Hannah McCann | The Australian National University (original) (raw)

Papers by Hannah McCann

While there has been much focus on the disempowering and incapacitating effects of ‘normative’ fe... more 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 distances itself from non-femme, or ‘normative’, femininity, it misses an opportunity for advocating for a different approach to gender presentation within a broader collective. The central argument of this article is that from an affective theory of queer femme as assemblage, we can better understand both queer femme identity and the attachments to femininity that people maintain more generally, without relying on a binary logic that proclaims femininity as only disempowering or empowering, queer or not queer enough.

Queer Sexualities – Diversifying Queer, Queering Diversity. Vikki Fraser (Ed.), 2013

This paper focuses on the notion that particular ways of understanding femininity have been histo... more This paper focuses on the notion that particular ways of understanding femininity have been historically "othered" within critical gender theory. 1 From Pamela Robertson's discussions of female "camp" that positions women embracing feminine excess against a backdrop of male homosexuality, 2 to Angela McRobbie's critique of pleasure-seeking women whom she dubs "phallic girls", 3 this paper examines why masculinity readings are often privileged as a marker of resistance to hegemonic notions of femininity and why some aspects of the category of femininity are often not in and of themselves considered as centralising concepts for analyses of gender. Along these lines, this paper focuses on two central premises: first, within contemporary feminist writing, femininity is often viewed as symbolically representative of oppression and/or symptomatic of a problematic post-feminist raunch culture; second, queer theory perspectives allow for different viewpoints on the same phenomena as that considered within feminist writing (such as interrogating raunch culture) but tend to offer readings that predominately focus on appropriations of masculinity as markers of female resistance, rather than considering the subversive potential of femininity per se.

Girls has been understood by many as ‘a generational document’ (Woods, 2015, p. 38) that fails to... more Girls has been understood by many as ‘a generational document’ (Woods, 2015, p. 38) that fails to adequately represent the diversity of young women in today’s multicultural world. Why Girls is seen as the ‘voice of a generation’ despite the creator Lena Dunham’s suggestion that she is merely ‘a’ voice is key to understanding the weight placed on representational politics in contemporary society. This chapter examines why we make demands about diverse representation, and what we hope these will achieve. It also considers the context within which representations of diversity are inserted, and the cruel promises for equality these engender. This chapter suggests a rethinking of representational demands, to consider the underlying material inequalities that give rise to concern for diversity in the first instance.

This article critically engages with the debate around whether gay and lesbian activism in the 19... more This article critically engages with the debate around whether gay and lesbian activism in the 1970s was marked by solidarity or inevitable fragmentation. This article investigates the dominant fragmentation thesis, which presupposes that the union between men and women was fragile at best and thus necessarily came to an end. Drawing on three examples from the archives of Australian gay and lesbian history, this article offers an alternative glimpse of moments of solidarity from the time. What these moments reveal is that the question of fragmentation was a contested arena, where many sought unity over separation in order to fight common struggles around homophobia and sexism.

This article considers the issue of the subject in feminism and queer theory and the complication... more This article considers the issue of the subject in feminism and queer theory and the complications of these theoretical perspectives in application to sociological research. While feminism has historically focused on the subject category of “woman,” queer theory has concentrated on radically unfixing normative subject positions. This paper acknowledges these histories while also recognizing the diversification of approaches that has occurred in feminist and queer thought more recently, particularly in interaction with one another. Considering the benefits of challenging the discrete subject, as well as the value of founded subject positions, this paper suggests ethnography as a fruitful method for social research wishing to adopt a contemporary queer perspective.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's television show Snog, Marry, Avoid (SMA) states its missio... more The British Broadcasting Corporation's television show Snog, Marry, Avoid (SMA) states its mission is, ‘to reveal a nation of stunning natural beauties who are currently hiding behind layers and layers of slap’ [BBC. 2008. Snog, Marry, Avoid Season One. United Kingdom: Remarkable Television]. This article considers SMA as a useful text for deconstructing contemporary norms of femininity. I utilise queer and affect theory perspectives from Berlant [2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], Halberstam [1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press] and Puar [2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] to reveal the queer dimensions of the excessive femininity represented in the show. Berlant's work illuminates attachments to particular stylings, to understand where ‘cruel optimism’ operates. Further, I apply the idea of ‘queening’ as an inverse reference to Halberstam's ‘kinging' [Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 259]. Lastly, Puar's ideas are used to analyse the affective dimensions of excessive feminine embodiment in order to consider how this involves a queering of the body. This article departs from recent feminist scholarship on the rise of raunch culture and post-feminism. Rather than focusing on the participants of SMA as symptoms of a problematic hypersexual culture, I argue for seeing these contemporary young women's excessive femininity as queer, that is, as troubling the boundaries of gender ‘normality’.

This paper considers the connection between death and feminism, specifically, as constituted in r... more This paper considers the connection between death and feminism, specifically, as constituted in response to claims of the death of feminism. As Sherryl Vint notes, “The death of feminism has been predicted for almost as long as there has been a movement identified as feminist” (2007, 165). Examining the perpetual question “Is feminism dead?” as seen in popular media, this paper charts the present-day agreement between feminists and media alike that a younger generation of “post-feminist” women are feminism’s killer. This paper considers that in naming post-feminism as feminism’s opposite, feminism finds a way to shout in the face of death and reassert a provisional existence. The paper proceeds in five acts, drawing heavily on the work of Hélène Cixous (1976, 1981, 1991) and the relationship between death, birth, writing and the feminine, as well as Gilles Deleuze (1983) on Nietzschean affirmation. This paper asks how we might approach what stands outside of the binary of feminism/post-feminism and is therefore paradigmatically unthinkable, to consider: how are we responding to the threat of death? Extending from Cixous’ Medusa who laughs in the face of death, to Nietzschean joy as a mode of engagement, this paper suggests that feminism ought to move away from the binary feminism/post-feminism and assert itself against a different paradigm.

Australian Humanities Review, 2013

As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to... more As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. … A book exists only through the outside and on the outside. A book itself is a little machine. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus VER THE PAST DECADE, THE NOTION OF ASSEMBLAGE HAS GAINED CURRENCY AS A keyword in the humanities and social sciences. Assemblage has traditionally been used in archaeology, art, and the natural sciences as a term of classification (see Anderson et al.; Marcus and Saka). More recently, however, assemblage has gained traction as a translation and appropriation of the concept designated by the French word agencement in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially A Thousand Plateaus. In this form, assemblage has been increasingly used to designate, not an arrangement or a state of affairs, but an ongoing process of arranging, organising or congealing how heterogeneous bodies, things or concepts come 'in connection with' one another (see Livesey; Phillips). As John Phillips notes, 'assemblage' is a less-than-ideal translation: Agencement is a common French word with the senses of either 'arrangement', 'fitting' or 'fixing' and is used in French in as many contexts as those words are used in English: one would speak of the arrangement of parts of a body or machine; one might talk of fixing (fitting or affixing) two or more parts together; and one might use the term for both the act of fixing and the arrangement itself, as in the fixtures and fittings of a building or shop, or the parts of a machine. (108) O

Conference Presentations by Hannah McCann

Teaching Documents by Hannah McCann

Talks by Hannah McCann

Books by Hannah McCann

Queering Femininity focuses on femininity as a style of gender presentation and asks how (and whe... more Queering Femininity focuses on femininity as a style of gender presentation and asks how (and whether) it can be refigured as a creative and queer style of the body. Drawing on a range of feminist texts and interviews with self-identifying queer femmes from the LGBTQ community, Hannah McCann argues that the tendency to evaluate femininity as only either oppressive or empowering limits our understanding of its possibilities. She considers the dynamic aspects of feminine embodiment that cannot simply be understood in terms of gender normativity and negotiates a path between understanding both the attachments people hold to particular gender identities and styles, and recognising the punitive realities of dominant gender norms and expectations. Topics covered range from second wave feminist critiques of beauty culture, to the importance of hair in queer femme presentation.

While there has been much focus on the disempowering and incapacitating effects of ‘normative’ fe... more 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 distances itself from non-femme, or ‘normative’, femininity, it misses an opportunity for advocating for a different approach to gender presentation within a broader collective. The central argument of this article is that from an affective theory of queer femme as assemblage, we can better understand both queer femme identity and the attachments to femininity that people maintain more generally, without relying on a binary logic that proclaims femininity as only disempowering or empowering, queer or not queer enough.

Queer Sexualities – Diversifying Queer, Queering Diversity. Vikki Fraser (Ed.), 2013

This paper focuses on the notion that particular ways of understanding femininity have been histo... more This paper focuses on the notion that particular ways of understanding femininity have been historically "othered" within critical gender theory. 1 From Pamela Robertson's discussions of female "camp" that positions women embracing feminine excess against a backdrop of male homosexuality, 2 to Angela McRobbie's critique of pleasure-seeking women whom she dubs "phallic girls", 3 this paper examines why masculinity readings are often privileged as a marker of resistance to hegemonic notions of femininity and why some aspects of the category of femininity are often not in and of themselves considered as centralising concepts for analyses of gender. Along these lines, this paper focuses on two central premises: first, within contemporary feminist writing, femininity is often viewed as symbolically representative of oppression and/or symptomatic of a problematic post-feminist raunch culture; second, queer theory perspectives allow for different viewpoints on the same phenomena as that considered within feminist writing (such as interrogating raunch culture) but tend to offer readings that predominately focus on appropriations of masculinity as markers of female resistance, rather than considering the subversive potential of femininity per se.

Girls has been understood by many as ‘a generational document’ (Woods, 2015, p. 38) that fails to... more Girls has been understood by many as ‘a generational document’ (Woods, 2015, p. 38) that fails to adequately represent the diversity of young women in today’s multicultural world. Why Girls is seen as the ‘voice of a generation’ despite the creator Lena Dunham’s suggestion that she is merely ‘a’ voice is key to understanding the weight placed on representational politics in contemporary society. This chapter examines why we make demands about diverse representation, and what we hope these will achieve. It also considers the context within which representations of diversity are inserted, and the cruel promises for equality these engender. This chapter suggests a rethinking of representational demands, to consider the underlying material inequalities that give rise to concern for diversity in the first instance.

This article critically engages with the debate around whether gay and lesbian activism in the 19... more This article critically engages with the debate around whether gay and lesbian activism in the 1970s was marked by solidarity or inevitable fragmentation. This article investigates the dominant fragmentation thesis, which presupposes that the union between men and women was fragile at best and thus necessarily came to an end. Drawing on three examples from the archives of Australian gay and lesbian history, this article offers an alternative glimpse of moments of solidarity from the time. What these moments reveal is that the question of fragmentation was a contested arena, where many sought unity over separation in order to fight common struggles around homophobia and sexism.

This article considers the issue of the subject in feminism and queer theory and the complication... more This article considers the issue of the subject in feminism and queer theory and the complications of these theoretical perspectives in application to sociological research. While feminism has historically focused on the subject category of “woman,” queer theory has concentrated on radically unfixing normative subject positions. This paper acknowledges these histories while also recognizing the diversification of approaches that has occurred in feminist and queer thought more recently, particularly in interaction with one another. Considering the benefits of challenging the discrete subject, as well as the value of founded subject positions, this paper suggests ethnography as a fruitful method for social research wishing to adopt a contemporary queer perspective.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's television show Snog, Marry, Avoid (SMA) states its missio... more The British Broadcasting Corporation's television show Snog, Marry, Avoid (SMA) states its mission is, ‘to reveal a nation of stunning natural beauties who are currently hiding behind layers and layers of slap’ [BBC. 2008. Snog, Marry, Avoid Season One. United Kingdom: Remarkable Television]. This article considers SMA as a useful text for deconstructing contemporary norms of femininity. I utilise queer and affect theory perspectives from Berlant [2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], Halberstam [1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012; Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press] and Puar [2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] to reveal the queer dimensions of the excessive femininity represented in the show. Berlant's work illuminates attachments to particular stylings, to understand where ‘cruel optimism’ operates. Further, I apply the idea of ‘queening’ as an inverse reference to Halberstam's ‘kinging' [Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 259]. Lastly, Puar's ideas are used to analyse the affective dimensions of excessive feminine embodiment in order to consider how this involves a queering of the body. This article departs from recent feminist scholarship on the rise of raunch culture and post-feminism. Rather than focusing on the participants of SMA as symptoms of a problematic hypersexual culture, I argue for seeing these contemporary young women's excessive femininity as queer, that is, as troubling the boundaries of gender ‘normality’.

This paper considers the connection between death and feminism, specifically, as constituted in r... more This paper considers the connection between death and feminism, specifically, as constituted in response to claims of the death of feminism. As Sherryl Vint notes, “The death of feminism has been predicted for almost as long as there has been a movement identified as feminist” (2007, 165). Examining the perpetual question “Is feminism dead?” as seen in popular media, this paper charts the present-day agreement between feminists and media alike that a younger generation of “post-feminist” women are feminism’s killer. This paper considers that in naming post-feminism as feminism’s opposite, feminism finds a way to shout in the face of death and reassert a provisional existence. The paper proceeds in five acts, drawing heavily on the work of Hélène Cixous (1976, 1981, 1991) and the relationship between death, birth, writing and the feminine, as well as Gilles Deleuze (1983) on Nietzschean affirmation. This paper asks how we might approach what stands outside of the binary of feminism/post-feminism and is therefore paradigmatically unthinkable, to consider: how are we responding to the threat of death? Extending from Cixous’ Medusa who laughs in the face of death, to Nietzschean joy as a mode of engagement, this paper suggests that feminism ought to move away from the binary feminism/post-feminism and assert itself against a different paradigm.

Australian Humanities Review, 2013

As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to... more As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. … A book exists only through the outside and on the outside. A book itself is a little machine. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus VER THE PAST DECADE, THE NOTION OF ASSEMBLAGE HAS GAINED CURRENCY AS A keyword in the humanities and social sciences. Assemblage has traditionally been used in archaeology, art, and the natural sciences as a term of classification (see Anderson et al.; Marcus and Saka). More recently, however, assemblage has gained traction as a translation and appropriation of the concept designated by the French word agencement in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially A Thousand Plateaus. In this form, assemblage has been increasingly used to designate, not an arrangement or a state of affairs, but an ongoing process of arranging, organising or congealing how heterogeneous bodies, things or concepts come 'in connection with' one another (see Livesey; Phillips). As John Phillips notes, 'assemblage' is a less-than-ideal translation: Agencement is a common French word with the senses of either 'arrangement', 'fitting' or 'fixing' and is used in French in as many contexts as those words are used in English: one would speak of the arrangement of parts of a body or machine; one might talk of fixing (fitting or affixing) two or more parts together; and one might use the term for both the act of fixing and the arrangement itself, as in the fixtures and fittings of a building or shop, or the parts of a machine. (108) O

Queering Femininity focuses on femininity as a style of gender presentation and asks how (and whe... more Queering Femininity focuses on femininity as a style of gender presentation and asks how (and whether) it can be refigured as a creative and queer style of the body. Drawing on a range of feminist texts and interviews with self-identifying queer femmes from the LGBTQ community, Hannah McCann argues that the tendency to evaluate femininity as only either oppressive or empowering limits our understanding of its possibilities. She considers the dynamic aspects of feminine embodiment that cannot simply be understood in terms of gender normativity and negotiates a path between understanding both the attachments people hold to particular gender identities and styles, and recognising the punitive realities of dominant gender norms and expectations. Topics covered range from second wave feminist critiques of beauty culture, to the importance of hair in queer femme presentation.