Affect, Performance and Queer Subjectivities

This article will re-configure the historical association between queer lives and psychopathology by focusing upon the enactive potential of particular performances of queer subjectivities. These are usually live performances which through their engagement with a background of trauma, shame, loneliness and isolation afford the circulation and distribution of what will be termed, ‘unhappy affects’. These situated responses to a register of affects which have historically been associated with queer lives, open up performative possibilities for enacting queer forms of belonging and becoming. The article will foreground the importance of attending to embodiment, affect and genealogy in investigating queer adventures in the context of live performance.