Queer Theory and Bad Objects: Symposium and Networking Afternoon

Few fields have been as preoccupied with ’bad’ social and scholarly objects as queer theory. Through attending to what others might prefer to forget–shame, negativity, backwardness, to mention only a few–queer scholars have sought to re-orient normative hierarchies of value while also questioning aspects of their own field’s self-understanding. More recently, this turn to bad objects continues to have life in the work of trans studies scholars focusing on, for example, trans maladjustment and bad feelings. Through this work, bad objects become ‘good’: offering currency in the contemporary academic marketplace. But what ‘objects’ (concepts, social structures, phenomena, as well as actual material things) remain irredeemable in contemporary queer thought? For example, is it possible to imagine a queer theory not antithetical to: categorisation, taxonomy, reason, heteronormativity, neoliberalism, the state? What objects do queer scholars not want to go near?

This afternoon event at University College London will create space for conversations around the multiple meanings of bad objecthood. Our invited speakers are: Lisa Downing (University of Birmingham), Joan Lubin (University of Durham), and Kyla Wazana Tompkins (University at Buffalo).

Among the questions we will ask are: On one hand, what categories and objects continue to be constructed as ‘bad’ by contemporary neoliberal normativity? Moreover, more counterintuitively, how does sitting with what queer studies itself takes as its bad objects make visible the otherwise tacit assumptions of the field? How does thinking from the place of these bad objects create space for new possibilities in queer thought?

‘Queer Theory and Bad Objects’ is the third in a series of networking events hosted by the AHRC-funded network 'Beyond Radical: Queer Theory and the UK'. 'Beyond Radical' aims to make space in the UK for anyone interested in the continued interrogation and development of queer theory.

www.manchester.ac.uk/beyondradical

Further practicalities:

• Look here for an essay by Kyla Wazana Tompkins that is recommended advance reading: Tompkins, 'Crude Matter, Queer Form' 
• For the full draft programme CLICK HERE
• Catering will be provided on the day with vegan and gluten-free options
  
• Please write to beyondradicalnetwork@gmail.com with any specific access requirements