Introduction to queer circuits: Critical performance and digital praxis

Abstract

This introduction situates the articles making up this special issue within four thematic clouds, positing queer theorization as broadly relevant for critically engaging with computational technologies and culture. These sub-themes offer suggestions for future queer inquiry and praxis and reflect key terms in performance studies and queer theory that have undergone transformation with the ubiquity of digital technology.

Keywords:

• queer
• digital
• archives
• relationality
• community
• sociality
• identity
• identification
• intersectionality
• representation
• ephemerality
• opacity
• forgetting
• sex
• desire
• embodiment
• materiality

Notes on contributors

Benjamin Haber received his doctorate in sociology from The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2017 and is currently an Instructional Technology Fellow at Macaulay Honors College and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. His writing on the intersections of digital sociality and queer theory has been published in WSQ, boundary 2, Real Life Mag, and a variety of edited collections. He has curated and performed queer media in a number of contexts, primarily with the Judy collective and through The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center.

Daniel J. Sander holds a BA in Studio Art from Reed College and MAs in Arts Politics and Performance Studies from NYU. He is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU and Assistant Curator at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. His antidisciplinary artistic and scholarly work concerns the philosophy of desire, the psychopathology of deviance, libidinal materialism, and queer nihilism, and has been exhibited, published, and performed internationally.