Queer Futures
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Edited by:
Kathrin Dreckmann
Is ‘queer’ still a useful concept? How can queer thought and artistic expression contribute to reimagining possible futures?
Queer Futures seeks to attract critical interventions in the debate on queer as a concept, its potential and futurity. Given the problematic legacy of queer, a term mainly associated with white gay male history and thus only partly operative for lesbians, people of color, or trans*, intersex, and non-binary people, this series not only deliberates the possible futures of queer as a concept, but also strives to imagine queer futures.
Aesthetic considerations play an important role in thinking about queer futures. In the context of the series, we understand the aesthetic as the capacity of media environments to profoundly change and reorientate our perception. To this end, Queer Futures promotes theoretically advanced research on a range of creative expressions by feminist, queer, and trans* media artists, filmmakers, photographers, musicians, performers, curators, and writers that materialize futures and forms of community. Contributions address the aesthetics of sexual and gender identities and engage critically and creatively with persisting hegemonic ways that cultural artifacts are produced and exhibited. Queer Futures aims to provide a platform for exploring how various theoretical, artistic, and activist cultures translate, appropriate, critique, and redefine queer as a concept and the visions of the future it generates.
All works are internationally peer-reviewed.
Advisory Board:
Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley
Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State University
Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Ruhr University Bochum
Kodwo Eshun, Goldsmiths, University of London
Eva Hayward, Utrecht University
Kara Keeling, University of Southern California
Jasbir Puar, Rutgers University
Dirk Schulz, University of Cologne
Jenny Sundén, Södertörn University
Kathrin Thiele, Utrecht University
Author / Editor information
K. Dreckmann, Heinrich Heine Univ. Dusseldorf, Germany; B. Papenburg, Freie Univ. Berlin, Germany; J. Weinstein, Linköping Univ. Sweden.
Topics
Popular culture encompasses and draws on a rich history of works by musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, and performers who question the contours of traditional sexual and gender identities, including but not limited to members of LGBTQIA* communities. When encountered on the stage or screen, for instance, in the guise of drag performances, forms of sexual ambiguity often spark fascination. Yet in everyday life in various socio-cultural contexts, sexual and bodily difference in all its forms is still met with hostility, rendering vulnerable those human beings that deviate from the white, male, straight, able-bodied norm. Queer artists today respond to social stigma in multiple creative ways, for example, by transforming negative affect, fostering a politics of care, and rewriting history.
This volume considers how feminist, queer, and trans* musicians, filmmakers, curators, and performance artists contribute to popular culture. It explores the many ways of relating to difference, however this is conceived, that their contributions enable. What affects do their works engender? How do they rouse their audience, and to what ends? How do they fabricate and circulate provocative messages about new forms of gender, race, class, and desire? What other visions do they inspire?
What can ethnic differences tell us about the desiring gaze while addressing the motives that result from the power and desire in gay ethnic pornography in Europe? How do pornographic films authenticate their ethnic subject in different European countries and how can the fetishism of presenting an authentically foreign body be best approached? Is the transformation of sex tourism, which affects countries differently, reflected through the ever-evolving history of gay pornography in Europe? And how does this transformation contrast or overlap with the legacies of Orientalism and colonialism? In addressing these questions, this book will participate in ongoing debates concerning Orientalism and colonialism, and make a contribution to the growing field of pornography studies. While recent works by scholars have considered the relation between US mainstream gay pornography and its representations of ethnicity and ‘race,’ and have also discussed examples from Europe (predominantly France), no historical study has yet bridged the gap between earlier European gay ethnic pornography and its current, specifically German-Turkish manifestations. Furthermore, this exploration of recent studios like GayHeim will also contribute to discussions on the mobility issues of non-European men, while illustrating how these new productions can be refugee—or migrant—positive while simultaneously perpetuating Orientalism.
