In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • “I Am Also a We”: Exploring Queer Worldmaking in Sense8
  • Stephanie L. Young (bio) and Art Herbig (bio)

circuit small enoughthat its allure was, you would eventually

get back all of the erotic energy you’d sent around it (so

that the point of this fantasy was nothing is ever really lost)—

in post-Proustianlove, on the other hand, the circuit could be big.

Imagine it bigenough that you could never even know whether

the system was closed, finally, or open. Sothe point could only

lie in valuingall the transformations and transitivities

in all directionsfor their difference, trans-i-ness, and their skilled nature.

—Eve Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love1 [End Page 69]

From the very first episode of Sense8, series creators J. Michael Straczynski, Lana Wachowski, and Lilly Wachowski brought to the screen an intricate story world meant for binge audiences cultivated by Netflix. At its most basic, Sense8 is the story of eight people (“sensates”) who no longer experience their lives as disconnected individuals. Instead, they are experientially connected through time and space despite being located on different continents and having diverse backgrounds. According to Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times, the series centers on an “octet of sympathetic resonators” who share dreams, see visions, “see through one another’s eyes,” and “sometimes, by some collective unconscious mechanism, . . . have the skills they need to get out of a tight spot.”2 In addition, Joshua Rothman of The New Yorker describes Sense8 as “sympathetic sci-fi” that focuses on “telepathic empathy.”3 Although no simple description fully encapsulates the worlds as experienced by the sensates, as the character Jonas Maliki (Naveen Andrews) explains to a confused Will Gorski (Brian J. Smith), “You are no longer you. . . . You have seven other selves now.”

Sense8 builds its stories out of its characters’ interconnection, what it refers to as a “cluster,” but vital to its stories is its treatment of difference. Despite living in each other’s spaces and often in each other’s bodies, the individual characters have different identities, histories, and experiences. Issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, language, and geography are central to their shared lives. In fact, Sense8 was lauded for its portrayal of sexual, racial, and gender diversity.4 As Jennifer Still remarks, the series is “a wonderful vehicle of inclusivity when it comes to traditionally underrepresented communities.”5 Tim Goodman notes that Sense8 is a “sex-positive” series with “positive portrayal of LGBT characters” that “preaches themes of acceptance and inclusion in most of its storylines.”6 In 2016, Sense8 earned the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series.7

In addition, some scholars have recognized Sense8 as a queer-centric text8 and have focused on the nonheteronormative subjectivities of the show.9 For example, Natalie Jolly argues that Sense8 queers heterosexualized femininity with a hyperreal birth montage10 whereas Maike Sarah Reinerth and Jan-Noël Thon point to how the series engages in strategies of intersubjective representation.11 As Elizabeth Blakey remarks, “the digital show turns on questions of identity, power struggles and the body, and the binary of reality/illusion.”12 What becomes clear through an even cursory watching of Sense8 is that the stories and characters go beyond traditional questions of how a program grapples with representation. Woven into representations of multilayered and multivocal characters, the structure and composition of the narrative created in Sense8 reflects a different approach to storytelling that is uniquely queer.

What cannot be ignored about the queer story world created in Sense8 is its creators: the Wachowskis. As the introductory credits roll on the first episode, [End Page 70] the Wachowskis are listed as executive producers, writers, and directors. Famous for their work creating films like The Matrix saga, the Wachowskis have also made a very public transition from the Wachowski Brothers to the Wachowski Sisters. As transgender women, the Wachowskis have invited the world to see their stories through the lens of their unique perspective as queer writers. In a recent speech at the GLAAD Media Awards, Lilly Wachowski said: “There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens...

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