Internationalist Answers to a Rented World!

Hmmm . . . a manifesto about a subject that doesn’t interest me all that much anymore.

It doesn’t. Why?

Because most of the media that I notice getting called “queer” seems as normal, commercial, racist, sex-phobic, naturalist, nationalist, narrative-driven, tedious, sexist, and humorless as the nonqueer.

But surely you can’t limit your conception of queer media to that boring lot of films that shows at international queer film festivals?

You’re probably right. But, because of my experiences in Germany, where I’ve lived for over a decade, I’ve developed a slight discomfort with the word media, which, in local academic circles, tends to be used as a way to subsume and delegitimize the field of film studies so as to aspire to purportedly more significant philosophical heights.

And the manifesto?

OK. But only with those thoughts in mind:

Queer media does not document

Queers cannot be documented, cannot be made visible, cannot be recognized

Realism is not queer

Media is not queer

Or media is only queer when queers see/read/hear/etc. it, not because queers make it

(Making it can be queer though)

Queer media is internationalist

This means that it solicits political alliances beyond the borders of the nation and that it is not assimilable to the interests of the nation-state

This means that it, for instance, refuses to collaborate in the oppression of the Palestinian people

O queer media give internationalist answers to a rented world!