Български
EnglishQueer theories
Contents
Hans Bertens, Queer Theory (transl. from English by Ruzha Muskurova) / 9
Lee Edelman, The Future is Kid Stuff (transl. from English by Maria Delcheva) / 21
Sara Ahmed, Queer Feelings (transl. from English by Filip Stoilov) / 58
Beatriz Presiado, The Pharmacopornographic Era (transl. from Spanish by Teodora Tsankova) / 101
Karl Schoonover, Rosalind Galt, Queer, World, Cinema (transl. from English by Ruzha Muskurova) / 127
Maria Delcheva, The Gender Liminal Body. Between Essentialism and Poststructuralism / 156
Wojciech Smieja, The Captive (Homosexual) Minds. On Being a Writer and a Homosexual in Communist Poland (Wilhelm Mach,
Jerzy Andrzejewski) / 183
Блажей Варкоцки, Murderous Shame. Queer Performativity in „Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer“ by Witold Gombrowicz
(transl. from Polish by Radostina Petrova) / 195
Debuts
Veselina Gekova, The Garden of EDEN and the Founders
of the Human Race. Light Installation Made of Blown Glass Molds / 215
Petya Dimitrova, Body under the Dress – Sociocultural
and Psychological Codes of Оtherness / 222
Reviews
Panayot Karagyozov, Between “The Wife” and the Refusal to Bestow the Nobel Prize / 234
Galina Georgieva, Read Through and Fly Off / 237
Nikolay Genov, Will the Mouse eat the Book? / 242
Maria Delcheva, The Other Voice is Important / 245
For the authors / 255
Requirements for publications / 259
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Queer Theory
Hans Bertens
Utrecht University in the Netherlands
For the queer theory that under the infl uence of Foucault develops out of lesbian
and gay criticism – and in United Kingdom, out of cultural materialism –
the homo/heterosexual opposition is central to Western culture. „Queer”
therefore provides a vantage point for a radical critique of liberal humanist
ideology. Any deconstruction of the homo/heterosexual opposition will
directly affect the self-defi nition and ideological organization of Western culture.
Some queer theorists use cross-dressing and other non-standard forms
of sexuality to question traditional classifi cation of sexual identity. Others,
arguing that sexuality is a matter of performance rather than of identity, challenge
heterosexuality’s claim to „naturalness” on theoretical grounds.
Keywords: queer, homo/heterosexual opposition, deconstruction, performance,
Identity
The Future is Kid Stuff
Lee Edelman
Tufts University, US
The following excerpt from Lee Edelman’s groundbreaking book No Future:
Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004) presents the theoretician’s
radical project of queer ethics and politics outside kinship and reproductive
circuits by introducing his re-conceptualization of queer negativity.
According to Edelman modern politics, whether of the left or of the right,
is defi ned by what he terms “reproductive futurism” which fi nds its manifestation
in the recurring image of the Child. In a subtle, counterintuitive
argument Edelman approaches the issue of negativity in Lacanian terms
and suggest that queerness occupies the place of the social order’s death
drive, fi guring the bar to every realization of futurity thus exposing the
reality of a collective future whose fi gurative status we are never permitted
to acknowledge or address.
Keywords: death drive, psychoanalysis, queer negativity, queer theory, reproductive
Futurism
Queer Feelings
Sara Ahmed
Goldsmiths College, University of London
In this excerpt from The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2008) Sara Ahmed
initiates a discussion on ‘queer feelings’ by examining the affective potential
of queerness. The fi rst section offers a critical analysis of the connection
between norms and affects in debates on queer families, suggesting
that rather than thinking of queer families as an extension of an ideal, we
can begin to refl ect on the exposure of the failure of the ideal as part of
the work that queer families are doing. The second section explores the
role of grief in queer politics with specifi c reference to queer responses to
9/11. In the fi nal section Ahmed elaborates on the role of pleasure in queer
lifestyles or countercultures. The theoretician makes the crucial point that
it is important not to identify queer as outside the global economy, which
transforms ‘pleasures’ into ‘profi t’ by exploiting the labour of others, yet
Ahmed demonstrates that the way in which queer pleasures can circulate
as commodities within global capitalism, can also challenge social norms,
as forms of investment.
Keywords: affect, grief, mourning, pleasure, queerness, social norms
The Pharmacopornographic Era
Beatriz Presiado
The following excerpt from Paul B. Preciado’s book “Testo Junkie: Sex,
Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era” (2013) introduces
the concept of pharmacopornography. The term is used to address
the processes of a biomolecular (pharmaco) and semiotic-technical (pornographic)
government of sexual subjectivity of which, according to the
theoretician, “the pill” and Playboy are two paradigmatic offshoots. Drawing
on the works of M. Foucault, A. Negri, D. Harraway, G. Agamben,
M. McLuhan, etc., Preciado attempts to map out the cartography of transformations
in industrial production during the 20th century, using as an
axis the political and technical management of the body, sex, and identity.
Preciado states that the real stake of capitalism today is the pharmacopornographic
control of subjectivity and argues that changes in capitalism
that we are witnessing are characterized not only by the transformation of
“gender,” “sex,” “sexuality,” “sexual identity,” and “pleasure” into objects
of the political management of living but also by the fact that this management itself is carried out through the new dynamics of advanced technocapitalism,
global media, and biotechnologies.
Keywords: biopower, gender, Paul Preciado, pharmacopornography, pornography, sexuality
Queer, World, Cinema
Karl Schoonover, Rosalind Gal
University of Warwick (England)
The text draws critical attention to the place of queer cinema in the world:
what might or could the world mean to queers, and what does queer cinema
mean for the world? By bringing the reader to the intersection of queer
politics and world cinema, it asks both how queer fi lms construct ways of
being in the world and what the political value is of the worlds that queer
cinema creates. Cinema is always involved in world making, and queerness
promises to knock off kilter conventional epistemologies. Thinking queerness
together with cinema thus has a potential to reconfi gure dominant
modes of worlding. The authors use the term “worlding” to describe queer
cinema’s ongoing process of constructing worlds, a process that is active
and incomplete, and does not presuppose a settled cartography. A critical
awareness of the global frame has challenged and revised the traditional
rubrics of fi lm studies and Western models of gender and sexuality.
Keywords: queer, cinema, world, globalization, sexuality, diaspora, dissident,
postcolonialism
Situating the Transgender Body between Essentialism and Poststructuralism
Mariya Delcheva
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (Bulgaria)
The article takes as a point of departure the “born in the wrong body” trope
frequently used to describe transgender embodiment in early transgender
narratives. Drawing on different, sometimes clashing, theoretical perspectives
on transgender embodiment this work argues that it is compulsory
for transgender people to speak about their bodies, yet transgender people
cannot make statements about their bodies.
Keywords: “born in the wrong body” metaphor, transgender, embodiment, queer theory
The Captive (Homosexual) Minds. On Being a Writer and a Homosexual in Communist Poland (Wilhelm Mach, Jerzy Andrzejewski)
Wojciech Smieja
Uniwersytecie Warszawskim (Poland)
The article traces two queer (homosexual) writers’ biographies under communist
regime in Poland. Wilhelm Mach (1916 – 1965) believed that the
new communist morality (in contrast to his traditional peasant Catholic
environment) will allow him to live more openly as a homosexual, so he
became regime’s supporter. When he realized that his expectations won’t be
fulfi lled, he experienced very deep crisis. This crisis together with his fatal
love affair with his Bulgarian friend resulted in author’s suicide in 1965.
Jerzy Andrzejewski (1909 – 1983) soon after the thaw in 1956 became very
critical towards the communist system and joined political underground opposition.
Andrzejewski decided not to hide his homosexuality in order to
avoid potential secret police’s blackmails. As “open” homosexual Andrzejewski
may be considered as a hero of non-existent Polish sexual revolution.
Keywords: communism, biography, homosexuality
Murderous shame. Queer performativity in a short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ by Witold Gombrowicz
Błażej Warkocki
A. Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland)
This article focuses on the short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ from
Witold Gombrowicz’s debut collection ‘Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity’
(later published under the title Bakakaj or Bacacay in the English
translation). Warkocki reads this collection as a ‘memoir of negative affects,’
with the opening story being a story about shame. Drawing on Silvan
Tomkins and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Warkocki suggests that shame
is an affect that interpellates the identity of the outcast and the misfi t. Thus
the short story represents a particular instance of queer performativity.
Keywords: queer, shame, masculinity, Witold Gombrowicz
The Garden of EDEN and Founders of the Human Race
Veselina Gekova
New Bulgarian University (Bulgaria)
The Bible parable at the beginning of the Pentateuch about the expulsion of
Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (also known as „First-born Sin“)
is deeply embedded in the collective notions of Judeo-Christian culture and
beyond. This parable is highly archaic and has endured signifi cant edits over
the centuries. So, what has come to us is a heavily redesigned likeness of the
„original“ version (rooted in Sumerian mythology). Here we will not touch
on the textual or chronological contradictions that glisten from the fi rst pages.
Leaving aside the literal purpose of the parable in question (namely to
serve as the main argument for removing women from power), what does
it mean psychologically? Why is „eye opening“ considered something so
„sinful“? Let‘s look at the collage of symbols, separately and together, andanalyzethem.
The Tree ofKnowledge of Good and Evil symbolizes the potential
of the human mind for the birth of self-consciousness. Tree symbolizes
the inner path of knowledge through which self-consciousness awakens.
The serpent is the unconscious, primary integrity of the human mind, before self-consciousness is formed. The fruit expresses the symbolic unfolding of
this psychological process of awareness, and Eve is the very consciousness
of a potential that is already ripe to awaken for itself.
Keywords: Glass Sculpture, Light installation, Bible parable, Adam and
Eve, Garden of Eden, First-born Sin, The Tree of Knowledge
Body under the Dress – Sociocultural and Psychological Codes of Оtherness
Petya Dimitrova
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria
The text analyzes the novel “Body under the dress” by GalinNikoforov,
looking at the issue of identity and gender identity in particular. Discusses
the different codes of otherness through the life of the main character of the
novel. Analyzes the connection between the childhood and the establishment
of sexual self-consciousness and gender identity. Searches for the
reasons for the gender changing and the desire for identity obliteration.
Keywords: identity, gender identity, transgender, transsexual