Öffentlicher Vortrag von Professor_in Bee Scherer

GeStiK präsentiert:
Öffentlicher Vortrag von Professor_in Bee Scherer, Canterbury
Christ Church University, U.K.
“Queer Theory, Aphallophobia, and the Paradigms of
Queer/Religious Dialogue”
Zeit: Mittwoch, 20.7.2016, 14:00 - 15:30 Uhr
Ort: Repräsentationssaal, Klosterstraße 79 b (Geb. 222a, 1.OG), Universität zu Köln
Gebäudelage: http://www.uni-koeln.de/bin2/where.pl?parent.geb221
(Raum ist stufenfrei zugänglich)
Der Vortrag findet auf Englisch statt.
Die Diskussion kann auf Deutsch geführt werden.
Biographie:
Professor_in Bee Scherer, PhD, ist Inhaber_in des Lehrstuhls für Comparative
Religion, Gender and Sexuality und Direktor_in von INCISE (Intersectional Research
Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice) an der Canterbury Christ Church University,
U.K. Bee Scherer hat eine Vielzahl von Artikeln und Büchern veröffentlicht in den
Bereichen Buddhist Studies (Philologie, Philosophie und Ethnologie), Mythologie,
Queer Theory und Transfeminismus. Xier ist ebenfalls Gründer_in der
interdisziplinären Konferenzreihe Queering Paradigms (QP,
queeringparadigms.com), des dazugehörigen wissenschaftlichen Netzwerks sowie
Herausgeber_in der gleichnamigen Buchserie (Peter Lang: Oxford).
Short description:
In this lecture, I offer a transfeminist angle on Queer Theory, approaching theorizing,
inhabiting and performing trans-bodies through metaphorical spatial discourses.
Leaving aside Deleuze and Guattari's becoming I am experimenting with Heidegger's
Dasein (being-in-time) in tension with trans crossings and dwellings. I investigate
parameters of the experience of embodied genderqueerness and transgenderism as
co-shaped by the experience of transphobia, noting that the 'Brownian motion' of the
trans identitarian performance is induced by the societal limitations which lacks the
identitarian grammar and lexicon to locate trans-anthroposcapes. I theorise
transphobia in its relationship to gender normativities by introducing overarching
readings of oppressive biopolitics through what I term aphallophobia - the fear too
loose (phallic) power which drives hegemonic masculinity and heteropatriarchy.
Building on from aphallophobia, I investigate queer (and) religion - using different
discoursive threads such as Human Rights; ethics; bodily integrity; spirituality; and
resistance. 'Queer' as a paradoxical (non-/anti-)category can and is being used for
the projection of identitarian belonging and yearning, oppositional to procreative
heterosexual bio-governmentalities, while 'religion', as an important form of vestigial
governmentality interpellated in heteropatriarchy, functions similarly as a category of
belonging and yearning.
Are both necessarily mutually exclusive? I investigate terms of a queer-religious
dialogue: Queer-challenging the myth of 'religion' as an essentialized positive
category, 'religion' is shown to be value-neutral and morally protean; queer
'victimhood', however, does not equal sainthood and the homonormative expectation
of belligerent secularism (what I term homosecularism ) shortchanges queer subjects'
needs for Dasein during/in/beyond becoming. A mature, constructive and jouissant
relationship of 'queer' and 'religion' is proposed by means of postmoral belongings-inaction and queerthought religion as embodied compassion-in-action.

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