Through Judith Butler’s concept of ‘cultural translation’, this dissertation seeks to provide a less imperialistic law-making mechanism as it relates to the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights concept (hereinafter ‘the LGB rights concept’) in Turkey, which currently relies heavily on legal transplantation. In search of a new law-making method, this thesis first deconstructs ‘legal transplantation’ as that which creates various asymmetrical relations that amount to consolidating Western imperialism. Critical legal scholars have shown great interest in revealing the imperialistic consequences of the law-maker West and the law-taker non-West. This thesis aims to add another dimension to these discussions by placing ‘imitation’, as advanced by Judith Butler, at the heart of its analyses. It scrutinises legal transplantation through the various imitations/repetitions it embodies and explores the role of imitation in law-making as law-taking. It does so by evaluating legal change by means of legal transplantation through the example of the Turkish experience with the LGB rights concept, and uses Judith Butler’s understanding of imitation/repetition, as advanced in her gender performativity concept, to achieve this evaluation This thesis attempts to expand our understanding of law-making as law-taking by unveiling their performative force, which humanises the subject in a way that is similar to the processes of gendering it. In doing so, this thesis aims to transfer the analyses that postulate the gendered body as performative to the rubric of human rights law, and argues that humanisation of the body through granting rights is performative as well. Though the occasion arises for subversion from these various imitations, it introduces a new law-making method, cultural translation, transforming the realm of limited possibilities for human rights into the realm of the possible.

Submitted by Mariana Dornelles Vargas (marianadv) on 2015-05-07T12:32:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 homossexuais_sao.pdf: 3584500 bytes, checksum: 55fb2a565eeaf1c11ab77b05090becbd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T12:32:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 homossexuais_sao.pdf: 3584500 bytes, checksum: 55fb2a565eeaf1c11ab77b05090becbd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Nenhuma / A partir da análise dos conteúdos de livros de medicina, psicologia e educação publicados no Brasil, entre os anos 1920 e 1970, realiza-se a argumentação de que um conjunto de ideias sobre a homossexualidade foram configuradas e constituíram-se em saberes médicos pedagogicamente articulados, visando gerir os sujeitos categorizados como homossexuais, os quais denominei de pedagogia dos manuais médicos. A tese defendida é também que essa pedagogia influencia ainda hoje o pensamento de quem escreve sobre a homossexualidade. Entretanto, foi possível, perceber nessa análise que um movimento contrário é exercido por outros/as escritores/as, visto que nos acervos das bibliotecas consultadas há obras que aprensentam conteúdos que tentam desconstruir as ideias sobre o/a homossexual veiculadas pela pedagogia dos manuais médicos. A construção da tese de que essas produções ensinam como conduzir sujeitos qualificados de homossexuais, ditando formas de tratar, curar e posicioná-los/as mediante a lógica heterossexual de viver a sexualidade, foi baseada em um conjunto de pressupostos médicos inscritos em 43 livros tendo como perspectiva de análise a teoria Queer. Foram utilizados os fundamentos da análise documental. O material de pesquisa foi categorizado e dividido em dois corpora: corpus 1 - livros de medicina, psicologia e educação publicados entre os anos de 1928 a 1978 (catalogados a partir de quatro bibliotecas: três em Porto Alegre/RS e uma em São Luís/MA) - e corpus 2 - livros de sexualidade e educação sexual (catalogados a partir de quatro bibliotecas de escolas públicas de ensino médio em São Luís/MA). As ideias e representações sobre a homossexualidade veiculadas nessas produções vão do biológico-higienista, passando por ideias psicologizantes até discursos que focalizam o tema a partir de uma visão qualificada como desconstrucionista, visto que imprimem uma discussão pautada na contextualização e problematização do tema ao apresentarem o/a homossexual como uma pessoa que deve ser respeitada, valorizada e percebida como cidadã/o. A pedagogia dos manuais médicos está inserida nas práticas de educação sexual e em todos os espaços sociais e suas ideias podem ser percebidas em livros que abordam a temática da sexualidade. Ela ainda apresenta traços das proposições sobre o homossexual veiculadas no século XX, mas ganha outros contornos e age de acordo com as necessidades da cultura. As resistências a essa forma de ver a sexualidade homossexual também estão em constante movimento e uma possibilidade de reagir às operações dessa pedagogia cultural é problematizá-la, trabalhando-se com metodologias que introduzam discursos desconstrucionistas e presentificadores sobre os sujeitos que vivem a experiência homossexual. / From the analysis of the contents of medical, psychology and education books published in Brazil, from 1920 to1970, the argument is made that a set of ideas about homosexuality have been set and constituted in medical knowledge articulated pedagogically, in order to manage the specimen categorized as homosexual, which I termed the pedagogy of medical textbooks. This study also argued that this pedagogy still influences the thinking of those who write about homosexuality. However, it was possible to notice in this analysis that a backlash is exercised by other writers, as found in the collections of the libraries there are works that have content that attempt to deconstruct ideas about homosexual transmitted by the medical textbooks. The construction of the thesis that these productions teach how lead with individuals qualified as homosexuals, dictating ways to treat, cure, and position them in straight way through the logic of living sexuality, was based on a set of assumptions registered in 43 medical books having as a perspective The queer theory analysis. It were used the fundamentals of documentary analysis. The research material was categorized and divided into two corpus: corpus 1 - medicine, psychology and education books published from 1928 to 1978 (cataloged from four libraries: three in Porto Alegre / RS and one in San Luis / MA) - and corpus 2 - books about sexuality and sex education (categorized from four school libraries in public high schools in San Luis / MA). The ideas and representations of homosexuality made in these productions go to biological - hygienist, go through psychological ideas to the speeches that focus on the theme from a view qualified as a deconstructionist one, because print a guided discussion based on questioning in the context of the subject by presenting the homosexual as a person who should be respected, valued and perceived as a citizen. The pedagogy of medical textbooks is included in the practice of sex education and all social spaces and their ideas can be seen in books that address the topic of sexuality. This pedagogy still has traces of propositions about the homosexual propagated in the twentieth century, but get other contours and acts according to the needs of the crop. The resistance to this way of seeing homosexual sexuality are also in constant motion and an ability to react to the operations of cultural pedagogy is to confront it, working with methodologies that introduce deconstructionist discourse and made present on the individuals who live homosexual experience.

The relatively new field of Queer Theory creates ways of thinking about people living without binary gender, but does not provide for a research model with which to give context to the material struggles of such people. Through the use of Internet discussion groups, the current research project attempts to examine the challenges that people who identify with the concept "genderqueer" describe facing as they fashion selves in social interactions; a process which inevitably requires consumer goods that typically only allow for heteronormative binary gender. Findings suggest that there are similarities in how respondents came to identify with "genderqueer," but such similarities are less present in how they understand and apply the concept to themselves. This study shows a potential conflict arising between academic Queer Theory, which seeks to deconstruct identity categories, and a more popular use of "genderqueer" claimed as an identity by some respondents. In conclusion this thesis examines possibilities for activism and marketing that may come out of "genderqueer" as a widely recognizable identity category.

The term “phantom limb” is used to describe the phenomenal tingling sensation that occurs in the nerve endings of an amputated limb; though the limb is no longer physically attached to the body, the person experiences pain and physical sensation in the space the limb once occupied. Though the body part has been removed, it haunts both the body and the brain. It is through this metaphor that I am interested in investigating the connection between the disembodied and the embodied. The disembodied connects to the embodied through the loss or lack of a bodily form; the embodied, therefore, links the disembodied to movements and mannerisms of the body. Adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, I define manner as a fluctuating force that operates as a spectrum. Manner links, rather than separates, the internal and the external through the social. In other words, the interplay between the internal and external must be socially interpreted in order to be understood as manner. The first chapter of my thesis will focus on embodied manner and use Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a case study to explain how society impacts the construction of normative manner. Building off Jack Halberstam, I adopt the theory that Mr. Hyde “is both a sexual secret, the secret of Jekyll’s undignified desires, and a visible representation of physical otherness” (82). My argument focuses on the connection between the “deformity hidden within” Mr. Hyde and that “inscribed upon his...skin” that Utterson, Enfield and Lanyon struggle to identify (82). The second chapter of my thesis will focus on how manner operates as both a disciplinary force and cultural haunting. In other words, just as the phantom limb reproduces a distorted version of the lost limb, the social control of manner ultimately reproduces imperfect replicas. In George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil, the protagonist, Latimer, begins suffering from visions after he parts ways with his dear friend Charles Meunier. Here, the unconscious operates at the individual level; I argue that these “visions” are the result of an implosion of Latimer’s repressed sexuality. I then turn to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper to argue that manner operates as a type of social law that attempts to stave off haunting but instead inadvertently reproduces it. In this section, I argue that the narrator’s secondary status as a female character gives her a different kind of agency from Mr. Hyde and Latimer, and that her husband’s ultimate failure to control her results in a type of queer production that calls into question the dialectical relationship between haunting and manner.

A collection of creative texts written concurrently with the creation of the artist’s thesis exhibition. A range of written forms coexist - poetry, prose, and dialogue - to open up the narrative and emotional space of the visual work. The text emerges from the point-of-view of different voices, describing experiences and body states that hinge upon the physical and conceptual space of the pond. Amphibiousness offers a gateway to a state of becoming and transformation. Some of the following texts appear in video works by the artist.

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.

The goal of this thesis is to explore the way heterosexism and homophobia are present in the coding that has created an implied and monstrous queer identity for the Joker, present in many versions of the character over the past forty years. Through close readings of several of the Joker’s most iconic appearances, queer theory texts, and analytical essays on pop culture, this paper will analyze the use of queer signifiers present in the comics and the way that these portrayals of the Joker are rife with harmful and heterocentric perceptions of what comic creators have seen as necessary signifiers for queerness. Additionally, I will be using knowledge gleaned from my own preexisting work with fan and cultural studies in order to talk about the way that this portrayal of the Joker has been developed within fandom/fan communities and how it is continually replicated in superhero media.

This thesis argues that the work of the artist David McDiarmid is to be read as an enactment of late twentieth century gay male and queer politics. It will analyse how both the idea and the cultural specificity of ???America??? impacted on the work of this Australian artist resident in New York from 1979 to 1987. The thesis examines how African American music, The Beats, notions of ???hip??? and ???cool???, street art and graffiti, the underground dance club Paradise Garage, street cruising and gay male urban culture influenced the sensibility and the materiality of the artist???s work. McDiarmid???s cultural practice of dress and adornment, it is proposed, forms an essential part of his creative oeuvre and of the ???queer worldmaking??? which is the driver of his creative achievements. The thesis proposes that McDiarmid was a Proto-queer artist before the politics of queer emerged in the 1980s and that his work, including his own life-as-art practices of dress and adornment, enact a mobile rather than fixed gay male identity.

This thesis foregrounds a question unanswered in queer theory�s account of the ongoing reproduction of heteronormativity. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler asks "From where does the performative draw its force, and what happens to the performative whose task it is to undo" that discursively legitimated enacting? (Bodies That Matter 224-5). While queer theory offers a compelling account of how the normative fictions of identity privilege heterosexuality, the first part of Butler�s question remains relatively under-theorised. This thesis addresses this gap and argues that to understand the source of performative authority, we must address the intimate relationship between gay identity and commodity culture. Thus, I investigate the connections between the marketing industry, an historically politicised gay press, and a lesbian and gay politics imagined through the paradigm of identity, and argue that they combine in a citational feedback loop to performatively produce gay identity as the "ideal consumer." I then undertake case studies of two media texts, the website Gay.com and the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, in order to demonstrate how the white, male, middle-class gay aesthete functions hegemonically as gayness in culture. My analysis then turns to the second part of Butler�s question -"what happens to the performative whose task it is to undo?"- and examines the consequences of the absence of an analysis of commodity culture for the notion of queer. To that end, I suggest that alongside their repetitions of gay normativity, both Gay.com and Queer Eye perform queer possibility. However, the case studies I undertake, along with the critical reception of Queer Eye and the internet technologies behind Gay.com, suggests that these media texts fall short of the promise of queerness. This apparent failure to disturb heteronormative reproduction is connected in these critiques to each text�s commercial imperatives. This thesis argues that such critiques tend to rely on determinations of the authenticity of queer performance, and emphasise veracity over queer theory�s potential to exploit the critical potential of deliberate indeterminacy. I argue, instead, that a key part of queer theory�s contingency is its capacity to respond to the changing performative contexts of the normative repetitions it seeks to undo. To put this more simply: If consumer desire defines contemporary gayness, then it is with consumer desire that queer theory must contend. It is precisely the indeterminacy of queer that enables such shifts in its strategies of subversion. Recognition of how queer�s indeterminacy enables those subversive moves returns us to the importance to queer theory of a sustained consideration of the constitutive capacities of commodity culture. What I suggest in this thesis is that if we do no ask "From where does the performance draw its force?" then we cannot answer "And what happens to the performative whose task it is to undo?" the normative framework of identity.

<p>The essay is about how teenagers around 18 years of age in a small town in Sweden talk about gender, body and sexuality. The study is based on two focus group interviews with five boys and four girls. We have then thematized and analyzed the material with queer theory.The results show how young people see heterosexuality as something 'natural' and gender as biologically determined. The teenagers are critical towards anything that deviates from the traditional nuclear family consisting of mother, father and children. Norms are created in their speech as some of them acts as so called "border guards" for these norms. Our conclusion is that there are difficulties to be deviate in terms of gender, sexuality and body in a small town.</p>