The project Affective Activism: Sites of Queer and Trans World-Making focuses on the ways in which queer and trans activists claim space for themselves and their world-making. Introducing an interdisciplinary approach to what we call affective activism, the project will produce original interview data and cutting-edge analysis on the affective arrangements of queer and trans activists’ actions, strategies, and visions for the future.
By focusing especially on affective arrangements, our project will contribute to scholarly discussions on the role of affect in queer and trans activism, and its place in societal change within Evangelical-Lutheran Church, memory institutions, in the field of art and in community building.
Our results will benefit the communities we are to involve in our studies by offering them conceptual and practical tools for self-reflection. Research conducted at Tampere University in the field of queer and trans studies will also enrich and benefit public discussions concerning queer and trans lives and liveability.
Researchers
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Tuula Juvonen
In her subproject Queer Activism in Museums, Juvonen analyses the ways in which queer and trans activists and scholars challenge the biased and exclusionary presentation of history in Finnish museums. She focuses among other things on queer guides through the museum exhibitions and the reinterpretations of unmarried men’s personal lives provided in the house museums.
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Varpu Alasuutari
In the subproject Affective Landscapes of Christian Queer Activism, Alasuutari analyses the early decades of Christian queer activism in Finland (from the late 1960s to the early 2000s), the affective tensions between the Evangelical Lutheran Church and homosexuality, and the feelings and hopes of people involved in this activism.
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Lotta Kähkönen
In the subproject Affective Aesthetics of Contemporary Trans Activist Art, Kähkönen studies how art by trans artists and communities works both in anticipated and unexpected ways and examines how artistic activism creates affective trajectories for the future.
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Luca Tainio
Tainio’s subproject Affective Vulnerability of Trans Activism addresses the ways in which affects inform and inspire activism on a personal level for individual trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming activists, as well as on a wider collective level of political goals, practices and visions for more liveable futures.