Queering the family of nation: Reassessing fantasies of purity, celebrating hybridity in diasporic cinema

Berghahn, Daniela

doi:10.1386/trac.2.2.129_1

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…It builds thus on the work notably of transnational film theorist Daniela Berghahn who, in a study of key European diasporic films such as Lola+Bilidikid/Lola and Billy the Kid ( 1 99 8 , Germany, dir. Kutluğ Ataman), has proposed 'queering the family of nation' (see Berghahn 2011 ), as well as of Derek Duncan, a contributor to the volume, who has examined male migration to Italy from Eastern Europe in some recent Italian films where the men featured are not gay, but where their representation constructs a nonnormative heterosexual subject whose presence in Italy depends precisely on their productivity while excluding any kind of reproductive function. The films' catastrophic plots hinging on the unsuccessful relationship between a migrant man and an Italian woman introduce the spectator to what Duncan terms 'a pedagogy of the non-national body' by queering the heterosexual romance narrative.…”

Section: Queering 'Europe'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

Williams¹

2020

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This exciting and original volume offers the first comprehensive critical study of the recent profusion of European films and television addressing sexual migration and seeking to capture the lives and experiences of LGBTIQ+ migrants and refugees.Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema argues that embodied cinematic representations of the queer migrant, even if at times highly ambivalent and contentious, constitute an urgent new repertoire of queer subjectivities and socialities that serve to undermine the patrolled borders of gender and sexuality, nationhood and citizenship, and refigure or queer fixed notions and universals of identity like 'Europe' and national belonging based on the model of the family. At stake ethically and politically is the elaboration of a 'transborder' consciousness and aesthetics that counters the homonationalist, xenophobic and homo/trans-phobic representation of the 'migrant to Europe' figure rooted in the toxic binaries of othering (the good vs bad migrant, host vs guest, indigenous vs foreigner).Bringing together 15 contributors working in different national film traditions and embracing multiple theoretical perspectives, this powerful and timely collection will be of major interest to both specialists and students in film and media studies, gender and queer studies, migration/mobility studies, cultural studies, and aesthetics.

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Section: Queering 'Europe'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema

Williams¹

2020

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“…In relation to identity categories, the alleged contradiction had two forms: the informants who intended to follow identity categories were not doing so according to the hegemonic way of doing it in the ‘host’ society; but the informants who were critical of identity categories were not completely alien to them. Ultimately, due to their location in a diasporic space (Berghahn, 2012), the informants found themselves in a complex position that made it impossible for them to completely reproduce or subvert the overlapping normativities of both the origin and the ‘host’ society.…”

Section: Analysis Of Queer Migrant Individuals’ Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Analysing the position of the informants through the lens of hybridity helped the authors to disentangle the alleged contradictions. Following Berghahn (2012: 133), hybrid identities ‘are complex and heterogeneous, characterized by crossovers and mixes between different cultural traditions that are invoked and drawn upon simultaneously’. In the case of our informants, they were in a complex position that compelled them to embark on a creative process in which they had to create their own ways to live their sexuality far from predefined solutions, a strategy that we found in another part of the research in which we analysed the cinematic representation of queer migrants (Coll-Planas, 2020).…”

Section: Analysis Of Queer Migrant Individuals’ Narrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The article focuses on how queer migrants from Morocco living in Catalonia (Spain) make sense of their sexualities, understanding that they find themselves in ‘the space of the “in-between”’, which positions them ‘at the interstice between the home and the ‘host’ country, the culture of origin and the destination culture, national rootedness and transnational routes’ (Berghahn, 2012: 133). Thus, the article draws on queer migration scholarship, which explores ‘how overlapping regimes of power and knowledge generate and transform identity categories’ (Luibhéid, 2008: 169); and queer diasporic studies.…”

Section: Introduction1mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Doing, being and verbalizing: Narratives of queer migrants from Muslim backgrounds in Spain

2020

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The hegemonic narrative in the West establishes that having same-sex relationships constitutes an identity that must be public. This article analyses how this narrative is reproduced and/or subverted in the discourses of queer migrant people from Muslim backgrounds in Catalonia (Spain). The analysis of 10 interviews reveals a more fluid notion of sexual orientation, an uncomfortableness with the identity categories regarding sexuality, and a stronger distinction between the public and the private boundaries. The informants found themselves in a complex situation that made it impossible for them to completely reproduce or subvert the overlapping normativities of both the origin and host society, compelling them to devise hybrid strategies to live their sexuality. The article closes with a reflection on the implications of the different ways of living sexuality in relation to the theorization of sexual/intimate citizenship and LGBT equality policies, which also reproduce the western hegemonic understanding of sexuality.

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“…In the process, the narrative follows a logic of exchange similar to that in Origine contrôlée, as the Swiss protagonists become clandestine migrants, if only briefly, and trade geographic places as well as families. This stance marks Baier's film as 'queer' as Berghahn (2011) understands the term as a form of resistance to 'containment' (133), through its treatment of various identity discourses: queer, national, filial and also to a lesser extent 'Western' vs. 'Eastern' European.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%