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- Dr Lora Koycheva

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UCL Mellon Programme Seminar

Seminar theme: Translations/Transpositions: Intergenric translation
- led by Cüneyt Çakirlar, 2008-09, more ...

Seminar diary 2008-09

Rationale for this strand of the seminar

Recalling the semantic twist of the very word “queer”, queer theories cluster their discourses around two different but mutually interacting ways: (i) using and analyzing queer (in the form of a noun or adjective) as a subjective agency, as an embodiment of the very repudiation within the normal, and (ii) using to queer (in the form of a verb) as an intellectual practice of critique as desubjugation, a methodology, a series of performative gestures in order to expose and challenge the hetero-normative presumptions within language and culture, the dynamics of power relations within the politics of representation. In this respect, the main objective of this project will be to contain both paths, that is to say, it will occasionally consider

1. the bodies on any form of artistic screen, revealed to be a queer representation,
2. the visual medium and genre as a gendered/sexualized site of queer reappropriations,
3. the artistic performance itself as a possibly queer subjective position mediated or inscribed into the generic, and/or medial, territory.

In short, this one-year project aims to delve into the relationships between queer, body and genre in contemporary visual arts and film. Being aware but critical of the Neo-Marxist critiques of postmodern pastiche as a symptom of late capitalism, this project has a particular urge to investigate the intersection between queer praxis and pastiche, gender-bending and genre-bending. It aprroaches queer as a deliberate failure in transfer or translation.

Besides working from within the white AngloAmerican AIDS-driven specificity of queer theory and praxis, the seminar series and other alternative events in this strand will also pay a particular attention to the recent problematizations of translation/transposition of queer into non-white and/or non-Western contexts.

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This page last modified 26 September, 2012 by UCL Mellon Admin