Critical Writing Index

Queer Kinship and Ambivalence

by Julianne Pidduck

GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2009, v. 15, no. 3

Duke University Press, 2009

In Julianne Pidduck’s 2009 essay the author examines how a selection of autoethnographic video works challenge and undertake notions of familial relations, belonging, death, loss, AIDS and the queering of kinship. The works discussed are: Jean Carlomusto (To Catch a Glimpse [1997] and Shatzi Is Dying [1999]) and Richard Fung (Sea in the Blood [2000]) as well as Fung’s earlier work, My Mother’s Place (1990). The video works deal with migrant family histories, the keeping and revealing of secrets, with bbinaries of Inclusion/exclusion, inside outside, disclosures, subjected and objectified. The films examine the relationships between blood family, chosen family, lovers and pet. The text offers discussions and definitions of kinship in the context of queer and performance theory, and the genre of autoethnography.

ITEM 2009.172 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

To Catch a Glimpse [1997]Jean Carlomusto

Shatzi Is Dying [1999]Jean Carlomusto

Sea in the Blood [2000]Richard Fung

My Mother’s Place (1990)Richard Fung

The Devil Never Sleeps (1996)Lourdes Portillo

Auguste Lumière

Tongues Untied (1990)Marlon Riggs

Silverlake Life: The View from Here (1993)Tom Joslin, Peter Friedman

Jane Rossett

Holly Hughes