Event overview
Lecture by Jonathan Kemp (Birkbeck) as part of the Visual Cultures public programme.
Queer(ing) Masculinity
Focusing on the figure of the penetrated male body, this paper queers masculinity by suggesting, through a reading of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1911), that submission is the precondition of modern masculine subjectivity. Male subjectivity is only intelligible – paradoxically - through a penetrability it cannot subsequently concede, but must actively avoid if it is to retain its masculine status. As such, the body’s inherent penetrability is overcome by a performative disembodiment promoted through the will to knowledge and achieved through the domination of, and distancing from, nature (as Other/woman/body). The skin thus functions as an epistemological limit, even in the most phantasmatic journeyings beyond it. The body is tamed and contained by a logic of the skin that embeds sexual difference within the very mappings of its surface.
JONATHAN KEMP teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Birkbeck College, London. His first novel, London Triptych, won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award in 2011, and his second book, Twentysix, is a meditation on language and sex (both published by Myriad Editions). This paper is an extract from his forthcoming book, The Penetrated Male (Punctum Books, 2014).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 Jun 2013 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
