In 1991 and with the beginning of queer studies, Sue-Ellen Case describes the term “queer” as “a kind of activism that attacks the dominant notion of the natural. The queer is the taboobreaker, the monstrous, the uncanny” (Case, 3). While the term initially circulated in the activist field and was increasingly used in connection with the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, it developed into a term within academic discourse in the 1990s, driven primarily by theorists such as Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jack Halberstam. Queer theory and queer artistic practices have been in close exchange ever since.
Since its beginnings, queer theory has been characterized by its definitional openness, with which it seeks to resist heteronormative categories of thought. Thus, queerness provides a strategy to dissolve concepts such as sexual orientation, gender, identity, subject etc., understanding them instead as fluid and in permanent flux. In this vein, in 1996 José Esteban Muñoz emphasized the importance of the ephemeral as well as of relationality and sociality as essential characteristics of queerness (Munoz, 6). Moreover, David Getsy states: "While 'queer' draws its politics and affective force from the history of non-normative, gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, it is not equivalent to these categories nor is it an identity" (Getsy, 15).
At the same time, the term is characterized by ambivalences, for example with regard to the included groups: Queerness is predominantly associated with an effeminate masculinity, drag queens or AIDS activists, whereas lesbians or dragkings remain rather marginalized within queer theory (Jones 2021, 189). To this day, queer theory also faces the challenge of breaking away from colonial structures and critically examining them through decolonial and intersectional approaches. Especially U.S. queer theory, queer movement, and queer politics are characterized by a nonreflective whiteness (Jones, 187) while people of color are largely left out. At the same time, as Amelia Jones concludes in 2021, the proclaimed fluidity of gender and sex is becoming increasingly fixed as a subversive form of identity (Jones, 191), with the result that there is a paradoxical risk of creating new 'homonormativities'.
In light of these developments since the emergence of the concept of queerness, it can be assumed that in the sense of Jonathan Katz's "queering masculinity" (Katz) masculinity no longer appears as "natural" and can be thought of as discursive rather than biologically defined. Accordingly, masculinity can be understood as diverse, mutable, and in a constant state of becoming. This gives rise to the potential of relating queerness and queer masculinity to posthuman and postanthropocentric theories that consider this alterability as constitutive.
Against this background, we would like to address queer artistic strategies and the consequences for masculinities. In addition, we want to consider which strategies artists have been using since the 1990s in order to visualize queer bodies and identities, on which historical presuppositions these are based, and how they position themselves in relation to the developments and ambivalences mentioned above. Moreover, we would like to explore what challenges and opportunities these works present for masculinities and their exploration. In order to address these queer artistic conceptions of new masculinities in the workshop at Ruhr-University Bochum, we are looking forward to contributions that are for example oriented towards, but not limited to, the following questions:
- How do queer artistic concepts reframe existing heteronormative models of binary gender? Which new strategies have emerged in recent years?
- How does male power and its symbolism change through queer interventions?
- Which impact did the AIDS crisis have on the representation of queer masculinities and how is this visible in the artworks?
- How do queer identities interact with intersectional categories of analysis such as 'race', disability, class, age, etc.? How is this addressed artistically?
- Which influence do technological body projects have on queer depictions of masculinity? How can posthuman theories prove productive for queer masculinities?
- How do discourses and conceptions of hegemonic masculinity respond to queer conceptions of masculinity?
- If, following Amelia Jones and Jonathan Katz, we can speak of a new queer normativity and a queer 'mainstream', how can the claims for queerness as a fluidity of gender, sexuality and identity still be realized?
- Do art or queer artistic concepts of masculinity have the potential to maintain this kind of fluidity?
We welcome contributions from art and cultural studies, gender studies, media studies as well as related disciplines. Please send an abstract (approx. 300 words) and a short CV to Charlotte Kaiser (charlotte.kaiser@rub.de) by June 15th, 2022. Feedback will be provided by the end of July.
Selected workshop participants will be asked to prepare a 20-minute presentation for the workshop on September 22nd, 2022. A digital keynote lecture by Dr. Peter Rehberg (Schwules Museum, Berlin) will be held on the evening of September 21st to open the workshop.
In addition, selected contributions will be published as part of an anthology edited by the DFG project. The selected papers must be submitted by early December 2022.
We plan to hold the workshop on site at the Ruhr-University Bochum and to stream it via Zoom. However, if this is not possible given the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop will be held online via Zoom. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered.
Literature:
Case, Sue-Ellen: Tracking the Vampire, in: Differences, Vol. 3, 1991, No. 2-.
Getsy, David: Queer, Cambridge, Mass. 2016.
Jones, Amelia: In Between Subjetcs. A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance, London/New York 202 Katz, Jonathan: Queering Masculinity, in: Pardo, Alona (Hg.): Masculinities. Liberation through Photography, Ausst.-Kat. Barbican Art Gallery, London 2020, 43–51.
Muñoz, José Esteban: Ephemera as Evidence. Introductory Notes to Queer Acts, in: Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, No. 8:2.