On Clexa Fans and “Queer Time”
An important part of my research is the idea of "queer time", so I've made a short video about this and how it relates to the experiences of Clexa fans—how do they feel a sense of dislocation, or in what ways do they feel out-of-sync or delayed? Please watch below:
You can find the transcript for the video here.
According to theorists, our social lives are organised around "straight time": the heteronormative life paths that prioritize marriage and reproduction, and dictate what life milestones are worthy of celebrating. So to live in "queer time" is to deviate from those life paths. As José Esteban Muñoz asserts, queer people, particularly those who choose not to be biologically reproductive, are deemed "developmentally stalled" and do not have "the complete life promised by heterosexual temporality" (2009, p. 98). As Sara Ahmed writes, the queer life is "constructed as an unhappy life... as it lacks certain things: a husband, children" (2011, p.165). So against the linearity of straight time, queer people find themselves out-of-sync.
Many of my respondents have commented on feeling a sense of delay in achieving straight time milestones, or how they actively reject those timelines and expectations, with their lives taking on a different rhythm or tempo compared to their straight counterparts.
These are just some of the themes I want to explore within the context of femslash fandom and in relation to Clexa fans' experiences. I'll also be posting more of my participants responses as the project progresses, so stay tuned!
