2008 Queer Studies Graduate Symposium

Neoliberal discourses of risk management and nationalist projects/practices of safety construct a particular vision of “the perfect world.” Simultaneously, images of “dystopia” proliferate in anti-immigration policies and warnings about environ...

Neoliberal discourses of risk management and nationalist projects/practices of safety construct a particular vision of “the perfect world.” Simultaneously, images of “dystopia” proliferate in anti-immigration policies and warnings about environmental degradation. In this context, queer projects are being challenged to take up not only a perpetual diagnosis of normativity (hetero- or homonormativity), but also to risk engaging with the utopic and the possibilities of making new worlds. Recent debates around temporality in queer studies have grappled with the value of futurity and utopia, and have the potential to place pressure on theorizations of queer spatialities. Some have argued that discourses of futurity are inextricable from heteronormative generationality and thus irredeemable, while others claim that utopias have a radical potential irreducible to dominant narratives. This Symposium asks how both conservative and radical projects might take up discourses of utopia and dystopia, and how contemporary invocations of utopia and dystopia are embedded in histories of post/colonialism and capitalist expansion.

» more

Are you the conference organizer?

Report a Problem With This Conference