Progressive Neoliberalism, and the Construction of Queer Patriotism on RuPaul's Drag Race

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11. Media, Digital Platforms, and Gendered Politics

Abstract

RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) is a reality competition program that features drag queens battling for the title of ‘America’s next drag superstar.’ In this paper I explore how RPDR conceptualizes queer patriotism as distinctly partisan by upholding progressive neoliberal ideology. Mainstream US politics consists of two parties promoting neoliberal agendas. Where they differ is in their politics of recognition, which focuses on status hierarchies. The progressive neoliberal agenda of the Democratic party champions a progressive multicultural recognition politics that purports to be egalitarian and emancipatory. On the other side the Republican party supports a reactionary neoliberal agenda with ethnonationalist exclusionary recognition politics. The distinctly progressive strain of neoliberalism allows for a more expansive iteration of queer patriotism that is inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals outside the bounds of the homonormative bargain framing US sexual exceptionalism as inclusive of more than the private sexual lives of LGBTQ+ individuals, but public gender expansive expressions of queerness. Through my analysis I found two main aspects of queer patriotism: 1. Nationalist beliefs and rhetoric, and 2. Civic patriotism. My findings explore the impact threats to freedom in differing political circumstances have on how the beliefs, values, and practices of queer patriotism are expressed and the partisan lines that define its conceptualization. This work adds to the literature on the state of queer media in a neoliberal era, and how queer media aids in the spread of homonationalist discourses.

Author

• Jamie Ackerman, University at Albany, SUNY