Table Of ContentQueer Defamiliarisation
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New Materialisms
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Placemaking: A New Materialist Theory of Pedagogy
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Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange
Helen Palmer
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Queer Defamiliarisation
Writing, Mattering, Making Strange
Helen Palmer
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the
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information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Helen Palmer, 2020
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by
IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 3414 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 3416 4 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 3417 1 (epub)
The right of Helen Palmer to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the
Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introductions 1
Introduction 1: Defamiliarising 1
Introduction 2: Queering 13
Introduction 3: Mattering 21
Chapter summaries 32
1 Synvariance 35
Horizontal/vertical 36
By any other name a rose is a rose by any other name 39
Stasis/fl ow 44
Repetition/difference 45
Every term must be supplanted by another term 47
Variance/invariance 49
Zombie signs/metanoia 52
Axis/assemblage 55
Intra-acting/intra-secting 58
Boycunt/logic of the ‘as’ 62
2 Mythorefl eshings 65
Personae: conceptual, narrative, collective? 69
Paradoxical relationalities: intimacy and estrangement 87
Gendered perception: queer defamiliarisation 88
Conclusion: syntaxa/parataxa 89
3 A Field of Heteronyms and Homonyms: New Materialism,
Speculative Fabulation and Wor(l)ding 91
Prologue: THE FIELD 91
Fictocriticism; or, fl owers at the lip of the world 92
Worlding from Heidegger to Haraway 94
Agential realism and the material-discursive 98
Speculative topoi: Afrofuturism as uchronia 100
Wor(l)dings: speculative fabulation, hyperstition,
fi ctioning, myth-science 106
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vi queer defamiliarisation
Wor(l)dings: heteronymy, homonymy, contingency 108
Epilogue: THE FIELD 114
4 Sensorium 115
Deforming the senses 116
Deforming dimensions 120
Deforming perception 125
Interstitium 1: The Surface, or Alice and the Hermunculus 128
Deforming touches: queer haptics 139
Interstitium 2: Speculative Taxonomies 143
Sirens and Organs, or, If These Whorls Could Talk 155
Concluding comments 168
Epilogue 171
A Hymn to Sol, or, She Rides the Tram in Different Voices,
or A Heliochronic Tram Journey on Blackpool Promenade
at Sunset, or, Radio Blackpool 171
o We Pray to Gaia and Sol as the Sun Touches the Sea
o Enheduanna Bellicosely Stalks the Promenade
o Ghosha Rides the Tram Chariot
o Some Unhomeric Sea-based Epithets
o Julia Balbila Does Latinate Sunsplicing
o Hypatia gets an Ice Cream and Teaches Conic Sections
o Li Qingzhao Gathers Plastic Sea Ornaments
o Marjery Kempe Paces the Windwhipped Sand in Trainers
o Saint Teresa of Ávila Counsels the Seabound
o Isabella Whitney Is a Contestant for Blackpool in Bloom
o Aphra Behn Blurs Lines under the Pier
o Phyllis Wheatley Sings the Satsuma Blues
o George Eliot Envisions Young Saint Teresa Chewing Jelly
Strawberries in Abingdon Street Market
o Emily Dickinson Diffracts the Light and Blackens the
Heart
o Virginia Woolf Remembers Dropping a Mivvi on the
Pavement
o Gertrude Stein Does Yoga on the Pier next to Trev
and Ann
o H.D. Splices Sea and Sun
o Mina Loy Worships Blackpool Tower
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contents vii
o One or Several Alices Answer Back
o Charlize Kinbote Discovers New Fragment by
Poet Joan Shade
o June Jordan Builds a Bridge Between Towers
o Gloria Anzaldúa Splices Language
o Audre Lorde Encourages A Humbled Mouthpiece
o Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva
Triangulate Desire and Conjugate Strangeness with
Kathy Acker, and They All Get Topological Tattoos
o Eimear McBride Voices Those Not Given Voices Nat Raha
Honours Kettling Hollie McNish Rides The Pepsi Max Big One
Rupi Kaur Considers Openness Yrsa Daley-Ward Articulates
Love Travis Alabanza Throws Colour Verity Spott Spots David
Cameron on Easyjet Voiced Detritus Bloom (A Rose) Speaks
Calyx and Corolla (App Design Creative Agency) Give Their
Pitch to Some Students Circe Speaks to Afrekete from the
Top of the Tower (Some Not-At All Targeted Facebook Ads)
Penelope / A Fictional Character / Your Own Shorn
Sharpenings / A Throb of Queer Desire
Bibliography 188
Index 210
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Carol Macdonald and Kirsty Woods at Edinburgh
University Press for their patience, encouragement and support while I
completed this manuscript. Thanks to Rosi Braidotti and Iris van der
Tuin, for their inspiration as feminist thinkers and also for including me
in this series. I thank Iris along with Felicity Colman for their running
of the COST Action IS1307 New Materialism: Networking European
Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’, which I joined in 2015
and which opened up multiple new worlds. Thanks to Anna Hickey-
Moody for feminist conversations and also for supporting a visiting
scholarship position at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies
at the University of Sydney in 2017.
At Kingston University I was supported by the Race /Gender Matters
research cluster, which has created space for discussions around gen-
der, race, class, language and matter. Within Race/Gender Matters I am
lucky to have the friendship and support of some amazing colleagues:
thank you Éadaoin Agnew, Matthew Birchwood, Fred Botting, Martin
Dines, Jane Jordan, Patricia Phillippy and Selene Scarsi. For multifari-
ous inspiration and friendship during this project particular thanks also
to Felicity Colman, Vikki Chalklin, Tina Chanter, Moira Gatens and
Isabella van Elferen. Special thanks to Charlie Blake, toposophical com-
rade, for making it weird, always.
Thanks to the artists who inspired me into some of this thinking who
are discussed in this book, and to the London queer scene, for being there
and being strong, and supporting new performers with a genuine and
heartfelt sense of community. May the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the Glory
and Wotever World fl ourish forever. This book is dedicated to my London
queer family who show me time and time again that Sara Ahmed is right:
queer family gatherings do make everything dance with renewed life.
Part of Chapter 2 appears as the following article: H. Palmer (2016),
‘Rewritings/Refoldings/Refl eshings: Fictive Publics and the Material
Gesture of Defamiliarization’, Continuum, 30 (5): 507–17. DOI:
10.1080/10304312.2016.1210724
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acknowledgements ix
Part of the Interstitium 1 in Chapter 4 appears as ‘Beyond Surface
Articulation: Alice and the Hermunculus’, in M. Bolhmann and A.
Hickey-Moody (eds) (2019), Deleuze and Children, Edinburgh: Edin-
burgh University Press, pp. 64–86.
Interstitium 2 in Chapter 4 is forthcoming in a Special Issue of Phi-
losophy Today on New Materialist Concepts, ed. I. van der Tuin and
Adam Nocek.
An excerpt from the Epilogue appears as ‘Gertrude Stein Does Pro-
teus at Sunset on Blackpool Promenade’, Minnesota Review, 88, Special
Focus: New Materialist Genealogies, p. 127.
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