Queer subjectivities, sexuality, and nationhood in contemporary Catalan cultures

This project will consider how queer subjectivities in contemporary Catalan cultures can problematise the co-constitutive, normativising notions of sexuality and nationhood, viewed from an intersectional standpoint. It is worth questioning both the emancipatory and the more fraught consequences of the

adoption (or, perhaps, co-optation) of queer cultural works into mainstream popular culture, albeit within a culture that is itself minoritised. I will argue that a centring of queer subjectivities disrupts normative epistemologies on sex and sexuality that underlie heteropatriarchal discourses on nationalism. My

study will examine the mainstreaming of queer literary and cultural works in the Catalan national canon, drawing on primary sources ranging from Catalan literature to plays and serialised television. My study would contribute a longer volume of research to the underexplored area of canonical queer subjectivities in contemporary Catalan culture, informing scholarship on the

relationship of queer subjects to Catalan nationalism and culture, as well as on the changed cultural landscape in post-2017 Catalunya. With this understanding, we can better envisage opportunities for resistance to normativity in a way that avoids simply reaffirming the very norms that queer theory seeks to challenge.