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- Convenors:
-
Cory Thorne Gutiérrez
(Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Guillermo De Los Reyes (University of Houston)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Intersectionality
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Queer intersectionalities is the premise that the discipline of folklore must learn to better address issues of sexuality and gender diversity throughout our scholarship. Queer theory both strengthens and is strengthened by folklore research methods and analytical frameworks.
Long Abstract:
Queer intersectionalities is the premise that the discipline of folklore must learn to better address issues of sexuality and gender diversity throughout our scholarship. Likewise, it is the contention that queer theory can be strengthened and better nuanced through folklore research methods and analytical frameworks.
In order to encourage scholarship on LGBTQI+ folkloristics, we are seeking papers that address the intersections of folkloristics and queer theory, including but not limited to queer intersectionalities (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc), queer geographies, queer temporalities, queer spiritualties, and queer methodologies. We likewise welcome material on two-spirited/transgender studies, marginality, post-coloniality, transnationalism, and translocality, hemispheric studies among other relevant themes within a queer folkloristics lens.
This discussion will be continued via a forthcoming special issue (2022) of the Journal of Folklore Research, likewise titled "Queer Intersectionalities in Folklore Studies"
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Queers know masks. Queers know pandemics. What can we learn from queer art, queer performance, and queer ethnography when masks and pandemics become part of mainstream, everyday, heteronormative life?
Paper long abstract:
Queers across this world understand the social, political, and psychological impacts of masking. Looking into forms of masking within queer communities, and specifically in relation to Cuban art, Medieval court jesters, anthropomorphism, and masculinity, we learn about the ways in which individuals negotiate the stigmatizations of homosexuality, gender diversity, and HIV/AIDS. Turning to the 2020 pandemic, and a virus that is not tied to sexual activity or sexual morality, broader society now struggles with the power of masking and stigmatization. We all face the fears that were once imposed on queer bodies. In discussing the role of masks in the negotiation of queerness, we can begin to understand anti-mask movements and anxieties. We turn to the surreal, the carnavelesque, and the power of play in the negotiation of reality. In the words of queer activist Harry Hays, “Come explore this new planet of Fairy-vision.”
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I will study the figure of the "rakshasi," the most recurring villain in Bengali wonder tales. I argue that she is a queer figure who navigates through a series of non-heteronormative sexual, emotional and cannibalistic desires rendering them structurally porous and fluid.
Paper long abstract:
"Rakshasi," the figure of the female cannibal in South Asian Folklore is located outside the colonial fetishes of the savage, primitive and exotic. The cannibal figure in South Asian folklore and mythology is called "rakshasi" (literally, raw-eater; "rakshasa", male) - a race of shapeshifting, magic-wielding cannibals. Strikingly, the characterization of the "rakshasi" in these narratives operates through a queer juxtaposition of motherhood and monstrosity. Her treatment of her victims (both male and female) exhibits a queer synthesis of cannibal desire and sexual desire. However, her queerness comes from her defiance of the norms of nurture through sustaining a cohabitation of the re-producer (mother) and the raw-consumer (monster) within the same body. She treats her body as a personal production house for consumable goods, but she also exhibits seemingly arbitrary emotional behaviour. She manifests as a queer figure judiciously navigating through her hunger and affection, appetite and sexuality. The multiple dimensions of identity and desire embodied within the "rakshasi" render her corporeal, emotional and cannibalistic desires excessively porous and fluid. And ultimately, the longstanding binaries of savage and civilized, mother and monster fail to address her.
Paper short abstract:
This paper develops a fishy trans folkloristics using archival remains, poetry, visual art, and material culture of trans women sex workers in the port city of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.
Paper long abstract:
This paper develops a fishy approach to trans folkloristics using embodied and ecological vernacular knowledges of trans women sex workers in the port city of St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Feeling fishy - an autoethnographic methodological approach to trans research-creation - comes to represent the queer interplay of archival ephemerality and oceanic ecologies that emerge through explorations of Newfoundland trans women's sexual labour. In addition to archival research and critical analysis, I work with the poetry, visual art, and material culture of Newfoundland trans women sex workers to emphasize the need for creative and multi-method approaches to trans folkloristics. Building on earlier folklore scholarship about trans worldmaking in Newfoundland (Greenhill 1995, 2014), this article offers evocative autoethnographic insight into minoritarian social worlds of Newfoundland trans women sex workers.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how the artivist (activist-artist) David Zamora Casas with his signature Dali mustache, fiery red lipstick, and waxed spiked hair above a long jet-black braid-uses altares/ofrendas and certain images from popular culture to convey a queer resistant and transgressive message.
Paper long abstract:
The San Antonio performance artivist (activist-artist) David Zamora Casas performs his queer aesthetics using folk and traditional elements, what I call a Chicanx Performative Rasquachismo after Tomas Ybarra Frausto's notion of the rasquache aesthetics in Chicanx art. This paper explores the use of traditional elements like altares/ofrendas and certain images from popular culture to convey a larger queer message of resistance and transgression. With his signature Dali-esque moustache, fiery red lipstick, and waxed spiked hair above a long jet-black braid, Zamora Casas embodies a gender-bending Chicanx rasquache aesthetic. His altares or ofrendas, the traditional Day of the Dead installations, based on traditional ritual become transgressive and offer a space for resistance to unjust social justice realities in the community. Zamora Casas’s body-specific signifiers (i.e. body hair, tattoos, clothes, etc.) function as contestations of gendered assumptions. In his installations, Zamora Casas critiques, highlights and spoofs local artists, politicians, even as he honors family, friends, and luminaries, all the while honoring a tradition. Using a qualitative approach, a blend of autobioethnography and semiotics, I approach Zamora Casas’s autohistoria, as Anzaldúa called the self-referential telling of one’s story, through a Chicana feminist lens focusing on Zamora Casas’s altars for Day of the Dead and his art exhibitions. I will show numerous images and a video clip to illustrate the points I make in my analysis.