Utopias, Realities and Futures: Queer world-making in contemporary comics
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Bachelor's thesis
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en
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62 + 4
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Abstract
Cultural production, including visual media, has been a significant outlet for queer people to engage in politics and social discourse, as they have been historically marginalized or completely excluded from other forms of civic engagement. This engagement, through the means of cultural production, often takes the form of envisioning alternative realities and futures outside of the cisheteronormative systems that oppress queer people. In queer theory, these renegotiations and alternative imaginaries of places, kinships, and identities have been examined, for example, through the concepts of ‘queer world-making’ and ‘queer utopianism’, and are significant concepts in queer liberation politics. Building on past research the thesis explores comics as a queer medium, particularly suitable for engaging with queer utopianism. The main research question of the thesis is: How do comics as a medium allow for queer world-making? The main research question is supported by the following sub-questions: How are queer comic realities constructed?; What makes comics an accessible medium for engaging with queer theory and politics? The thesis employed a qualitative methodology in the form of semi-structured interviews with six contemporary queer comic artists. The interviews were utilized to examine ways of constructing queer realities and worlds in comics, shed light on the inner workings of the comic field from a queer perspective, as well as investigate how the practice translates to the political sphere and broader queer liberation context. Additionally, the thesis was supplemented by a case-study analysis of Edith Hammar’s “Portal” (2023). A tangible visual example provides an added layer to the investigation and illustrates the discussed phenomena. The findings of the thesis reinforce comics as a queer medium. Further, findings suggest that there are certain conditions and formalistic affordances of comics that amplify their capacity for queer world-making. The particular freedom of the form and ability to distort time and space was found to be especially suitable for the visual representation of queer temporalities, which allows one to authentically represent queer experiences and thus engage with queer politics and theory. The study also identified circumstances of production as well as accessibility, afforded by the unique combination of text and image, as the enablers of the political potential of comics. Finally, it was found that queer comics can connect queer people across time and space, fostering a sense of kinship that acts as a counterculture to the isolating cisheteronormative oppression, making queer comics themselves act as queer world-making devices.Description
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Chun, NamkyuThesis advisor
Miljak, CvijetaKeywords
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Opinnäytteessä tekijän nimi muodossa Teo Borzecka.