Lecture by Katrin Köppert - „S is for Shame which is a very important queer feeling.“*
SHAME
*Ann Cvetkovich & Karin Michalski: The Alphabet of Feeling Bad
In the alphabet of bad feelings, the letter S stands for shame. But that’s not all: shame is an important queer feeling, says Ann Cvetkovich. But why should we read shame together with queerness? What does queer even mean in this context? The shameful moment of coming out? The painful history of shaming people who desire the same sex or do not live a gender-conforming life? Or does queer stand for a political shift in discourse: away from the capitalistically exploitable requirements of being happy and future-oriented towards a politics of vulnerability? But how should such a policy differ from the various techniques used to instrumentalize fear, anger or even shame? What role do the ungovernability of affect, the unconsciousness of gesture and humor play in a queer politics of shame? The lecture would like to develop some approaches along these questions, but certainly not provide any answers.
-
Katrin Köppert
studied Gender Studies and Modern German Literature at the Humboldt University of Berlin (M.A.). From 2010 to 2012 she was a research assistant in the DFG research project Media Amateurs in Homosexual Culture (University of Siegen). From 2012 to 2014, she was a fellow at the DFG Research Training Group Gender as a Category of Knowledge at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and submitted her dissertation on a queer affect theory of pain in photography to the Institute for Art and Visual Culture at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Since December 2017, she has been a research assistant in the Department of History and Theory of Visual Culture with Prof. Dr. Kathrin Peters (Institute for History and Theory of Design).
She is the winner of the Best Publication Award Gender and Media 2013 of the Society for Media Studies. She is currently spokesperson for the Gender/Queer Studies and Media Studies working group of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaften.
Most recently, together with Käthe von Bose, Ulrike Klöppel, Karin Michalski and Pat Treusch, she published the volume I is for Impasse. Affective Queer Connections in Theory_Art_Activism published by b_books Berlin.
Her work focuses on queer media theory, affect studies and political feelings, visual culture, popular and vernacular culture, photography theory and history, post- and decolonial (media) theory, sound and temporality.