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11. Queerness, Multimodality, and the Possibilities of Re/Orientation
- Utah State University Press
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Q u E E r N E S S , m u lT i m O da l i T y, a N d T h E P O S S i b i l i T i E S O f r E / O r i E N TaT i O N Jonathan alexander and Jacqueline rhodes There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. . . . But, then, what is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? —Foucault, The Uses of Pleasure Ultimately, throughout, and before we even begin, we log on, we ask: How might I represent my own queerness? How might I figure queerness multimodally ? More specifically, how might multimodality embody the queer in dynamic and productive dimensions? What is a multimodal queerness? What are its possibilities, and what are its limitations? We can read, see, hear, perhaps even touch the queer—and have it touch us through multiple senses, potentially even interactively. But what does such touch mean, particularly for those who may not be queer? The internet and the emergence of a variety of collateral multimedia composing and publishing tools have given us a nearly unprecedented capacity to represent ourselves, our interests, our communities, and our investments—personal, political, and otherwise. With such a capacity has come the possibility that our views, beliefs, and ideas may themselves be challenged by others, putting out there their own multimediated visions. Such is certainly true for the multimediated representation of queerness, which has been represented in richly multimodal ways—to foster community and awareness, particularly among those struggling with their sexual orientation, to mobilize queer activists as they reach out for political change, and (indeed) to foster hatred and intolerance through sites such as God Hates Fags. Such sites aside, we believe that exploring queerness through multimodality—that is, taking advantage of increasingly rich ways of figuring and composing—may help us develop productive insights into the experiences of the queer, the possibilities of multimodal composing, and the possibilities (and limits) of figuring the queer. 11 Queerness, Multimodality, and the Possibilities of Re/Orientation 189 In this chapter, we want to forward a theoretical approach to the multimodal composition of queerness that situates such figuring as a challenging possibility for queering sexuality, for queering our understanding of the queer and the heteronormative, and for queering our interaction with multimedia and multimodal texts. To undertake this queering , we want to construct a set of queer genealogies—from Jean Cocteau to Craigslist, from Gay.com to lesbian cut-ups—that sees in the multimodal composition of queerness possibilities for reorienting our understanding of sexuality and how it moves in the world, and for how it orients us along certain paths, particular trajectories on which we may, or may not, wish to travel. Most audaciously, perhaps, we want to suggest that multimodal composing offers us rich resources for representing a complex queerness —and that such resources have a history, however unexplored, that may be illuminating, even inspiring. With this view in mind, we attempt to perform in this chapter our own encounters—as sexed and sexual beings—with a variety of texts. Combining scholarly discussion, theoretical explorations, and autoethnography, this essay fleshes out our understanding of how sexually engaged interactions with new media problematize sex/sexuality/gender as it creates a space for producing new sexual positionings. mulTimEdiaTEd Q u EErN ESS: SO m E ThEO r ET iCal aNd hiSTOriCal CON TEXTS To offer a framework for our exploration of queer multimodality, we set two narratives against one another: 1. the narrative of scholarly exploration of queerness online and through multimediated texts* 2. an homage extolling the unacknowledged work of Jean Cocteau as both queer artist and multimedia artist These two narratives, not contradictory but rather in tension, offer us a way to conceive of the possibilities of queer multimodality as a function of both a recovered and an emerging history of queer multimedia. * Jonathan is grateful to his colleague Elizabeth Losh, with whom he explored some of this thinking about queer representation online in “A YouTube of...