Queering critical discourse studies or/and Performing 'post-class' ideologies

• Published in: Critical discourse studies Vol. 13; no. 5; pp. 485 - 514
• Main Author: Thurlow, Crispin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 19.10.2016
• Subjects: (im)material ethnographies; Critical discourse studies; elitist discourse; messy methods; non-representational theory; performance studies; performative writing; post-class ideology; queer theory; status/privilege
• ISSN: 1740-5904; 1740-5912
• DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2015.1122646

At the heart of this paper is a desire to queer critical discourse studies (CDS) a little: jabbing at our norms and wisdoms, poking around our spiritless or dispirited spaces, and perhaps nudging us towards some new possibilities. This impulse is prompted by my collaborative research on elitist discourse and so-called luxury tourism which also serve as the thematic focus of my paper here. Throughout this work, I have struggled to manage the affective, spatial, and embodied nature of status/privilege. For all its fervour, CDS has become a rather cerebral exercise: all very textual and rational. None of which lends itself to the slippery, sensuous 'new worlds of luxury' where semiosis and representation are everywhere, but by no means everything. If we are to get our methods and politics right, we must recognize how status anxieties get under our skin as well as into our heads. We must also acknowledge how we are all positioned by (and seduced into) the euphoric post-class ideologies of contemporary wealth formation/inequality. To this end, I propose that CDS pay (more) attention to the provocations of queer theory, non-representational theory, im/material ethnographies, and performance studies. As my paper hopefully demonstrates, our scholarship may also benefit from a style of 'writing' - of representing our work - that is a little messier and perhaps a little more playful.