Queer Studies

Erster Termin 07.04.2022, verpflichtender Termin /obligatory date Das Seminar mündet in ein gemeinsamen Workshop mit Doktorand*innen der KHM und der Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien am 17. und 18. Juni (Freitag/Samstag) an der KHM. Wir diskutieren mit Stefano Harney die Konzepte von Logistik und Improvisation in seinem Buch All Incomplete (mit Fred Moten) The seminar leads into a joint workshop with PhD students of the KHM and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on June 17 and 18 (Fri+Sat) at the KHM. We will discuss with Stefano Harney the concepts of logistics and improvisation in his book All Incomplete (with Fred Moten). Logistik ist kolonisierend und sucht die kürzeste Linie. Sie soll für die Sicherheit von Versorgung sorgen, just in time. Doch sie liefert die Unplanbarkeit ins Zuhause und das Management der Improvisation. Die Basis ist extreme Unsicherheit und Prekarisierung. Logistik kapitalisiert die Gegenwart und produziert bestimmte Lebens- und Subjektivierungsweisen. Und: Logistik und Improvisation sind zentrale Elemente von Migration, Transit, Flucht. Wie lassen sich aus queerer Perspektive die gewaltvollen Ströme der Logistik aufbrechen und ausnutzen? Welche Rolle spielt das Virus? Wie blockieren und unterbrechen queere, schwarze Schulden auf nicht-logistische Weise? Wie verbündet queere Intimität im Transport und welche Verbindung entstehen in der Versorgung der Prekären? Wie lässt sich im Gemeinsamen improvisieren? Logistics is colonizing and seeks the shortest line. It is supposed to provide security of supply, just in time. But it brings unpredictability into the home and the management of improvisation. The basis is extreme insecurity and precarization. Logistics capitalizes the present and produces certain ways of life and subjectivation. And: logistics and improvisation are central elements of migration, transit, flight. How can the violent flows of logistics be broken up and used from a queer perspective? What role does the virus play? How do queer, black debts block and interrupt in non-logistic ways? How does queer intimacy ally in transportation and what connections emerge in the care of the precarious? How can we improvise in common? Literaturauswahl: COWEN, Deborah, "Rough Trade? Sex, Death, and the Queer Nature of Circulation" , in: The Deathly Life of Logistics, Minnesota, London 2014. HARNEY, Stefano, MOTEN, Fred, The Undercommons. Fugitive Planning & Black Study, London 2013. HARNEY, Stefano, MOTEN Fred, All Incomplete, London 2021. LINEBAUGH, Peter, "All the Atlantic Mountains Shook", Labour/Le Travailleur, Aug. 10, 1982 LÓPEZ MARÍN, Bernardo, Gianmaria LENTI, "Between Coercion und Improvisation. The Case of Irregulated Migrants in Transit Across Mexico", Sites. New Series, 16:2 (2019). LOREY, Isabell, "Logistifizierungen. Pandemie und Unplanbarkeit", https://transversal.at/blog/logistifizierungen. TINSLEY Omise'eke Natasha, "Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic. Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage", GLQ 14:2-3 (2008), 191-215. TSING, Anna, "Supply Chains and the Human Condition", Rethinking Marxism, 21:2 (2009).

Erster Termin 06.04.2022, verpflichtender Termin /obligatory date Bei den Begriffen Care, Fürsorge und Sorgearbeit denken viele Menschen an Kinderbetreuung, die Pflege alter und kranker Menschen oder Hausarbeit. Sorgearbeit, die in trans und nicht-binären Räumen geleistet wird und die über familiäre oder medizinische Fürsorge hinausweist, wird selten in den Blick genommen. Dieses Grundseminar befasst sich damit, wie Sorge jenseits heteronormativer Zweigeschlechtlichkeit praktiziert und theoretisiert wird und wie eine Perspektive auf nicht-binäre queere und trans Sorgepraxen zu radikalen Analysen von kapitalistischen Verhältnissen und zu neuen demokratischen Praxen führen. Und wir fragen, wie wechselseitiges Sorgen und der Fokus auf Abhängigkeiten mit aktivistischen kollektiven Versorgungspraxen beispielsweise in den Social Clinics der 2010er Jahre in Griechenland korrespondieren. When people hear the terms care, caring, and care work, they think of childcare, caring for the elderly and sick, or housework. Care work that is done in trans and non-binary spaces and that goes beyond family or medical care is rarely considered. This basic seminar looks at how care is practiced and theorized beyond heteronormative gender binary and how a perspective on non-binary queer and trans care practices can lead to radical analyses of capitalist conditions and to new democratic practices. And we ask how mutual caring and a focus on interdependency correspond with activist collective care practices in, for example, the social clinics of the 2010s in Greece. Heath CABOT (2016), "'Contagious' Solidarity: Reconfiguring Care and Citizenship in Greek's social clinics”, Social Anthropology 24:2, 151-166. Jules Joanne GLEESON, Elle O’ROURKE (eds.) (2021), Transgender Marxism, London. Hil MALATINO (2020), Trans Care, Minneapolis, London. Martin F. MANALANSAN IV (2008), "Queering the Chain of Care Paradigm", http://sfonline.barnard.edu/immigration/print_manalansan.htm. Alan SEARS (2016), "Situating sexuality in social reproduction", Historical Materialism, 24(2), 138-163. Francis SEECK (2021), Care trans_formieren. Eine ethnographische Studie zu trans und nicht-binärer Sorgearbeit, Bielefeld.

Queer Theory has for a long time been interested in trauma: The mass death event of the Aids crisis, heterosexist violence, incest and rape etc. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, for example, just recently reminded us that Generation X queers » came of age in the midst of the epidemic with the belief that desire intrinsically led to death, internalizing this trauma as part of becoming queer «. Queer Theory's engagement with trauma was most often deeply – though not always successfully – antipathological, focused on collective experiences, and negative feelings were seen as – as Ann Cvetkovich puts it – » a positive source for political action rather than its antithesis «. Current queer popular culture has adapted the vocabulary of trauma theory with its triggers and flashbacks etc., but seems to have abandoned this focus on collective experiences as potential driving forces of political action. Today's queer trauma often seems to be individualized, and disconnected from calls for political action or if at all predominantly connected to action within the framework of bourgeois logics of charity. As Queer theorist Yasmin Nair observes, queer trauma seems to have become an identity, a confessional practice, a prerequisite to getting heard and the traumatized subject itself might be the perfect neoliberal subject. In the seminar we will explore different concepts and critiques of queer trauma and we will try to develop research questions for projects related to queerness and trauma. The seminar is a research seminar, so ideally you have some experience reading and analyzing theoretical texts. Languages: English, German, Dinglish