Queer Waiting
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:18th Feb '27
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 18th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
By tracing and exploring entanglements of queerness and waiting in a diverse selection of fictional and
autobiographical queer-themed narratives, this book proposes a new theoretical concept of 'queer waiting'.
The act and experience of waiting – and refusing to wait – is a central feature in queer people’s lives: from waiting to come out, to waiting for political and social recognition, to refusing to wait while hard-won legal rights are taken away today.
In this open access book, von Seth traces and explores entanglements of queerness and waiting in fictional and autobiographical queer-themed narratives, to propose the new theoretical concept of “queer waiting”.
Drawing on a diverse selection of narratives, genres, and cultural contexts, including early queer texts about gay men, texts about trans experiences and waiting for death during the AIDS epidemic, films such as Brokeback Mountain and the videogame The Last of Us Part II, Oscar von Seth argues that although waiting is a universal human activity and an unavoidable aspect of life, it can be understood as a distinct and specifically queer cultural phenomenon.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on Bloomsbury Collections.
A mesmerising and richly layered exploration of queer time, Queer Waiting brings to life a vibrant tapestry of our lives across time and implores us not to waste any more of it. A compelling call to action, I was captivated from beginning to end. -- Dan Glass, ACT UP Activist, Author
If virtually everything happens as we await something else, then the experience of waiting must be richer and more diverse than is supposed. Through philosophical reflection and sustained attention to a range of queer narratives, Oscar von Seth makes good on this hypothesis, illuminating the unexpected possibilities that lie waiting. A substantial contribution to the scholarship on queer temporalities. -- Tim Dean, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
This is a book after my own heart – in Queer Waiting, Oscar von Seth places waiting at the centre of queer temporalities, teasing out the nuances of elongated time as it is taken up in cultural phenomenon, and as it wends its way through queer lives. Philosophically informed, and using a rich archive of cultural examples, it never loses sight of the many instances of being forced to wait, yet it draws out the always latent options of refusal, and of reconfiguring waiting itself as an endlessly viable mode of living. -- Lisa Baraitser, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
ISBN: 9781350582941
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
238 pages