Queer Use: A lecture by Sara Ahmed

The Sexual Cultures Research Group is pleased to announce our third event, a public lecture by Sara Ahmed.

Wednesday 17 May 2017, 6pm.
ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road E1 4NS

All welcome. No bookings taken. FREE. Refreshments served.

Sara Ahmed’s talk is entitled Queer Use:

The lecture draws from my current research into “the uses of use.” In this lecture I reflect on the gap between the intended function of an object and how an object is used as a gap with a queer potential. I do not simply affirm that potential, but offer instead an account of how institutional and sexual cultures are built to enable some uses more than others. Small acts of use are the building block of habit: use can build walls as well as worlds. To bring out the queerness of use requires a world-dismantling effort; to queer use is to make usage into a crisis.

Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer, scholar, and activist. She is the author of Living a Feminist Life, Willful Subjects, On Being Included, The Promise of Happiness, and Queer Phenomenology.