Paper short abstract:

Drag-queers are identified as studied transgressive militant performers who tend to break the rules of mainstream drag, heteronormativity and binarity, by opposing themselves to biopolitical norms with the feminist and intersectionnal use of hybridity, queer identity, and scenological empowerment.

Paper long abstract:

The popularization of these queer practices in France questions the way in which performative cross-dressing is a reflection of a society rich in social transformations. Founded by Michel Foucault, the term "biopower" focuses on the "controlled","constrained" body. The political and institutional dimensions that relate to the emerging experiences, resistances and performative counter-powers of groups targeted and minimized by biopower will be analyzed. Through the drag-queers, it will be necessary to study their capacities of diversion and how they reappropriate the European biopower with extra and intra-community transgressions.

The research will show the epistemological bounds between the queer community and academic fields through the concept of legitimacy to queer identity. It is therefore possible to consider a disciplinary intersection between ethnoscenology and gender studies.

The ethnographic methodology consists in a field survey located in France and tends to understand the power of artivism. Artivism is “a neologism made up of the words art and activism. It concerns the social and political engagement of militant artists but also the art used by citizens as a mean of political expression” (Salzbrunn, 2019). In this context, performances performed in plural contexts can be exercised in an artistic, political, and militant way.

In order to participate in the development of new fields of study nowadays, this research will focus on the growing artivism of queer and feminist circles in France. The use of photography will also contribute to archival work on the performing arts. It will therefore reflect on the renewal of contemporary scenic aesthetics.