca-
pacity she worked as a PR person and editor of digital media in PR
agencies and in NGOs, with focus on CSR and social innovations.
130
As a columnist and independent author she deals with arts, media
culture, feminism, social injustices and other phenomena.
Muzart, Thomas is a PhD student at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York (CUNY). He earned his MA at
Sciences Po Lyon in Communications and Culture. His studies
in France led him to work on cultural activism and sexuality
studies, especially in his thesis on gay and lesbian film festi-
vals in France. After working for several theatre companies in
New York and Paris, he decided to combine his academic and
professional interests to further issues on identity and perfor-
mance. He published several articles on gender studies for the
online magazine non.fiction. He presented papers on authors
such as Jean Genet and André Gide in several conferences in
the United States. As a participant to the Summer School for
Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2014 in Belgrade, he present-
ed his latest research on the pornographic discourse in France.
He currently teaches French in New York at Baruch and City
College.
Panayotov, Stanimir holds a BA in Philosophy (Sofia University,
Bulgaria) and MA in Philosophy and Gender Studies (Euro-Balkan
Institute, Skopje, Macedonia), and is a PhD candidate in compar-
ative gender studies at Central European University, Budapest,
Hungary. His interests and contributions are in continental and
feminist philosophy, gender studies, queer theory, critical theory,
and autonomist Marxism in particular. He is also part of the teams
of New Left Perspectives and Social Center Haspel in Sofia and
of IPAK.Center in Belgrade, where he co-organizes the Summer
School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics. He is also one of the
directors of Sofia Queer Forum.
Rogerson, Steph Schem is completing her dissertation In Search
of Queer Visual History: Feeling and Early Photography in the Joint
Graduate Program of Communication and Culture at York/Ryer-
son Universities in Toronto, Canada.
rose, france is an America-born, Norway-residing academic, artist
and activist in the realm of queer rights. He has a MPhil in Sociol-
ogy from University of Cape Town and a MFA in Applied Arts from
Kunstakademiet i Trondheim, Norway. france currently collabo-
rates on a joint project, Art [] Gender [] Art, in which he explores
art as a platform for deconstructing gender norms.
Slipac, Melisa was born in 1978 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herze-
govina, and educated in Banja Luka, Split (Croatia), and Austria.
She holds a MA in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, English, and
Spanish language and literature from the University of Vienna.
She published a book of poetry, Dancing Between the Walls (2007),
which was awarded the literary prize “Kocić Feather,” and has pub-
lished in English “Black Female Sexuality and Nature of Woman-
hood” (2009). She is an active board member of two intercultural
associations called ditiramb and LINE IN. She works as a language
teacher in Vienna and currently she is writing her doctoral thesis 131
at the Institute of Slavic Studies in Vienna.
Vilchez, Jennifer received her BA from the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley in both Film and Spanish Language and Literature in
2008. She completed her MA with distinction in 2014 at the De-
partment of Gender Studies in the Central European University in
Budapest, Hungary as part of the GEMMA program, the Erasmus
Mundus Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies. For the first year
of her MA, she attended the Instituto Universitario de Estudios de
las Mujeres y de Género at the University of Granada in Spain. Jen-
nifer has also previously attended the Universitat Autonoma de
Barcelona for the Education Abroad Program in 2006-2007 and
studied Creative Fiction Writing at the American University in Par-
is, France in 2013. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Cali-
fornia in the United States, she is currently a PhD student in the
University of Granada. Her recent research interests include horror
film, pornography, popular cultures, psychoanalysis, gender stud-
ies and sexuality.
Wates, Anna completed her MaRes in Anthropological Re-
search Methods at  SOAS, University of London, in 2014.  She
has a background of involvement with disability rights move-
ments in both the UK and the US, and has been able to further
this engagement by travelling to Ghana to conduct collabora-
tive fieldwork for her BA dissertation with grassroots disability
rights activist groups. Broadly, she is interested in exploring
the nuances and tensions elicited by claiming “disability” as Rights of Marginalized Communities (2011-2015). Since 2013 132

a political subjectivity, in particular, exploring commonalities
with, among other things, queer theory and the intersections
of disability as a socially negotiated identity with race, gender,
and class. Her work applies an anthropological perspective
on social movements, looking to the ways in which this might
reveal how people simultaneously challenge, interrupt, inter-
vene, and reinforce hegemonic ideas about bodies and bodily
practices perceived as non-normative.
Žernovski is co-founder of IPAK.Center - Research Center for
Cultures, Politics and Identities in Belgrade, Serbia, and since
2008 is co-founder of FRIK Cultural Initiatives Development
Formation, horizontally based organization which is working
on motivation of socially engaged art production and social
democratization, beyond prejudices and stereotypes.

Žernovski, Velimir holds both MA BA degrees from the Fac-

ulty of Fine Arts, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje.
He is also MA candidate at the Department of Cultural Stud-
ies at Euro-Balkan Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities
Research, Skopje. He realized solo exhibitions in Macedonia
and abroad: New York (2010, 2012), Paris (2011), Vienna (2009,
2011), Freiburg (2009), Skopje (2006, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013),
Belgrade (2014); he took part in group exhibitions in Slovenia,
Kosovo, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Macedonia, Turkey and
USA. Through the media of drawings, videos, installations, ob-
ject installations in public space, writing and publishing artist
books he is exploring notions of identity, urbanity and popular
culture as well as sexuality and gender identity. He was working
as a curatorial assistant at press to exit project space - special
project of the Swiss Cultural Program in Macedonia, worked as
a researcher at Euro-Balkan Institute (2011-2013) and actively
participated in the program of the Coalition Sexual and Health
 133

Poster by Velimir Žernovski

 134

Jack Halberstam (University of Southern California, CA, USA):

Wild Bodies: Gender, Sexuality and Power
 135

Eszter Timár (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary):

Derrida’s Queer Bio-Politics
 136

Bracha L. Ettinger (European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland):

“The World Is Gone, I Must Carry You”: Daring the Shock of EMUN (Trust).
On the Transjective Subreal in Art and Psychoanalysis
 137

Open Interactive Lecture by Tomasz Sikora

(Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland):
Living with an Alien; or, (Again) Against Representation
 138

Open Lecture by Jack Halberstam

(University of Southern California, CA, USA):
On Behalf of Failure
139
IPAK.Center -
Research Center for Cultures,
Politics and Identities

office@ipakcentar.org
www.ipakcentar.org
Karađorđeva 65
11000 Belgrade
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