Through analysing select postmodern queer poetry of Carol Ann Duffy ('Mrs. Tiresias' and 'Queen Kong') and Suniti Namjoshi ('Snapshots of Caliban' and 'Sycorax'), this paper examines queer bodies as a deconstructive site, a ‘polysemic’ postmodern self, and a metaphor of ‘liminal’ resistance narratives in contention with the phallogocentric discourses. The select ‘little narratives’ contextualise the ‘coming-out’ of non-conforming other(ed) bodies which have normatively been relegated to the margins, problematizing essentialist understandings of the queer bodies and performances, primarily from Britain and India. The queer bodies delineated in select poems subvert the rules of (hetero)normative discourses and category constructs to project a ‘play of differences’ through their subversive narratives. Drawing on Sara Ahmad’s ‘Queer Phenomenology’, which rethinks queer body and space, how queer subjectivities are involved in deconstructing and reinventing the traditional (hetero)patriarchal structures into new forms of ‘queer(y)ing’, this study explores queer embodiments within the context of postmodern queer feminist poetry, and involves an intersectional examination of gender, sexuality, and identity. The paper, further, refers to Judith Butler’s conceptualisation of the materiality of the body as a socio-cultural construction marked by sexuality and gender; theory of gender performativity, which aims at non-essentialist (deconstructionist) understanding of the conventional body images, and how queer bodies and subjectivities are situated within the predominantly heteronormative culture of visual narcissism and cisgender body hysteria. Through these gendered and sexual (re)presentations, queer bodily acts and performances amplify a leap into the future possibilities of genderqueer, and makes a space for alternative ‘coalitions’ in the contemporary world.

Authors:
Saher Bano, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

About the Presenter(s)
Saher Bano is a Junior Research Fellow, working with Dr. Sarbani Banerjee at the Dept. of HSS, IIT Roorkee. Her research interests include Gender and Queer Studies. Currently, she is working on Contemporary Queer Feminist Poetry and Diaspora.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/saher-bano-251b27233/

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Saher-Bano-2

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