Staging Queer Feminisms

This book examines sexuality, gender and race in Australia’s vibrant independent theatre and performance culture. It analyses selected feminist and queer performances that interrogate the cultural construction of sexuality and gender, challenge the normative trends of mainstream Australian society and culture and open up spaces for alternative representations of gender identity and sexual expression. Offering the first full-length study on sexuality and gender in Australian theatre since 2005, this book reveals a resurgence of feminist themes in independent performance and explores the intersection of feminist and queer politics. Ranging across drag, burlesque, cabaret, theatre and performance art, the book provides an accessible and engaging account of some of the most innovative, entertaining and politically subversive Australian theatrical works from the past decade.

This is a landmark anthology of international feminist theatre research. A three-part structure orientates readers through Cartographies of feminist critical navigations of the global arena; the staging of feminist Interventions in a range of international contexts; and Manifestos for today's feminist practitioners, activists and academics.

Queer ideas have unsettled other forms of exploring gender and sexuality in particular feminism and feminists have been significant critics. This book explores the debates between feminist and queer theorizing to seek out interconnections and identify new directions in thinking about sexuality and gender that may emerge out of and at the interface.

More than any other area of late-twentieth-century thinking, gender theory and its avatars have been to a large extent a Franco-American invention. In this book, a leading Franco-American scholar traces differences and intersections in the development of gender and queer theories on both sides of the Atlantic. Looking at these theories through lenses that are both “American” and “French,” thus simultaneously retrospective and anticipatory, she tries to account for their alleged exhaustion and currency on the two sides of the Atlantic. The book is divided into four parts. In the first, the author examines two specifically “American” features of gender theories since their earliest formulations: on the one hand, an emphasis on the theatricality of gender (from John Money’s early characterization of gender as “role playing” to Judith Butler’s appropriation of Esther Newton’s work on drag queens); on the other, the early adoption of a “queer” perspective on gender issues. In the second part, the author reflects on a shift in the rhetoric concerning sexual minorities and politics that is prevalent today. Noting a shift from efforts by oppressed or marginalized segments of the population to make themselves “heard” to an emphasis on rendering themselves “visible,” she demonstrates the formative role of the American civil rights movement in this new drive to visibility. The third part deals with the travels back and forth across the Atlantic of “sexual difference,” ever since its elevation to the status of quasi-concept by psychoanalysis. Tracing the “queering” of sexual difference, the author reflects on both the modalities and the effects of this development. The last section addresses the vexing relationship between Western feminism and capitalism. Without trying either to commend or to decry this relationship, the author shows its long-lasting political and cultural effects on current feminist and postfeminist struggles and discourses. To that end, she focuses on one of the intense debates within feminist and postfeminist circles, the controversy over prostitution.

Can queer theory be written by theorists of any sexual identity? Does the act of reading queer theory form queer readers who do not necessarily claim lesbian, gay, or queer identity? In Relating to Queer Theory the author explores the intimate link between sexual identity and theoretical stance in the energizing work of leading contemporary queer theorists. Drawing on a wide range of poststructuralist theory, this study theorizes previously unarticulated ethical relations between queer theory and readers of different sexual identities. Arguing that (queer) reading takes place in a transformative space that is open to readers of any sexual identity, this book interweaves theory and practice of queer reading by staging a series of encounters between queer theory and the different but related field of French feminism. Texts by Irigaray, Kristeva, Wittig, and Cixous are placed alongside those of their queer theoretical commentators in order to re-view current relations between feminism and queer theory. This study reflects critically on intersecting and divergent positions in feminist theory and queer theory, using each theoretical area to reread the other on issues of sexuality, sexual difference, and gender in relation to reading and writing.

This beautifully written and well-informed book presents a comprehensive study of Zuni Icosahedron, a Hong Kong avant-garde theatre and dance company, and calls into question the relationship between culture and politics during the last years of British colonial rule. Through both fieldwork and textual analysis, the author explores the double-bind tensions between Chinese and Western aesthetic forms, while examining identity and gender within representation as part of the dramatization of an increasingly uncertain present. Incorporating insights from cultural studies, feminism, anthropology, and queer theory, this imaginative unpacks current debates over Hong Kong identity through the kaleidoscope of avant-garde theatre performances.

Sue-Ellen Case is arguably the most influential and significant scholar in feminist and queer theatre studies. This collection brings together her most important writing. Framing this with new introductory material, Sue-Ellen Case will contextualise her work within broader developments in critical theory and feminist / lesbian studies.

In Feminism is Queer, Mimi Marinucci provides a valuable introduction to the intimately related disciplines of gender and queer theory, and develops the innovative concept of queer feminism, which treats queer theory as being continuous with feminist theory. While there were significant conceptual tensions between second-wave feminism and traditional lesbian and gay studies, queer feminism offers a paradigm for understanding gender, sex and sexuality that overcomes this conflict in order to foster solidarity between those campaigning for women's rights and those for LGBTQ rights. This updated and expanded edition engages with the latest developments in feminism and queer theory, including the new forms of both feminism and 'antifeminism' which have developed within online communities, the growing prominence of trans experiences in popular media, and the relevancy of queer feminism to a new generation of feminist activists. Feminism is Queer remains the indispensable guide for anyone with an interest in gender, sexuality, and the connections between feminism and queer issues.