Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange - Paperback

by Helen Palmer (Author)

Helen Palmer examines the Russian formalist concept of defamiliarisation from a contemporary critical perspective, bringing together new materialist feminisms, experimental linguistic formalism and queer theory.

She explores how we might radically restructure this gesture of 'making-strange' to create a dialogue with the affirmations of 'deviant', 'errant', 'alternative' and 'multiple' modes of being which have become synonymous with queer theory. Queer theory harnesses the creative potential of indeterminacy in order to celebrate and affirm infinite dimensions of sexuality and gender, creating space for all human beings to express themselves without the classification or judgement of prescriptive terminologies. Linguistic at its source, but going beyond this limit just like defamiliarisation, the liberating force of queer theory is derived from the removal of terminological boundaries.

Palmer asks what a 21st-century queer defamiliarisation might look like and examines the extent to which these affirmative or emancipatory discourses escape the paradoxes of normativity or historicisation.

Back Jacket

A new theory of defamiliarisation as a process of queering, and of queering as a process of defamiliarisation Helen Palmer examines the Russian formalist concept of defamiliarisation, or making-strange, from a contemporary critical perspective, bringing together new materialist feminisms, experimental linguistic formalism and queer theory. She explores how we might radically restructure this gesture of making-strange to create a dialogue with the affirmations of deviant, errant, alternative and multiple modes of being which have become synonymous with queer theory. Queer theory affirms multiple dimensions of sexuality and gender, while defamiliarisation celebrates shifts in perception. Palmer explores these processes from a number of literary and philosophical angles, concluding with a creative epilogue written in the voices of women throughout history. Helen Palmer is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing, Kingston University, London.

Author Biography

Helen Palmer is Senior Scientist at the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics at Technical University Vienna. She is the author of Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense (Bloomsbury, 2014). She has published work on feminist new materialisms, the relationship between literature and philosophy and queer clowning.