Queer Performance on the Border

Making Critical Fun of European Immigration Regimes

Bibliographic Data

ID12599045
AuthorsMatthew Abbey (0000-0003-3961-1223, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume25
Issue4
Pages957-972
Publication date2022-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/13675494211073343
OpenAlexW4214556823
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited34

Queer migrants seeking asylum in Europe face both heteronormative and homonormative assumptions about their subjectivity. Yet these assumptions are not simply adhered to for the sake of intelligibility. This article will explore how cultural production challenges the heteronormativity and homonormativity of European immigration regimes in both On the Bride’s Side (a 2014 documentary directed by Khaled Soliman Al Nassiry, Antonio Augugliaro, and Gabriele del Grande) and Moebius Stripping (a 2019 filmed performance by the Istanbul Queer Art Collective). Drawing upon the Bakhtinian notion of the carnivalesque, I suggest these performances are making critical fun of European borders. Instead of only exposing the violence of hetero/homonormativity, making critical fun allows one to grapple with how such violence is being creatively manoeuvred. By displaying the border as porous and incapable of understanding migrant subjectivity, there is an imaginative reconfiguration of the border itself. Without denying the potential for European borders to force queer migrants into situations of vulnerability, the act of crossing the border, and performing the act too, can sometimes become an agentic sign of making critical fun that disrupts the sexual and gendered norms being expected by immigration regimes

Aesthetics · Art · Carnivalesque · Heteronormativity · Immigration · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Queer · Sociology · Subjectivity · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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