Queering/Quaring/Kauering/Crippin'/Transing “Other Bodies” in Intercultural Communication

Abstract

Focusing on the body as a complex site of meaning and knowledge, this essay seeks to bring together queer and transgender studies and the study of intercultural communication. To do so, I engage the various theoretical and political impulses within queer and transgender studies to highlight their potentially productive tensions. More specifically, I use the notion of queering/quaring/kauering/crippin'/transing to extend Chávez's concept of embodied translation to research practices. Using a case study of male–male sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa, I discuss ways to understand “other bodies” in critical intercultural communication.

Keywords:

• Body
• Culture and Research Practices
• Embodied Translation
• Gay Identity
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dr. Karma Chávez and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and to Yogi, my affectionate Pomeranian companion, for his gentle love and grounding presence.

Notes

1. I am deliberately keeping these terms in “their awkward togetherness” to highlight the potentially productive tension of their ongoing engagement with each other.

2. The study, which was published as a lead article in a major U.S. anthropological journal, was selected for analysis for two reasons. First, it focuses on the body as a site of the interplay between sexuality, gender, and culture with other vectors of difference. Second, it examines the relationship between the micro- and the macro (e.g., interpersonal interactions and larger historical and political forces). Although it was not necessarily exemplary, it serves to illustrate the complexities and problems of translating “other bodies” in intercultural research.

3. It is worth noting that Donham never met Linda in person; therefore, the nonverbal and verbal scapes of translation are not presented in the study. Aware of some of the limitations of his research, which was primarily based on interviews with people who knew Linda and published accounts and interviews with Linda, Donham (1998) calls for “a revitalized attention to ethnography” (p. 16).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gust A. Yep

Gust A. Yep is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University