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Project title

Staging Queer Ecological Strategies towards Climate Justice: Proposing Enviro-Futures through Queer Resilience Tactics and Ethics of Care.

Primary Funding Agency

Irish Research Council

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)

Lead Applicant

n/a

Project Abstract

Climate action policies in Ireland emphasise saving the environment for future generations; justifying heterosexuality through reproduction and economic longevity. The queer community has been side-lined in these conversations, yet marginalised communities will experience the most negative impacts of climate change. This underrepresentation is underpinned by divisions between the human and non-human, appraising nature through essentialist lenses of gender and sexuality. This positions heterosexual, cis-gendered human experiences and performances as �natural� and, consequentially, queerness as �unnatural�, thus displacing queer bodies from heterosexual, cis-gendered models of futurity. However, non-heteronormative performances of identity continue, emphasising the resilience of queer people. When disowned by families, we make our own; when discriminated, make our voices heard � a community developed from an ethics of care. Turning to queer ecology challenges us to think of the human as inextricably linked to the non-human, challenging binaries of gender and sexuality. In repositioning the human amidst what Timothy Morton calls the ecological �mesh�, organisms which are interconnected but not necessarily interdependent, an abundance of queer behaviours and bodies in the wider ecology are revealed. I argue that queer ecology presents an ideological platform to examine the interconnection between the queer body and a wider ecology. Using critical reading, theatre case studies, and practice as research, I explore how queer bodies relate to a deeper ecology, and how queer oppressions under hetero-futurism link to environmental destruction. By turning to queer resilience and ethics of care, we rethink our relationship to nature, inspiring action. This will be achieved through facilitating and developing an applied theatre intervention with the queer community using interview, reminiscence, and object-environment exploration. Through this, I consider how essentialist gender and sexuality binaries mutually affect queer and ecological bodies and rehearse ways in which queer resilience and ethics of care reimagines futures enmeshed in a wider ecology.

Grant Approved

�54,000

Research Hub

Climate related research

Research Theme

Achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

Start Date

01/09/2021

Initial Projected Completion Date

31/08/2023