Taking Back Desire: Visions of Queerness and Capitalism in Time

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The central concern of this research is to argue that queerness can produce a site of resistance to the current political environment of neoliberalism, despite many recent instances of assimilation of queerness into neoliberal culture. The crux of this argument is the proposition that neoliberalism and queerness use contrasting temporal logics in the construction of subjectivity. Here, a Lacanian position is used to recognise subjectivity as formulated through desire, that is, through lack. My research comes at a pressing time and is primarily situated in the contemporary moment. The queer theories I draw from are formative works by Judith Butler, Eve Korofsky Sedgewick, and more recent works by Jack Halberstam and Jasbir Puar. These works make arguments concerning subjectivity and performativity in ways that have threatened the status-quo of capitalism. By elucidating identity and subjectivity as performative and constructed, the way power is woven through social articulations is disengaged from concepts of dominance such as "objective" and "natural". This understanding of queerness interrogates many givens of culture and works to dismantle naturalised oppressions such as the regulations of "femininity" and "masculinity" in a broad and collective sense. However, what is now considered "queer" is often reduced to "identity", which is then easily integrated into a neoliberal, individual-centric position. The rhetoric that promotes and accompanies many LGBTQAI+/queer discussions can be described as identity-politics, which becomes little more than a practice in self-branding. The model whereby queerness has been smoothly integrated into the current landscape of late-capitalism is reliant on the paradigm that individual choices and rights are the central vehicles for freedom. Queerness as the performativity-of-identity intersects with the Lacanian position that understands subjectivity as lack by considering the temporal implications that run across these points. My research will explore how performativity undermines the temporal enclosure of the future inherent in the idea of 'essentialism'. Essentialism (of identity, orientation, sexuality, etc) is a position that queerness/queer theory has often adamantly disagreed with. Essentialism is built in tandem with the future in the sense that it is stabilised by the assumption that what is today, will also be tomorrow, and forever. For example: if one is essentially female then one will always be female. In contrast to this future-fixed identity, performativity in the queer sense can be read as imminent in that it pertains to no 'real' self but a series of ever-iterating inscriptions that must be constantly enacted. Here, 'lack' could be reengineered not as a site to be filled, but as a site that allows exploratory play. In conjunction with analytical research, I will also conduct interviews with film and video artists, curators involved with the showing of 'queer' moving-image works, and activists to garner a detailed image of how queerness is webbed through cultural institutions. The cultural areas and media I have currently identified are primarily North American and European, but my intention within the PhD is to expand to a more global reach. The intersections of queer theory, political theory, psychoanalysis and media studies will be combined in a unique balance for a timely and original thesis that can have relevance not just within frameworks of theoretical discourse, but also embodied, lived experiences and organising. Arguing for a refreshed understanding of queerness as possessing a strong ability to resist and problematise capitalism through media and cultural theory can web to larger emancipatory struggles that resist the assimilation of subjects into exploitation.