Queer Representability

Queer Representability: The Politics of LGBT
Visual Culture. Open to BFA-3 and BFA-4 students
only.
What makes an image a queer image-the content,
producer, mode of production, a certain
sensibility, a set of politics, or simply the eye
of the beholder? What are the social, linguistic,
and semiotic conditions of intelligibility that
inform our available modes for representing queer
experience? Does the recent explosion of gay and
lesbian characters on television mean we have
emerged from the celluloid closet? Or are we
witnessing new homonormative forms of censorship?
Are social recognition and visibility the
necessary goals of all queer representation? What
potential may linger in the obscene, the abject,
or the unintelligible? Is queerness, in its most
radical possibilities, ever fully representable?

The term representability is drawn from
psychoanalytic theory where it is used to address
the process by which latent unconscious content
takes the form of dream images and, thus, becomes
available to consciousness. The course will
expand from this starting point to understand
morebroadly the process by which an endless
possibility of arrangements of bodies and
pleasures are channeled and disciplined into a
narrow set of recognizable sexual identities and
kinship practices. Course readings include works
by Butler, Bersani, Berlant, Edelman, de
Lauretis, Gopinath, Halberstam, Munoz, Warner and
many more-offering a comprehensive introduction
to a range of approaches to queer cultural
politics. Our critical inquiries will unfold
alongside the investigation of a number of
flashpoints in queer cultural studies-including
pre- and post- Hayes code Hollywood cinema, the
early representation of HIV/AIDS, diva worship
and slash culture, 'New Queer Cinema,' TV
after-Ellen, and contemporary trans portraiture.