Queer subjectivities, sexuality, and nationhood in contemporary Catalan cultures

This project will consider how queer subjectivities in contemporary Catalan
cultures can problematise the co-constitutive, normativising notions of
sexuality and nationhood, viewed from an intersectional standpoint. It is worth
questioning both the emancipatory and the more fraught consequences of the
adoption (or, perhaps, co-optation) of queer cultural works into mainstream
popular culture, albeit within a culture that is itself minoritised. I will argue that
a centring of queer subjectivities disrupts normative epistemologies on sex
and sexuality that underlie heteropatriarchal discourses on nationalism. My
study will examine the mainstreaming of queer literary and cultural works in
the Catalan national canon, drawing on primary sources ranging from Catalan
literature to plays and serialised television. My study would contribute a
longer volume of research to the underexplored area of canonical queer
subjectivities in contemporary Catalan culture, informing scholarship on the
relationship of queer subjects to Catalan nationalism and culture, as well as
on the changed cultural landscape in post-2017 Catalunya. With this
understanding, we can better envisage opportunities for resistance to
normativity in a way that avoids simply reaffirming the very norms that queer
theory seeks to challenge.