CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Gorbachyova, Mariya |
|---|---|
| Title | Subversive Potential of Queer Art: Shapeshifting and Resisting Neoliberalism through Perfume Genius's and Anohni's Music |
| Summary | Two contemporary LGBTQ artists are disrupting the traditional desire/violence narratives and voice out the anxieties of living in the neoliberalist times. They do that by executing the practice of shapeshifting in the line of bold chamber pop or alternative music. Similar anxieties and practices have been defined before by Lisa Duggan & José Muñoz as “hopelessness” (2009), and Lee Edelman as “no future” (2004). These are worked through, subverted, and outlived by two artists in particular: Perfume Genius and Anohni. Perfume Genius, with the overarching theme of No Shape (2017), engages with the areas of sadomasochistic queer desire and im/possibility of reproductivity for queer people. He also sings about living with chronic illness in the able-bodied matrix, and the will to shapeshift or escape the restraints of one’s body as a result of that, doing that by “hovering with no shape”. Continuing in the same line of thinking, Hadreas’s explorations are analyzed in this thesis alongside Anohni’s songs about the expansion of capitalism to all spheres of lives and its disastrous consequences in terms of drone wars and their victims, violence against transgender people, and the posthumanist and watery-fluid explorations in Hopelessness (2016) & Cripple and the Starfish (2000). Anohni also shapeshifts in her manifestos, as she subverts the experienced pain with the cries of “drone bomb me” and “so come on and hurt me / I'll grow back like a starfish” in the defiant-destructive anthems. This thesis attempts to map out the works of Perfume Genius and Anohni in the journey of shapeshifting and crafting the queen(r) art of failure. The point of departure for that are Michel Foucault’s concepts of power, biopolitics & sexuality, paired with Jack Halberstam’s explorations of masochism, and theory of performativity, particularly the concept of dialogism by Mikhail Bakhtin and others. Considering the media’s representation through the universalizing sanitized queer image, and the need to resist the subjugation to be the productive neoliberal disciplined body in general, art that shapeshifts is integral to queer survival and resistance. Keywords: queer music; performativity and performance; masochism; body; repetition; dialogic; dialogism |
| Supervisor | Hyaesin Yoon, Christina Jurcic |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/gorbachyova_mariya.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University