Imagining Utopia, Sustaining Community. Autoethnographic Research and Queer Affective Pleasure

Kirjoittajat

• Elizabeth Whitney City University of New York at Borough of Manhattan Community College

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23980/sqs.63646

Abstrakti

For queers, the affects of pleasure and risk are intrinsically interrelated, and the practice of imagining utopia signifies the importance of community as a place where we come together to sustain and nurture ourselves. This essay explores the affective pleasure of queer worldmaking through community building in Finland from my perspective as a non-Finnish queer researcher. Taking pleasure in the freedom to experiment is at the very heart of being together, resisting heteronormativity, and visualizing alternative and utopian ways of worldmaking. While such acts are not necessarily unique to Finland, my experience as a queer feminist researcher and participant in Finnish queer communities was unique to me. Thus, I use autoethnography to discuss my insider/outsider experience of conducting research in Finland, as a queer feminist from the US my work adds to a growing body of autoethnographic scholarship that raises questions about cross-cultural perception and belonging, and offers new possibilities for queer methodologies.