SEXTANT: masculinities, sexualities & decolonialities

Queering Feminisms

Anushree Mukerjee

University College Dublin

References and Supporting Material:


Slide 1: Feminism and Intersectionality

Image: Original Artwork: This Cage of Ours


Our Cages are not made to be easily identifiable. These cages are the normative. However, every cage is different made of different materials. ​Some of our cages might be bigger, with a better view or easily escapable. For many of us, our cages could be dense, claustrophobic, and ​crippling. As McIntosh states, power from unearned priviledge can look like strength when it is infact permission to escape or dominate. ​(McIntosh, P. 1989).We sometimes battle to escape these cages which can cause harm. In this image, the bloodied bird represents us. For the ​bird, the cage is the natural environment, yet the feeling of being caged can be felt. It is here when our personal struggles, advantages, ​accesses and realities become situated and inherently political.


References:

  • McIntosh, P. (1989) White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack - national seed project. Available: ​https://nationalseedproject.org/images/documents/Knapsack_plus_Notes-Peggy_McIntosh.pdf (Accessed: 26 November 2023). 
  • Hanisch, C. (1972) "The Personal Is Political", Woman's World, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 14-15.
  • Frye, M. (2007) The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Berkeley: Crossing Press. 
  • Mills, C.W. (1970) The sociological imagination. London: Royal National Institute for the Blind. 


Slide 2: Gender, Sexuality and Colonialism

Image: Stone Carving at Konark Temple, Odisha, India


I was perhaps seven when I first visited this temple. Over the years, I continued to learn more about this temple and visit it multiple times. ​Schooling taught me more about the challenges to build and keep the temple upright i.e., a large magnet was placed on top of the temple by ​a young boy. However, I was more inquisitive about images like these carved around the temple. Over the years, in my work, study and ​research I have continued to remember these carvings. As this evidence tells me that queerness could never be wrong. However, it has been ​shunned, policed, criminalized, and appropriated over the years for political gain. Yet, this temple remains as evidence of queerness being ​immortal.


References

  • Faye, S. (2021) The transgender issue: an argument for justice, Penguin Books, London.
  • Butler, J. (2022) “Judith Butler: The backlash against ‘Gender ideology’ must stop”, New Statesman. Available at: ​https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2019/01/judith-butler-backlash-against-gender-ideology-must-stop (Accessed: 28 November ​2023). 
  • Eddo-Lodge, R. 2017, Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race, Bloomsbury Circus, London.


Slide 3: Pink Washing, Identity Politics and Necropolitics

Image: Queering the Map (Website), input from Gaza, Palestine

Website Link: https://www.queeringthemap.com


As mentioned in the previous section, queers and queerness have largely been used for political gain by heteronormative and violent ​governments. This image directs us towards pink washing used by the Israeli State to order to achieve ‘governable’ queer supporters. While ​queer liberation continues to be global struggle, governments continue to pink wash and appropriate queer liberation movements to convince ​us that the bare minimum is enough for unconditional support. The genocide of Palestinians can never be in a queer’s support. As queers have ​a long history of the treatment of lives as ‘lesser than’, we empathise with the Palestinian population. The necropolitics in place here tells us ​the governable bodies are grievable bodies.


References

  • Hill Collins, P. 2004, Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism, 1;1st;1st; edn, Routledge, London; New York.
  • Herr, S.Z. and Vatovec, T. (2011). On Borders and Biopolitics: An Interview with Eithne Luibhéid. disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory, 20(1), ​p.15. doi:https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.20.15.
  • Mbembe, A. (2003) “Necropolitics”, Public culture, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 11-40.
  • Young, I.M. (2020) “Five Faces of Oppression”; in Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, pp. 39-65.


Slide 4: Politics of Affect and Happiness

Image: Art Installation: Can’t Help Myself by Su Yuan and Peng Yu; Commissioned for the Gugenheim Museum

Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS4Bpr2BgnE


The art installation by Su Yuan and Peng Yu demonstrates the ‘affect’ of helplessness. Inquiring into the politics of happiness, I use this image ​to ponder over affect theory and feminist understandings of happiness. The inevitable violent death of this machine is not sudden. The ​machine is acting on surviving which includes a short moment of happiness demonstrated by a dance. Yet, it quickly goes back to gathering ​it’s fluid back into its body. I have been deeply touched by this image. It let’s me consider deeply about how the personal is political. “The idea ​of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?” ​(Davis, A. 2020).


References

  • Ahmed, S. (2010) “Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. ​571-594.
  • Massumi, B (2015) Politics of Affect, Polity Press, Newark. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [28 November 2023].
  • Morrison, T. (2019). The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993. [online] NobelPrize.org. Available at: ​https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/. https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/12607/angela-davis-​quotes-on-freedom-juneteenth-black-lives-matter-movement


Slide 5: Gender Performativity and Utterance

Image: Reece Lyons at the Last Word Festival, 2018.

Yotube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIhdszDEwPE


Gender is ever evolving as is gender expressions. Masculinities, femininities and performativity have changed tremendously over generations ​subjected to war, colonialism, famine, labour, revolutions etc. However, normative performativities have remained crucial to society. By this ​image, I find it important to highlight how the authority can be taken by individuals to perform gender. It’s the taking of that agency that ​grounds queer theory.


References

  • Butler, J. 1988, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Theatre journal (Washington, ​D.C.), vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 519-531.


Music

The music used in this video is an urdu nazm written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz and sung by Iqbal Bano. This music had become a battle cry for the ​Citizenship Amendement Act protestors across the India subcontinent in 2019. The poem sings about the day of revolution.



Copyright:


© Mukerjee, A.

Email: anushree.mukerjee@ucdconnect.ie


To cite:


Mukerjee, A. (2024) "Queering Feminisms",

SEXTANT: Masculinities, Sexualities & Decolonialities, Video Essay. Vol 2, Issue 1: 12.


SEXTANT: Masculinities, Sexualities & Decolonialities

ISSN 2990-8124

University College Dublin, Ireland

https://sextantnotes.com