Contextualisation, part 1

Queer cinema and the global

Abstract

In the first of two contextualising articles written for this themed issue, the notion of queer cinema is positioned within larger, global narratives of activism, theorymaking and reception, while simultaneously nuancing its functional applicability in ‘world cinema’ contexts – in essence cautioning against the potential pitfalls of deploying it as if with global or universal reach. In reaction to such universalist assumptions, the national is rather conceptualised in/through queer cinema as multiple horizons of belonging, as frameworks of space which speak to interconnecting and overlapping surfaces; turning the focus instead to the process of queering the formations of nations, ethnicities and diasporas as marked by hierarchical (hetero)sexual binaries whose normative effects can be disrupted and undone.