[Candrama] CATR Longtable: Untethering Queer: Thinking Beyond the Normative/Anti-Normative Binary

[Laine Newman]

*Call for Participants:*

*Untethering Queer: Thinking Beyond the Normative/Anti-Normative Binary in
Queer Political, Personal, and Pedagogical Life*

*Long Table Session at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research*


While considerable work in queer theory has been founded on the assumption
that antinormativity is a fundamental character of queering scholarship and
practice, more recent work has begun to question this investment (see
Duggan 2015; Halberstam 2015; Wiegman and Wilson 2015; Tongson 2014;
Jacobson 1998; among others). This debate has become increasingly important
in light of the recent US presidential election and the threat to basic
civil rights it threatens, if not promises. (If not the end of the world,
this is at least the end of the world as we know it.) In this open
roundtable discussion, participants will consider the implications of
denouncing antinormativity in activism, performance, and daily life. What
do we lose if we, as queer theorists, are no longer fastened to the realm
of the antinormative?



Furthermore, the roundtable will consider how antinormativity is often only
tenable from a position of privilege: Who is given the freedom and liberty
to refuse normativity without reprisal? Through this line of questioning,
the roundtable will consider the intersections and divisions of activism,
performance, and scholarship in relation to performing queer activism and
queer theory.


*POSSIBLE QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:*

• What do we lose if we lose antinormativity?

• Who performs antinormativity?

• How does queer theory in academia lose the ability to perform queerness
(particularly if it is no

longer invested in antinormativity?)
• How does a discussion on antinormativity/normativity in and of itself
reinscribe binaries that

queer theory seems to want to destabilize and denounce?



*PROPOSALS: *Those interested in participating are asked to send a short
statement (250-500 words) with their stance on queer theory and
anti-normativity, which will be shared online with other roundtable members
three weeks before the conference. During the long table, participants will
present concise, two-to-three-minute summaries of their stances.

*STRUCTURE: *Following the format of Lois Weaver’s “long-table discussion”
“an experimental open public forum that is a hybrid
performance-installation-roundtable-discussion-dinner-party designed to
facilitate dialogue through the gathering together of people with common
interests” (LADA 2014), this discussion will, literally, invite
participants to the table. After the initial presentations,
audience-participants who wish to join the conversation may gently tap a
currently seated participant on the shoulder, and that participant will
offer their place at the table to the audience-participant.

*DEADLINE EXTENDED: *February 15, 2017

Please contact laineyale at gmail.com with your proposal or any queries

--
Laine Zisman Newman, M.A., M.F.A, PhD Candidate
Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
& Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto
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