Abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of queer kinesis. Drawn from Aristotle’s kinēsis, which the ancient philosopher used to suggest the potential for change that is brought on through movement and its process, I’m queering the term to include the initiation and successive development of (a) transformation (Kostman 1987: 3). By examining and analysing performance artist and photographer Alexander Guerra’s ungendered character ‘Rabbit’, I demonstrate how a transformation may occur through Rabbit’s performance, set in motion by an act of anthropomorphosis. Guerra notes that his work is first and foremost ‘always about movement and motion’ (2013). I critically read this example of queer kinesis as both transformational and transformative as it extends across time and place. Herein I employ a variant and specific notion of trans (as opposed to trans*) as an enactment of the transnational, the trans-temporal and the transspecies.
Presently she began again. ‘I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth!’
L. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.
Bond Stockton, K. (2009) The Queer Child: or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press.
Boyle, J. (2010) ‘Biomedia in the Time of Animation’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies. Vol.1, No.1–2, pp. 46–55.
Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Carroll, L. (2010) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and through the Looking Glass. London: Penguin Classics.
Edgecomb, S. (2012) ‘The Ridiculous Performance of Taylor Mac’, Theatre Journal. Vol.64, No.4, pp. 549–63.
Elliot, P. (2010) Debates in Transgender, Queer and Feminist Theory. Famham: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Ettinger, B. L. (2006) The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (trans. Sheridan, A.) New York: Pantheon.
Freeman, E. (2010) Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke University Press.
Guerra, A. (2013) Unpublished Interview with the Author.
Halberstam, J. (2005) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press.
Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press.
Halperin, D. and Traub, V. (2009) Gay Shame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harrity, C. (2011) http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment
Heidegger, M. (2010) Being and Time. (trans. Stambaugh, J. and Schmidt, D. J.) Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jackson, R. L. and Murali, B. (2011) Global Masculinities and Manhood. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Joost, K. (2013) ‘Intimating Mortality: A Heideggerian Account’, in Aaron, M. (ed.) Envisaging Death: Visual Culture and Dying. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 158–173.
King, M. (2012) ‘Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists’, Canadian Theatre Review. Vol.149, No.4, pp. 3–5.
Kostman, J. (1987) ‘Aristotle’s Definition of Change’, History of Philosophy Quarterly. Vol.4, No.1, pp. 3–16.
Massumi, B. (2002) Parables for Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press.
Manning, E. (2009) Relationships: Movement, Art, Philosophy. London: MIT Press.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.
Pick, A. (2011) Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press.
Pitzulo, C. (2008) ‘The Battle in Every Man’s Bed: Playboy and the Fiery Feminists’, Journal of the History of Sexuality. Vol.17, No.2, pp. 259–89.
Preston, C. J. (2011) Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rudakoff, J. (2012) TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work. Bristol: Intellect Ltd.
Schechner, R. (1977) Essays on Performance Theory, 1970–1976. New York: Drama Publishers.
Sedgwick, E. (2008) Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sekula, A. (1986) ‘The Body and the Archive’, October. Vol.39, pp. 3–64.
Stryker, S. (2004) ‘Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Vol.10, No.2, pp. 212–15.
Walton, K. (1993) Mimesis and Make-Believe: On the Foundations of Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Warner, S. (2012) Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Wickstrom, M. (2014) ‘Desire and Kairos: Cassil’s Teirisias’, The Drama Review. Vol.58, No.4, pp. 46–55.
Williams, M. (1958) The Velveteen Rabbit. New York: Doubleday.
Web pages consulted
Dickens, K. (2014) Karla Dickens. Available from http://www.karladickens.com.au
Feinberg, L. (2005) Available from http://www.transgenderwarrior.org/writings/
Guerra, A. (2011) Available fromhttp://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/aguerra/
Horwitz, S. (2011) Transgender Performers on How Art and Identity Inform Each Other. Available from http://www.backstage.com/news/transgender-performers-on-how-art-and-identity-inform-each-other/
Mai’a (2009) Third Gendering Fuck. Available from https://guerrillamamamedicine.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/third-gendering-fuck/
Taylor, K. (2014) Bugs Bunny in Drag. Available from http://www.oocities.org/westhollywood/village/3025/bugs.html
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Sean F. Edgecomb
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Edgecomb, S.F. (2016). Queer Kinesis: Performance, Invocation, Transformation. In: Campbell, A., Farrier, S. (eds) Queer Dramaturgies. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411846_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411846_20
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57028-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-41184-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)