Whatever. A Transdisciplinary Journal of Queer Theories and Studies

Di che cosa parliamo quando parliamo di diritti: uguaglianza, differenze, queer

Carmen Dell'Aversano — 2019-06-27

This paper presents a critique of the Enlightenment concept of rights. Based as it is on equality, it deploys the term in both a descriptive and a prescriptive way, acting as a device to exact the performance of normalcy, and to deprive anyone who proves either unwilling or unable to comply of the “right to have rights”. A queer analysis of equality shows it to be constructed collusively, through the socially shared decision not to notice a number of traits, and to concentrate instead on what two or more objects have in common despite their inevitable differences. To opt out of this collusion means to embark on a radical critique of equality as the foundation of a philosophy of law, and to replace it with a nuanced and respectful consideration of the different and incommensurable needs and vulnerabilities of all sentient beings.

La fondazione del FUORI e la mobilitazione degli artisti (1971-1974)

Sergio Cortesini — 2019-06-27

This article discusses the foundation of the FUORI – the first national organization of Italian homosexuals in 1971– and its journal, Fuori!, from an unprecedented angle, that is the contribution of the artists to the politics of visual and discursive representation of the new social subject. Working on primary sources, the author casts a light on the stimulating microsocial milieu of intellectuals, artists, designers in Turin that originated the FUORI and describes how artistic vanguard and reformist or revolutionary political discourse allied in propelling the first gay liberation front.

Listening for a queer utopia

Camille Rogers — 2019-04-26

This article seeks out queer resonances in the peculiar lives and sensational music of the castrati: castrated male singers who, on operatic stages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, proved their virility not through the strength or reproductive capacity of their unusual bodies, but through the breathtaking virtuosity of their voices. Problematizing not only binaries of gender and sexuality, but also those of mind vs. body and verbal vs. non-verbal, this paper uses music as a medium through which to explore the liminal space between linguistic signification and embodied experience. Relying on Sylvia Wynter’s ‘deciphering turn’, this study investigates what the stories and music of the castrati can do rather than concentrating on what they mean: the use of auto-ethnography extends this investigation into the present, exploring how modern performances of the castrati’s music can potentially offer solace and inspiration to queer subjects of today.

The Fire in the Voice

Ernst van der Wal — 2019-04-29

This article investigates queer vocality as it impacts on contemporary experiences and imaginings of race, gender and sexuality within the South African context. By examining the very applicability of queer (as term and methodology) within the South African context, and paying particular attention to its relationship to voice, this article explores how ideas surrounding race, gender and sexuality bears on South Africa as a sonic environment. The work of South African performing artist Umlilo is specifically drawn upon as the basis of this investigation. As a self-identified queer, black, non-binary artist, Umlilo offers a vocal challenge to patriarchal, racist, hetero- and/or cisnormative conventions, and this article explores how such challenges are brought into effect and into voice.

Exploring queer spaces in and through the Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam

Sara Azzarelli — 2019-06-27

In the Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam, dancers use their body as a means to tell stories. In particular, Abhinaya, the narrative narrative technique featured in this choreutic form, provides performers with codified series of bodily attitudes, hand gestures and facial expressions through which they become any character of their epic and mythological narrations, flowing between age, class and gender differences. From a mainstream perspective, this play of impersonations is largely considered - among dancers and observers - as a mere matter of acting. However, by exploring the peculiar artistic and activist activities of a number LGBTIQ Indian dancers encountered by Sara during her ethnographic research in Tamil Nadu, as well as by reflecting on our own work – which has been partly shared with the Cirque Conference’s Audience who have attended our performance – we aim to recount the marginal perspective of a minority of dancers who find, in – and through -this dance form, multiple spaces of agency, inclusive zones of unstable, changing identities and desires, queer spaces.

La differenza queer della traduzione a teatro

Serena Guarracino — 2019-06-27

Questo contributo esplora il ruolo della traduzione teatrale come forma di attivismo femminista e queer attraverso l’analisi di Porci e cani (2017), traduzione italiana di Pigs and Dogs (2016) della drammaturga britannica Caryl Churchill. Parte di un più ampio progetto per sostenere la ricezione di un’autrice ancora poco rappresentata sulle scene italiane, questa traduzione e la sua drammatizzazione ad opera di Bluemotion si inseriscono in un ampio scenario di ricerca sulla messa in scena dei corpi sessuati come pratica di resistenza politica. Rispetto alle esperienze maturate in Italia, questo testo sollecita però anche un confronto con la posizionalità del corpo queer rispetto alla linea del colore, e al suo ruolo nell’elaborazione del discorso nazionale e transnazionale sui diritti civili. La traduzione – sia sulla pagina che sulla scena – apre quindi uno spazio che permette di interrogare la differenza su diversi livelli (linguistico, corporeo, performativo), mostrando lo spazio e il tempo della performance al centro della ricerca di immaginari alternativi all’etero-patriarcato di marca coloniale, e che il teatro civile resta una delle forme di attivismo politico più significative nell’Italia contemporanea.

Genealogie della maschilità. Generi e desideri nelle “Baccanti” di Euripide

Giuseppe Burgio — 2019-06-27

This article focuses on some of the characters of Euripides' Bacchae using a queer, philologically founded, analisys approach. Our starting hypothesis is that the family relationships between some characters of the tragedy correspond to a symbolic genealogy, that connects some different episodes of ancient Greek mythology, creating a unique, coherent meaning. So, three characters of the tragedy – Actaeon, Pentheus and Dionysus – will be analyzed as different models of masculinity: two of them (Atteone and Penteo) are “loser” men, for different reasons, while Dionysus appears to be a winner, but his model of masculinity is absolutely heretical, eccentric, basically not virile and, in the last instance, queer.

Ambivalence in encounters with my big fat Greek closet

Spyridon Chairetis — 2019-06-27

Both fat people and queer people diverge from the norms that control who is perceived as societally normal versus abnormal. While literature on the closet has encapsulated the experiences of the two subject positions as distinct entities, limited scholarship examines the relationship between fatness and queerness vis-à-vis the closet. Drawing on fat studies, queer theory, and autoethnography, I critically examine my encounters with the closet both inside and outside of Greece. Reflecting on my experience as a queer fat boy/man who spent a great deal of his teenage and early adult life in Greece and the United Kingdom, I weave together stories and emotions embodied in different spatiotemporal contexts and problematize notions of gender, sexuality, fatness, agency, and Greekness. This article considers how a subject may react to and negotiate the tensions that arise when multiple identity markers intersect, overlap and/or collide. It also revisits the undertheorized concept of ambivalence through a queer lens, in order to propose fresh strategies and ways of inhabiting bodies, identities, and spaces.

That Dog Is Real: Queer Identities in the New Wes Anderson’s Film Isle of Dogs

bianca friedman — 2019-06-27

The representation of animals in movies deals with an unavoidable premise which has pragmatic consequences: movies are made by humans, for humans. Therefore, since humans usually define their identity in opposition to animals, representing them as individuals implies a problematic application of human categories to animal characters’ performance. Trying to combine queer theories with Animal Studies, I propose an analysis of Wes Anderson’s latest movie, Isle of Dogs, and in particular a reflection on the relationship between animals and machines. This article focuses first on the stop-motion technique which has been used to create speaking animal characters. Then, it explores how in the movie the machines are used by humans with animals and what ambiguities can emerge. Finally, it closes with a reflection on how the dogs relate to an identity constructed and ascribed to them by human society.