Queer waiting in literature and film
Bild från Pixabay
In the postdoc project “Queer Waiting in Literature and Film”, Oscar von Seth poses the question if waiting, a universal human activity and an unavoidable aspect of life, can be understood as a queer cultural phenomenon. The project introduces “queer waiting,” a concept that is defined as waiting that is both awkward and unusual, and interwoven with non-normative sexuality and gender. The hypothesis is that queer characters often wait for a better future and experience waiting in ways that are directly linked with their queerness.
Details
- Period: 2023-07-01 – 2026-06-30
- Budget: 3,600,000 SEK
- Funder: Swedish Research Council
Description
To provide a broad account of queer waiting, the project's corpus is comprised of openly queer texts (from the 20th and 21st centuries), such as Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912), Michael Cunningham's The Hours (1998), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005), Abdallah Taïa’s queer autobiography An Arab Melancholia (2008), Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), and the PlayStation game The Last of Us Part II (Neil Druckmann, Anthony Newman, Kurt Margenau, 2020).
Theories on “queer time” formulated by José Esteban Muñoz (2009), Sara Ahmed’s notions about happiness and “happy endings” (2010), as well as Martin Heidegger’s concept “releasement” (1959), are drawn on.
All in all, the project proposes that while waiting, to everyone, can make the present seem unbearable, queers experience it, and handle it, in unique ways.
Project members
Contact
- If you have questions about this project, please contact Oscar von Seth.
- Oscar von Seth