Fire stands for anger and – alluding to the unfinished film A Fire In My Belly by US artist and activist David Wojnarowicz and the German group ACT UP Berlin / Feuer unterm Hintern – the heated political situation at what was, from a Western perspective, the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s. In reaction to the resentment against LGBTIQ people that was growing again in the wake of HIV/AIDS, resistance arose that was borne by indignation and anger, but which also stood in the sign of a new politics of vulnerability, mourning and care. Under the impact of HIV/AIDS and the isolating effects, not only of the disease itself, but of state and media policies, a shift in the thematization and mediatization of negative feelings took place within social movements as well as queer theories. This seminar traces this shift and brings together readings on the relationship between affect and gender as well as feelings and sexuality (Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Deborah Gould, Heather Love, José Esteban Muñoz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick). Finally, the focus on queer theories of affect and feeling is linked to the question of the perspectivization of the current pandemic and the (mediatized) politics of feeling that accompany it.
- Kursleiter/in: Katrin Köppert