Beyond the visible: Rethinking femininity through the femme assemblage

Abstract

While there has been much focus on the disempowering and incapacitating effects of ‘normative’ femininity, less attention has been paid to the queer possibilities of femininity. Queer femme has been proposed by some as a key site for rethinking femininity. Extending upon these discussions, and drawing on interviews conducted with queer femmes in Australia in 2013, this article proposes focusing on affective dimensions to deepen our understanding of queer femme as more than an identity, but rather, as assemblage Working from the basis of assemblage, this article examines exactly how and why femme bodies queer femininity. However the article also argues that where queer femme discourse distanc..