Abstract:
Contemporary discourses about sexuality in the West are inextricably tied into conceptual understandings of gender, which are shaped by the current structural and socio-historical context. The colonial/modern gender system (Lugones, 2007) is a term employed in this research to describe the structure of gender contemporarily. Vital to this colonial/modern gender system (Lugones, 2007) is compulsory heterosexuality (and thus, heteronormativity), racial hierarchy, and a gender binary. It is from this perspective this thesis begins, employing a structural and socio-historical analysis to interpret contemporary discourses surrounding non-heterosexual, transgender and intersex subjects in mainstream LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) fictional, entertainment media. To investigate what the contemporary discourses are, both a literature review of key theoretical and historical developments in the areas of gender/sexuality and a critical discourse analysis were undergone. The critical discourse analysis was theoretically influenced by Foucault (1990) and Althusser (2008), as discourse is understood as both productive and a form of discipline, and the media is understood as a key modern Ideological State Apparatus within the context of this research. This thesis uses the results of the critical discourse analysis to explain and explore the “homonormative” (Duggan, 2002) and “homonationalist” (Puar, 2007) tendencies of current LGBT politics, and seeks to address these tendencies with a counter-hegemonic queer politics that focuses on social and material marginality (hooks, 1990; Cohen, 1997) as a starting point for activism and structural analysis.