Notre propos interroge la pluralisation des formes d’émancipation féministe en France depuis le milieu des années 1990 au regard de la confrontation entre féminisme matérialiste et féminisme queer. Nous sommes partis de l’hypothèse que l’articulation entre ces deux positions théorico-politiques est possible car elle se réalise dans les pratiques militantes queer-féministes actuelles. Nous affirmons que cette conjugaison est pertinente et mérite d’être davantage théorisée car elle porte selon nous une radicalité inclusive. L’alliance de ces deux approches interroge la définition du sujet féministe et, en particulier, l’élaboration non-essentialiste de l’unité politique. Nous analysons dans quelle mesure la démarche (contre-)hégémonique ainsi que le projet de démocratie radicale plurielle et agonistique donnent des outils pour répondre à cette question. Notre thèse est la suivante : le constructivisme radical qui résulte de l’union entre féminisme matérialiste et féminisme queer devrait développer une stratégie hégémonique de construction du sujet politique, car celle-ci prend en compte la pluralité et la contingence du social mais vise également l’unité et la stabilité du « nous » politique afin de renverser les diverses dominations matérielles. Ce constructivisme conçoit le politique comme institution du social et développe une compréhension de la politique comme organisation du conflit en situation d’indécidabilité. / This research addresses the pluralization of feminist emancipation’s forms in France since the mid-1990s in light of the conflict between materialist and queer feminisms. We have taken as our starting point the hypothesis that the linkage between these two political theoretic discourses is possible since it actually takes place in the « queer-feminist » movement’s militant practices. We argue that this combination is meaningful and deserves to be better theorized since it carries with it a message of radicalism and inclusiveness. The alliance of the two approaches questions the definition of the feminist subject, and especially the formulation of a political unity which is not essentialist. We analyze the extent to which both the (counter-)hegemonic approach and the project of a radical, agonistic and plural democracy provide us with tools to answer this issue. Our argument runs as follow : the discourse of radical constructivism that results from the union between materialistic and queer feminisms should develop a hegemonic strategy regarding the conception of the political subject for two reasons. First, this strategy takes into account the plurality of the contingency of the social realm. Second, it aims at unifying and stabilizing the political « Us » in order to reverse the various material domination’s manifestations. Such a constructivist theory thinks of the political realm as an institution of the social realm and develops an understanding of politics as the organization of conflict in a situation of undecidability.

Tercera reunión del grupo de lectura Queer AVT Club. Se discutió el artículo de Judith Butler: "Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism". La introducción estuvo a cargo de María Pérez L. de Heredia de la Universidad del País Vasco.

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This opera, for soprano, contralto, baritone, treble voice, and chamber orchestra, sets an original story, a meditation on gender and the effects of restrictive gender norms in a society. The narrative follows a young sailor who wishes nothing more than to work on the sea forever, but is derailed from that destiny by her forced betrothal to a captain. She escapes this fate through the discovery of a latent power, sailing away from her home into an uncertain future of her own making. The work is approximately one hour in duration.

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What is the relationship between the American social system and its depiction in American fiction, principally in Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!? and How can one disentangle the workings of race, gender, and sexuality in the American social system, when such a knot depends upon queer desire for its strength and energy to an exaggerated degree? Ultimately, I argue that one way to pull these threads apart is to implement a queer deconstructive approach informed by narrative theories of desire, but to begin to answer this question, I contend that the Romantic version of Satan is inherently queer and that as Byronic heroes, Ahab and Sutpen’s queerness deconstructs the binaries that would ensure the “success” of their designs by magnifying and critiquing the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class are predicated on socially constructed and interlocking binaries to assure the supremacy of (those who at least appear to be) powerful white, wealthy, heterosexual, cisgender men like Ahab and Sutpen. In my analysis of the queer impulses of Ahab and Sutpen, I draw on Jaime Harker’s model of the Southern social system as predicated on an “unholy trinity” formed by the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to advance a new approach to interpreting triangular relationships of power and desire in the in the American novel (Harker 112). In my analysis of Sutpen, I layer romantic triangles inspired by the work of René Girard in Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) over the triangle of the “whore,” “nigger,” and “queer” to explore the ways in which mediated desire between “whores,” “niggers,” and “queers” disrupts cultural hegemony. Queer erotic dynamics involving Ahab are more often bivalent than triangular, but both Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom! feature queer erotic desire across racial boundaries, that reveal deep racial fantasies. I maintain that both novels are palimpsests of queer desire and that as Byronic heroes Ahab and Sutpen, though not the characters most frequently discussed in queer readings of Moby-Dick and Absalom, Absalom!, produce, benefit from and blend back into the queer milieu of each text. I end by arguing that Sutpen’s Hundred metonymically stands in for the American South and that the Pequod represents The American Project in its entirety. It is my view that these novels model a hermeneutic (part: whole) relationship that makes them especially apt choices for probing this uniquely American matrix of social power and for highlighting the transformative potential of partially unearthed counter-narratives.

This thesis explores a notion of “queer being” in relation to a difficult yet creative articulation of queer self-consciousness. The difficulty of attempting to “particularise” self-consciousness is challenged and dismantled by proposing ways in which putatively exclusive esoteric knowledges of being can be exposed and expanded. This is achieved by justifying singular (queer) experience as it coincides with the disparities between subjectivity and objectivity, experience and existence. I argue that two key perspectives (those of interstitiality and self-transformativity) provide a basis whereby we can “force” a radical articulation of queer being-ness into general and contemporary philosophical discourses of being. In doing so, a particularised theory of intersubjective being emerges as a way to identify the complicity of ethics and ontology. “Queerness” in this thesis is especially articulated as an eccentricity or poetics of being, experienced at the juncture of diverse knowledge spaces. These include not only the threshold and radical spaces of sexuality and gender, but also the perceived limits of theories of being which allow us to formulate understandings of self-consciousness. This is evidenced through a critical analysis of feminist, queer, transgender, phenomenological and existential texts and/or practices, paying special regard to “everyday, real-life” experience. By using a combination of the “logic of the interstice”, genealogical methods, hermeneutical analysis and a deconstructionist theoretical approach, the thesis seeks out, and insists upon, ways to articulate and determine the possibility of a queer sensibility as both a practice of self-transformativity and a more broadly applicable knowledge heuristic. The thesis demonstrates that by increasing an awareness of a particular kind of self-transformative queer being-ness – one that embraces a critical ethics of being – the rich insights of queer experiences and knowledges can act as a valuable resource for reviewing the horizons of the ontology of the subject. It also suggests that particularising the term “queer” in relation to a complex theory of “sensibility” provides new depths for understanding, and practical ways to make use of, a queer theory of being.

This essay will discuss Ernest Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, posthumously published 1970, focusing in particular on the importance of the protagonist's fluid gender identity and interest in queer sexuality. Central to my discussion is queer theorist Judith Butler's view of gender as something performed and contextual and her objection to the binary of man and woman. I will argue that the issues of gender identity and queer forms of sexuality are ever-present throughout the novel, and that in the protagonist Thomas Hudson, Hemingway presents a different hero in comparison to the hardboiled macho-man he has been claimed to glorify in his work. My thesis is that the protagonist's denial of his ambiguous gender identity and his interest in queer sexualitey are the underlying causes for the development of the plot. The novel will be discussed in relation to the thesis in chronological order: first, it examines the protagonist's detachment and separation from his sons; second, his difficulties to sustain any longer relationships with women, and third, why he never dares to trust the people who say they love him.

This thesis layers theories of affect circulation, queer performance participation, counterpublics, and queer space and time with ethnographic work performed in queer performance spaces. In so doing, the thesis explores affective networks in queer performance spaces in order to begin a theoretical analysis of the connecting affects amongst queer performance participants. In my interviews, I found affective connections which I explored as keywords. These keywords express affects that, in part, create the affective networks of queer performance participants.

This thesis explores the potential of queer embodiment through the experiences of transgendered people. After discussing the importance of researching the body, often left out of academic enquiry, I engage with theoretical frames that radically reconfigure concepts of subjectivity providing the means to reveal the innovative forms of embodiment that participants embrace. Within these frameworks the mind/body division is disrupted and reconfigured to demonstrate that these are not separate entities rather the mind exists in the body as does the body in the mind. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's version of the becoming body, I locate the body as a vibrant multiplicity of particles capable of infinite connections as opposed to a separated and contained entity. Through approaching embodiment as a never ending process of becoming I look to the way in which spatial settings such as the family have a major influence on the way in which bodies are formulated. In these spaces, I contend, bodies are directed and regulated to conform to dominant understandings of being. Such directing I argue creates 'straight' bodies/space restricting the presence of queer bodies and the disruption they embody. Extending this spatial investigation I look to the way in which open spaces are straight spaces and how the dynamics of such spaces create the queer body as hyper-visible. Exploring queer as a spatial term I suggest that the queer body exists at an angle to the normative straight line creating new and challenging ways of living. A major theme that runs throughout this thesis is the intercorporeal nature of bodies. In developing this concept I demonstrate the generosity of queer bodies and their radical disruption of the distinction between maleness and femaleness. In doing so I explore how bodies are spatially sexed according to the myth of two-sexes, disrupting such a limited view I demonstrate how queer bodies have the potential to move beyond the boundaries of recognizable identity/bodily categorizes and anatomical understandings and embrace a space of intermezzo/ in-betweeness.

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