[csaa-forum] Theorising Intimate Security— Deakin 'First Fridays’ Gender and Sexuality Studies Seminar Series on 5 October

[Gender and Sexuality Studies]

Deakin University’s next ‘First Fridays’ Gender and Sexuality Studies seminar will be held at 4pm on 5 October at Deakin Downtown<http://www.deakin.edu.au/locations/deakin-corporate-centres/deakin-downtown> (at 727 Collins St, near Southern Cross Station).



All are welcome to join us for afternoon tea before the seminar as part of a monthly GSS/LGBTQ+ Community networking event from 3pm onwards sponsored by Deakin University Equity and Diversity. The seminar commences at 4pm and will be followed by informal drinks.



The seminar series is free and open to people interested in the work, although bookings are required. For further information about the seminar series and to register see our blog<https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/gender-and-sexuality-studies-research-network/about-us/seminar-series/>.


Theorising Intimate Security: Affect and Post-Racial Politics

A seminar by Dr Gilbert Caluya



The rise of Trump and the Alt-Right in the US, UKIP and Brexit in the UK, and the return of Pauline Hanson and the emergence of UPF and Reclaim in Australia are symptoms of the resurgence of a racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic right whose growing success has shocked Western mainstream media over the last few years. This has resulted in leftist hand-wringing in op-eds blaming ‘identity politics’ for single-handedly sidelining the real victims of neoliberalism: white working-class men. Yet if we look at the backlash against so-called ‘identity politics’, it is shaped in a decidedly two-pronged form: the resurgence of a conservative intimacy surrounding notions of traditional family values and the bolstering of national security under the rhetoric of counter-terrorism. Along these battlelines, ‘intimacy’ and ‘security’ are continuously co-mingling and clashing, forming new knots and reconfiguring new conundrums in the contemporary political landscape in what I refer to as ‘intimate security’. In this paper I draw on Lauren Berlant, Ann Laura Stoler, David Theo Goldberg, Raymond Williams and Elspeth Probyn among others to theorise intimate security as a structure of feeling that draws upon a number of different social, cultural and political developments in the intimate logics of security and the securitisation of intimacy. I contend that one of the main drivers for this structure of feeling is the survival of racism under the post-racial state. The logics of racism survives through the protection of the private via liberal freedom and security via notions emergency. Intimate security emerges through these two sites of exception, entraining a certain affective, sensory response to the world and events that ironically justifies the unequal distribution of security and intimacy.



About the Speaker



Dr Gilbert Caluya is a Lecturer in Screen and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne where he teaches both in the Screen and Cultural Studies and Gender Studies programs. His research has focused on race and the cultural politics of intimacy across several cultural sites: sexual subcultures, cultural citizenship, digital cultures and everyday cultures of security. He has been a recipient of the University of Sydney Medal, the Gay and Lesbian Archives Thesis Prize and an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award. This paper draws together his research from his DECRA on intimate citizenship in postcolonial Australia.


For further information and to register click here.<https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/gender-and-sexuality-studies-research-network/about-us/seminar-series/>

Future Seminars

2 November—Eben Kirksey (Deakin), with Tamara Pertamina
7 December—Aileen Moreton-Robinson (QUT)



The Gender and Sexuality Studies Research Network blog<https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/gender-and-sexuality-studies-research-network/> contains registration details, recordings of past seminars where available and links to other events.


You are receiving this email because you attended a Deakin Gender and Sexuality Studies seminar or have contacted us to be placed on this list. If you no longer wish to receive occasional notifications of Deakin GSS events (usually two emails per month), please contact me and I will remove you from the list.


Jack Kirne

Sessional Academic | PhD Candidate

Deakin University

School of Communication and Creative Arts, Faculty of Arts and Education, Burwood, Victoria, 3125

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