Queer/ing transmediations: form, function, futurity

Abstract

This dissertation proposes multiple alternatives that circumvent the inherent reliance on binary thinking in queer theory. Straitjacketing ‘queer’ as an unyielding binary to the normative has multiple limitations. For one, this conception connotes a form of stasis. Even if ‘queer’ celebrates difference in diversity and deviates from linear prescriptions of being, its political ambivalence manifests through its complicity with, and dependence on, the normative matrices it seeks to subvert. It is as if queerness has no vitality to queer unless it relies upon these normative matrices to locate its departure. Using a transmediative approach to queering, the dissertation examines three different primary sources that are by no means constrained by their categorisations: a novel, Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other; a graphic narrative, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home; and a video game, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. As a verb, queerness queers its own binaries by enacting transdisciplinary movements which transgress the partitions that have hitherto cemented disciplinary divides. These movements potentialise ‘queer’ in its transitive form––a doing that generates transversal manoeuvres across identity frontiers, methodologies, and seemingly disparate mediums to affirm its positive, intrinsic difference.