Queer Space: Poetry and Reparative Practice

My project will explore twentieth-century and contemporary queer poetics. It will research queer space in poetry. The critical component will draw on Ahmed (2006) to argue that queer space must occur within mainstream society but on different terms. Sedgwick's (2003) idea of reparative practice will then be used to explain how camp practices can be employed to repurpose mainstream social space, with its intrinsically anti-queer values, into one capable of healing the damage done by discrimination. I will then analyse contemporary queer poets including Mendoza, Nat Raha and Sophie Robinson as examples of reparative practice. The creative component of the project will enact queer space in the form of a book-length poem called Before and Against. The source material will be texts which clearly manifest dominant social values. Those will be subjected to 'reparative techniques,' so that despite the intent of the original texts, they become queer spaces.
This project aims to encourage creative discussion of queer space. Primarily, I intend to engage with the public. This will be achieved by curating events and workshops with LGBTQI institutions. Secondly, I aim to raise academic interest by contributing to both research seminars and critical journals. Finally, I plan to engage with writers. Ultimately, I plan to have my poem published as a chapbook with Veer Books.
Reparative Practive - Sedgwick (2003) identifies 'paranoid reading' and suggests an alternative, 'reparative reading'. The premise of paranoid reading is that exposure of systematic wrongs may lead to their redress. However, Sedgwick shows that premise to be mistaken. In addition, she argues that paranoid reading is unhealthy in that it demands that the 'painful effects' of oppression are 'exacerbated to make the pain conscious'. Instead, Sedgwick proposes reparative reading, which is motivated by 'pleasure and amelioration'. Reparative reading aims to repair the damage done by discrimination and hate. She looks to camp performance for examples of reparative practices. Those practices, which Sedgwick lists, will guide my research into queer poetry. It will be necessary to question how reparative practice can work for non-male queers.
Queer space - The notion of reparative practice arguably belongs in the context of 'antisocial' theory, which can illuminate the concept of queer space. The 'antisocial' theory is based on Bersani's (1995) contention that gay identity is inherently antisocial. Developing that argument, Edelman (2004) states that queers should define themselves in opposition to a society which ostracises them. Like Edelman, Sedgwick recognises the exclusion queers experience is definitive. Yet while Edelman's focus is on the trauma of ostracism, Sedgwick views it as potentially freeing. As such, reparative practice has more in common with Halberstam's version of antisocial theory. Halberstam (2011) suggests that social exclusion offers an opportunity for queers to 'live life otherwise' by allowing us to 'escape the punishing norms that discipline behaviour'.
However, it is important to note that ostracism occurs within the social space. As Ahmed (2006) states, 'queer does not have a relation of exteriority to that with which it comes into contact'; leaving 'the "world" of heterosexuality' by identifying as lesbian, for example, still requires 'staying in a heterosexual world'. Therefore, queer space must be a re-orientation within existing social space. One method of effecting re-orientation is to replace harmful social norms with nourishing values.
The project will be one of the first investigations of reparative practice and modern poetry. It will uniquely argue that poetry is a paradigmatic site for reparative practice, based on the belief that 'poetry is aversion of conformity in the pursuit of new forms' (Bernstein, 1992:2). Secondly, it will provide one of the first in-depth academic considerations of socially significant contemporary poets.