Queer friendship

Popcultural depictions of cisheteronormative nuclear family life have verged on the apocalyptic in recent years: Mothers at the edge of nervous breakdown, violent or completely lackadaisical fathers, murderous or murdered children and societies that are at best indifferent regarding the division of care-work or emotional labor. At the same time, authoritarian populists foster and instrumentalize fears of the end of The Family and the destruction of the – supposedly – biological order. They use these fears to target queers who they claim are out to destroy the nuclear family and the generational order. Mainstream gay community has traditionally answered these calls to violence with demands for inclusion, diversity, rainbow families and gay marriage. – But there are also queer positions that indeed demand an end of patriarchal violence and exploitation and deconstruct the institution of the family.

We will read queer theoretical critiques of familialism, texts about family abolition, the celebration of chosen families and complex kinship relations, and discuss friendship as a political practice.

Texts will be in English and in German, we’ll speak English, German, Dinglish.