Annual conference of the German Association for the Study of British Cultures
After a period of seeming consolidation, feminist politics, queer and trans* identities as well as gender studies as an academic field are, once again, under threat. In delineating the history of feminist discourses and activism, for instance, critics habitually represent the conflicts among diAerent ‘waves’ of (white) feminists as cliquish battles. These “[d]erogatory narratives about all feminisms as racist and/or transphobic distract from the current political, systemic, and discursive backlash against LGBTQIA+ persons and feminists alike” (Olson & Lechner 299). In a similar manner, gender studies in general, and queer and trans* studies in particular, are frequently depicted as an unnecessary enterprise at best, as a threat to societal cohesion at worst. Paralleling the attacks on feminist, queer and trans* identities, gender studies are increasingly endangered on an institutional level (UK universities scrapping arts and humanities programmes and departments are but one example of this trend). These developments go hand in hand with politically charged language which is either directed at those who are still marginalised and at risk or is co-opted for ideological purposes like the weaponisation of gender-based resentment in the run-up to the Brexit referendum (see Green & Shorrocks). The analysis of the plurality of gender expressions has always been at the core of cultural studies, which accommodate femininities, masculinities, queer and non-binary as well as intersectional identities. Taking its cue from the inherently political nature of cultural studies, this year’s BritCult conference wants to take stock of these histories and reorientate the position of gender (studies) in British cultural studies today. In Sara Ahmed’s definition, orientation is “how [...] we come to find our way in a world that acquires new shapes, depending on which way we turn” (1). It consequently includes a diachronic view as well as one that is directed at the future: the (cultural, performative, political, theoretical) work of academics working in feminist, queer and trans* studies as well as activists and artists has become inspirational for their contemporary successors, the critics and activists who draw upon their work to call out injustices and think through genders and their representations. Thus, re-orientating may be a way to represent gender and queerness anew or to suggest future potentialities such as José Esteban Muñoz’s call to imagine queerness in a utopian near-future that has not yet arrived (2009). In a similar vein, the discomfort and disruption which feminist discourse can produce – via Ahmed’s notion of the ‘feminist killjoy’ – has led to a productive reclamation of the term ‘feminist’. In a political climate which paints queer and trans* identities as threatening, and the humanities as expendable, gender studies assume renewed responsibility within and beyond academia.