Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality - Tommaso M. Milani

Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality - Tommaso M. Milani

3. The Desire for Identity and the Identity of Desire: Language, Gender and Sexuality in the Greek Context

Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality - Tommaso M. Milani

Costas Canakis [+-]
University of the Aegean
Costas Canakis is Associate Professor of sociolinguistics and director of the Laboratory for the Ethnographic Study of Language at the Deprtment of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean, Lesvos.

Description

This chapter focuses on three recent studies investigating the discursive construction of sexuality in Modern Greek – in contexts as diverse as same-sex online personals, the performance of heterosexuality in a mixed-sex conversation and coming out narratives – arguing that critical approaches to heteronormativity, the hallmark of queer linguistics, can hardly be dissociated from issues of ‘identity’ and ‘desire’ in language, since heteronormativity specifically aims at regulating their correlation vis-à-vis gender norms. These studies investigate the indexical relation between language, gender and sexuality as experienced by socially positioned agents whose subjectivity is constructed with reference to their desires and whose desires allude to intelligible (and eroticisable) subjectivities. Therefore, any attempt at reductive theorising based on an exclusivist platform, inspired by either identity or desire alone, fails to capture crucial aspects of sexually relevant language

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Citation

Canakis, Costas. 3. The Desire for Identity and the Identity of Desire: Language, Gender and Sexuality in the Greek Context. Queering Language, Gender and Sexuality. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 42-60 Feb 2018. ISBN 9781781794944. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=30444. Date accessed: 04 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.30444. Feb 2018

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