Reading is fun-da-mental: Queering queer ‘safe’ spaces within drag culture

• Main Author: WOODS, Orlando
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Difference-in-itself; representation; reading; safe spaces; RuPaul’s Drag Race; Gender and Sexuality; Reading and Language
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3588; https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2022.2062411
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper explores how the queer subcultural practice of ‘reading’ can pave the way for a more ontologically open way of being. Reading involves the trading of insults between two or more marginal subjects in ways that create comedic value by identifying and parodying representational norms. It reveals a radical politics of inclusion that rejects the idea of distinction that underpins subject formation, and thus repositions the subject in-between representations. Because reading usually occurs within the queer ‘safe’ space of drag culture, it can be seen to have a queering effect on ‘safe’ space. I illustrate these ideas through an analysis of the reading challenge that has become an anticipated part of the programming of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The challenge asks contestants to subvert their already subversive subject positions, to parody representational injustices, and to therefore demonstrate how reading can be ‘fundamental’ to realising the political promise of queer theory.