Editorial introduction to Special Issue: Queer Kinship and Relationships

Studies of non-heterosexual kinship in modern societies are well established in the Anglophone countries, dating back to such ‘classical’ texts as Esther Newton’s Mother Camp (Newton, 1972) and especially Kath Weston’s Families We Choose (Weston, 1997[1991]). This original body of work has now become ‘canonical’ and a mandatory point of reference for subsequent researchers – and deservedly so. Canonization, however, does present the inevitable perils of hegemonization and dominant theories can sit somewhat uncomfortably amidst diverse (i.e. non-Western) socio-cultural and historical contexts. Scholars from geographically diverse localities typically invoke ‘the canon’ as pre-existing points of reference and inspiration for their investigations and analysis. Consequently, whilst studying diverse localities, we frequently adapt language and concepts that derive from elsewhere. There has never been any attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all frame onto queer lives and lifestyles; such a move would indeed be most ill-fitting. Queer experience remains as dynamic now as it has ever been. At the same time, it is hard to escape the intellectual scaffolding that accompanies prevailing theoretical vocabulary. This thorny issue of cultural hegemony is of course not unique to queer kinship studies. The power and impact of discourse has been a key feature in sexuality research more widely, starting with Michel Foucault (1990[1976]) and extending to recent engagements with homonormativity (Duggan, 2002) and homonationalism (Puar, 2007), to name just two. Anthropological studies have long reminded us to unpick the discursive tools that create and sustain kin ties (Strathern, 1992), with recent interventions in critical kinship studies demonstrating the analytical advantages of a posthumanist lens in unravelling the intersections of power and kinship in shaping the natural order of things (Riggs and Peel, 2016). This special issue of Sexualities on the topic of ‘Queer Kinship and Relationships’ starts from this critical de-centred vantage point.

The source of inspiration for this collection was a Queer Kinship and Relationship International Conference, organized in 2015 in Poland as a part of the Families of Choice in Poland research project (see Mizielinska and Stasińska, this issue). During this conference, scholars from a range of disciplines and countries came together to present, hear and discuss different understandings of queer kinship and the dynamics of non-normative relational configurations in diverse geo-temporal contexts. This special issue includes some of the key papers from this conference. Together, they explore how a focus on different geo-political locations can refine understandings of queer kinship. This begins to unpick the dichotomies of Western/non-Western, Anglo-American/non Anglo-American knowledges and positions them in relation to each other. Contributors come from diverse locations and also write about different social and cultural contexts that are sometimes distant and sometimes in personal proximity – bringing the matter of queer kinship close to home. Authors use local theorizing alongside Anglo-American frameworks of understanding in ways that question their usefulness and applicability, and sometimes to show how certain key concepts might need to be re-developed if they are to address the specificity of non-Western experience. The examples presented here do not therefore simply serve as illustrations of Otherness or difference, located in ‘far away’ countries; instead they complicate our understanding of taken-for-granted phenomena and offer new points of departure that queer the kinship lens.

An uneasy dialogue is often palpable within and across the articles. On the one hand, Western queer theory on kinship is positioned as hegemonic and over-dominating ‘the rest’; on the other, it represents a discursive space that is constantly being challenged and productively transformed. We might call this phenomenon ‘queer transculturation’, drawing on and extending the thinking of Allaine Cerwonka on ‘feminist transculturation’. Cerwonka (2008: 829) understands feminism as a ‘set of ideas and practices that has developed through contact and negotiation. It directs our attention to complex circuits of influence without losing our sight of the way contact is always structured by uneven power relations’. Adopting a framework of ‘queer transculturation’ therefore enables us to situate research on queer kinship. It has the capacity to foreground the ways in which asymmetrical power relations are materialized and also, at the same time, how power is being renegotiated, reworked and creolized through the very process of its translation to the other geo-political contexts. Queering kinship and relationships in this way highlights the need for ongoing dialogue between contexts, so that the privileged position of dominant theoretical and empirical perspectives can be challenged. This special issue thus offers both individual contributions and also the sum of parts. The geopolitically grounded understanding of queer kinship and families that it represents is, we contend, both illuminating and long overdue.

Whilst contributions featured here combine empirical research and critical theory, our focus is nevertheless on empiricism. This is intentional. It stems from our belief that the lived experiences of non-heterosexual people unstitch the universality of Anglo-American paradigms – starting from the point of queer heterogeneity. But articles in this issue are not simply another collection of localized case studies from different countries, collected together to shed light on the particular character of queer relational arrangements. Through in-depth analysis of empirical data, contributions demonstrate how certain concepts and ideas travel and function differently in distinctive geopolitical contexts. This does not aim to define what is queer (kinship) and by default, what is not; nor does it revisit queer investment in anti-normativity and/or the heteronormative ties that bind (Wiegman and Wilson, 2015) – this path is well trodden. Instead, in diverse ways, authors engage with and seek to answer crucial questions germane to the field of queer kinship studies, grounding contemporary research in spatial and temporal contexts.

The articles in this issue demonstrate the ways in which geo-temporal conditions shape queer lives and loves. Understandings of chronological time combine with the quotidian of intimate experience to unsettle dominant modes of knowledge production. Western teleological development and hegemonic uses of time are undone in the ‘knotted temporality’ of non-Western LGBTQ lives (Kulpa et al., 2012; Mizielińska and Kulpa, 2011). In countries where LGBTQ rights are not reflected in law, the logic of progress is suspended. Experiences, needs and strategies of survival of queer families cannot be fully understood and explained through the concepts of homonormativity (Duggan, 2002) or homonationalism (Puar, 2007). Likewise, the ‘no future’ perspective (Edelman, 2004) has scant meaning when queer people are discursively framed as degenerate, barren and unhappy subjects. Also, in these contexts, boundaries between ‘families of choice’ and ‘families of origin’ may not be necessarily clear-cut and for many may be experienced as messy, coincident or even interchangeable. Examples from ‘elsewhere’ can therefore shed new light on the complexity of queer relational lives everywhere by calling attention to the ways experiences are entangled within legal and social contexts, and the gaps in social structures where queer living may be materialized. This requires us to think beyond Western-framed dichotomies of difference. This decentring of queer kinship unsettles the certainty of theoretically-informed concepts which render some queer relational configurations and daily ways of doing queer families as ‘second order queer’ – not queer enough from the queer perspective and too queer for conservatives. This returns us to a question posed by Judith Butler (2006 [2004]) namely, whose lives matter (in queer theory) and why?

The empirical focus of this special issue also raises important questions about how we do research on queer kinship and our different approaches to methodology and researched subjects. Here queer or ‘scavenger methodology’ (Halberstam, 1998: 149) meets the multi-method approach (Gabb, 2008). In our attempts to dig deeper and present complex multi-layered pictures that reflect the materiality of different relational configurations, questions about the nature and pragmatics of ‘queer methods’ inevitably arise (Gabb, 2012). Contributors that feature in this special issue come from different academic disciplines and situate themselves differently within the researched LGBTQ community. Being part of a ‘community’ can sometimes raise situated ethical dilemmas, with a sense of burden and responsibility to ‘get it right’. The desire to sufficiently represent the complexity of the field can rest uncomfortably with our endeavours to advance a political (activist) agenda and/or to produce academically-recognized queer research. Proximity and duty of care are not however the only features of queer methodology. Key components that distinguish queer research from the ‘straight’ social sciences are the development of embodied, situated and ‘insider knowledge’; the questions that we ask are knowing and this can generate telling research. Intersectionality, sensitivity to exclusions and privileges, open-mindedness, and an acceptance of the messiness of findings are often crucial, alongside researcher reflexivity. Although this special issue does not focus on queer methodology per se, the richness of contributions that are included also has the capacity to inform epistemological discussions on how to research queer kinship, sexuality and intimate relationships more widely.

The special issue starts with two articles that demonstrate the benefits of multi-method research. The rich data generated are used here to examine the intersections of time, place and identity. In the first article ‘Beyond the Western gaze: Families of choice in Poland’, Joanna Mizielińska and Agata Stasińska draw on the results of a large-scale mixed-methods study on the ways in which geo-temporal conditions in contemporary Poland shape relational and familial lives of LGBTQ people. This challenges some of the foundational concepts developed in Anglo-American research. The authors underline the need to engage with and rewrite dominant Western knowledge to advance a local non-Western understanding of queer kinship. In the following article, ‘Unsettling lesbian motherhood: Critical reflections over a generation (1990–2015)’, Jacqui Gabb uses a combination of data from empirical investigations and autobiographical experience to draw attention to some of the different factors that have shaped queer motherhood over the past 25 years. She reminds us of the role and impact of emotions in accounts of queer parenthood. Taking the long view, she asks that we pause for reflection, to consider how policy developments, queer community experience and personal biographies intersect to inform the pleasures and pitfalls of lesbian parenthood. Through this longitudinal perspective, Gabb teases apart the conflation of temporal progression, progressive rights and narratives of progress. The next two articles similarly examine queer reproduction and fertility, and interrogate what it means to reproduce queerly.

In her article ‘Becoming fertile in the land of organic milk: Lesbian and queer reproductions of femininity and motherhood in Sweden’, Ulrika Dahl demonstrates how diverse research sources, including popular culture, ethnographic data, and mainstream commercials, can open up dynamic understandings of a topic and shed light on different, sometimes contradictory dimensions of a phenomenon. Dahl discusses the ways in which same-sex motherhood is represented as the epitome of Swedish gender and sexual exceptionalism on the one hand, whilst on the other it forecloses queer possibilities that bring together fertility, femininity and parenthood. Other tensions that emerge are counter-meanings that overwrite representations of lesbian motherhood, such as homonationalism, for example. Her analysis argues for the need to move beyond the notion of heteronormativity if we are to fully understand how gender, sexuality, race and class intersect and are reproduced in queer kinship stories. The following contribution by Rachel Epstein ‘Space invaders: Queer and trans bodies in fertility clinics’ is based on narratives from a Canadian research project, but it is not national context that situates experience. Epstein demonstrates the ways in which queer embodiment defines and contests the boundaries of kinship. She explores misreadings and misrecognition of LGBTQ bodies, identities and family configurations to examine how gender and kinship labour break down in queer and trans encounters with fertility treatment.

In the final set of articles, authors engage with the question of what is queer about queer kinship, making important interventions to debate on the discursive meanings of queer practices of relating. This situates centre stage the significance of geo-political context by exploring, for example, how contentious practices like ‘marriage fraud’ or being ‘in the closet’ may be seen as queer when located in antagonistic environments. In ‘What’s so “queer” about coming out? Silent queers and theorizing kinship agonistically in Mumbai’, Brian Horton examines the creative potentials that exist in the practices of not coming out. By examining the strategic silences of queer persons in India he locates ‘coming out’ as a productive starting point for theorizing connections between kinship and queerness. He deploys the concept of ‘agonistic intimacy’ to open up understandings of the ways in which Mumbai queers inhabit heterosexual kinship networks through practices of contestation and submission. Horton’s argument here is that sexuality silence does not signal an impoverished transnational queer in need of saving, as often assumed in the West, but instead reflects an effective and pragmatic way of negotiating desires for respectability and queerness. A similar theme is examined by Jingshu Zhu in her article ‘Unqueer kinship? Critical reflection on “marriage fraud” discourse in mainland China’. Zhu explores the experience of Chinese ‘gay’ men who enter into (heterosexual) marriage as a means of sexual concealment. This, Zhu argues, reconstructs the discourse of ‘marriage fraud’ wherein the deceit of these gay men transposes into pity for their powerless wives. Drawing on multi-site ethnographic research, she critically engages with this Western viewpoint to examine the im/possibility for married ‘gay’ men to be honest in their marriages. She proposes a shift towards ‘opacity’, using this as an epistemological, methodological and ethical framework to radically queer how we research and understand queer kinship in hostile contexts. In the final article, ‘Something old, something new: Historicizing same-sex marriage within ongoing struggles over African marriage in South Africa’, Michael Yarbrough explores the highly charged cultural politics that surround ‘traditional’ forms of extended family and understandings of contemporary African marriage. The material conditions that most black South Africans face in their daily lives undermine the elective pursuit of dyadic ‘pure’ affection and intimacy. Yarbrough argues, therefore, that current struggles over same-sex marriage rights have simultaneously yielded claims for relationship equality but the daily battle for sheer survival serves to diminish sexuality as the key marker of relationship difference. In this context, queer and heterosexual couples are alike.

The contributions in this special issue therefore provide a fresh look at the neoliberal agenda that dominates Western understandings of queer kinship. Socio-cultural and policy developments have undoubtedly brought about significant advances in equality rights with resultant kinship opportunities taking hold in many parts of the world. This rise in equality rights and liberalization of attitudes is not, however, unproblematic as the articles here demonstrate. Moreover, equality rights can serve to further distinguish between lives that are possible, imaginable, or even desirable. As such, the extension of sexuality rights may also inadvertently obscure the lack of opportunities available to the global majority. Whilst the contributions here draw attention to the significance of geopolitical contexts in terms of sexuality laws and sexual identities, there are other voices that remain outside this queer lens, where being queer remains outlawed and punishable in the most extreme ways. This collection of articles therefore remains inevitably partial and also acknowledges the precarity of queer kinship rights. Whilst we should never be grateful for relationship recognition – this is a human right – we should nevertheless not take this for granted.