Queer Ecologies of the In-Between: Porous Bodies and Intimate Spaces in Contemporary Narratives of Desire

This paper examines the presence of queer ecologies in two recent works by Camille Vidal-Naquet and Luca Guadagnino, reading their distinct visualisations as sites where non-normative desire and human-nature relationships are brought into productive dialogue. While both works engage with queer subjectivity, they do so through substantively different representational and political registers, and it is precisely this divergence that the paper sets out to illuminate. Through close textual analysis, the study interrogates how each work constructs an environmental aesthetic that is inseparable from the articulation of queerness. Vidal-Naquet presents a raw, embodied refusal of heteronormative and capitalist structures, raising pointed questions about whether figures such as sex work can sustain genuine anti-systemic critique. Guadagnino, by contrast, deploys a romanticised Mediterranean landscape as both a mirror and a medium of queer longing, while the adaptation of key scenes from the source novel reveals a deliberate softening of the more unsettling, abject dimensions of desire. The paper argues that, despite their shared investment in non-normative sexuality, these works diverge significantly in their aesthetic and political strategies. Through which they render queerness ecological — ultimately contributing to emerging scholarly conversations on nature and queer representation.