Queering Performances

• In Event: Ethics and Eros: Theoretical Considerations of LGBTQ Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Objectives:
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate multiplicity and shifting images of queer performances across different sources and media. In this paper characters, individuals, and queerness are not described in movement, but it is the continuity of the movement that describes them. According to Deleuze(1995), the ‘essence of things’ never appears at the outset but can potentially be recognized in the course of the plot (or scene’s) development and can be found in the middle (of things).

Perspective and methods:
In this paper we do not want to offer new readings of any included performances, but instead create the space for queering effects that trouble (hetero)normative texts and images. More specifically we position queer not as a category of spatial identity, or a fixed label, but a temporary, mobile image; an “image in movement”. We create numerous images in movement through multi-layered texts drawing on Billy Elliot (the film), Matthew Bourne’s production of Swan Lake (the ballet), and our own conversations when watching the film and interacting with theories and theorists (e.g. Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Halperin, Sedgwick). And by the end we think through images, but without these images being necessarily visual. Our images form a series of effects, open-ended and moving images of queering and Billy, of the Prince and the Lead Swan, and of ourselves, which are images conflicting and affective, physical and spatial. More specifically, our selections of queer images/effects vary in length, and they are interlayered with other images and variations on queer. They are also layered with moments from LGBTQ-themed young adult novels.

Conclusions/ Significance:
By means of a multi-layered text and “images in movement”, we also resist simplified notions of category and the linear structure of “a textbook chapter”. In our opinion, many academic texts represents expressions of (hetero)normativity [or (hetero)normative rules] shaping ways in which (hetero)normativity becomes embedded within books, texts, chapters and papers. Our aim is to unsettle this classic (normative) text structure through various textual formats and by working creatively with images and clips from Billy Elliot and Swan Lake. We offer multiple simultaneous “visual mini-sections” and shifting images, in order to replace and rethink queer as a stable, normative category.

Author

• Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg, Arizona State University