Queer waiting in literature and film
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In the postdoc project “Queer Waiting in Literature and Film”, Oscar von Seth poses the question if waiting, a universal human activity and an unavoidable aspect of life, can be understood as a queer cultural phenomenon. The project introduces “queer waiting,” a concept that is defined as waiting that is both awkward and unusual, and interwoven with non-normative sexuality and gender. The hypothesis is that queer characters often wait for a better future and experience waiting in ways that are directly linked with their queerness.
Details
- Period: 2023-07-01 – 2026-06-30
- Budget: 3,600,000 SEK
- Funder: Swedish Research Council
Description
To provide a broad account of queer waiting, the project’s corpus is extensive, from early queer texts about gay men—like Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912) and E. M. Forster’s Maurice (1913–14)—through a variety of autobiographical narratives set during the AIDS epidemic—like Lou Sullivan’s diaries about coming of age as a HIV-positive gay trans man, We Both Laughed in Pleasure (2019), and Craig G. Harris’s “I’m Going Out Like a Fucking Meteor,” about waiting to die from AIDS-related complications at the height of the epidemic—to the film Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005), Abdellah Taïa’s autobiography An Arab Melancholia (2008), and the videogame The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020).
Theories on “queer time” formulated by José Esteban Muñoz (2009), Sara Ahmed’s notions about happiness and “happy endings” (2010), as well as Martin Heidegger’s concept “releasement” (1959), are drawn on.
All in all, the project proposes that while waiting, to everyone, can make the present seem unbearable, queers experience it, and handle it, in unique ways.
Project members
Contact
- If you have questions about this project, please contact Oscar von Seth.
- Oscar von Seth