Journal Articles by Jessica Kean
Sexualities, 2018
In queer theory ‘heteronormativity’ has become a central tool for understanding the social condit... more In queer theory ‘heteronormativity’ has become a central tool for understanding the social conditions of our sexual and intimate lives. The term is most often used to shed light on how those lives are patterned in a way that shapes and privileges binary genders and heterosexual identities, lifestyles and practices. Frequently, however, ‘heteronormativity’ is stretched beyond its capacity when called upon to explain other normative patterns of intimacy. Drawing on Cathy Cohen’s (1997) ground breaking essay ‘Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer?’, this article argues that analysing the political landscape of our intimate lives in terms of heteronormativity alone fails to adequately account for the way some familial and sexual cultures are stigmatised along class and race lines. This article gestures towards examples of those whose intimacies are unquestionably marginalised and yet non-queer, or at least not-necessarily-queer, placing Cohen’s ‘welfare queens’ alongside examples from contemporary Australia public culture to argue for the critical efficacy of the concept ‘mononormativity’ for intersectional analysis.
Hypatia, 2018
Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their int... more Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their intimacy becomes increasingly entangled with the young and tempestuous Xavière. Many readings of the novel explain Françoise's bad feeling and eventual violence as symptoms of sexual jealousy. The book has also been read as a veiled autobiography of Beauvoir and Sartre's similar entanglement with Olga Kosakiewicz, so that, very often, Françoise's jealousy is assumed to stand in for Beauvoir's own. This article is about misreading in two ways. First, I argue that the common view that this is a story in part or in whole about sexual jealousy reflects a radical simplification of the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of the “trio.” Second, I argue that this interpretive simplification is in fact common in mainstream readings of nonmonogamous relationships, where “jealousy” is used to name any and all bad feelings in the vicinity of the nonmonogamous relationship, and where that bad feeling is interpreted as caused by the nonmonogamy itself. To conclude, I suggest that She Came to Stay, and particularly its notorious ending, can be seen as Beauvoir's depiction—and refusal—of the misreadings that constitute the “situation” of nonmonogamy in everyday life.
Feminist Media Studies (online first), 2017
The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the lo... more The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.
[Full article available open access via link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/bqbzFMMzqBpIb2YkNN6w/full ]
Cultural Studies Review, 2017
Full text available (open access) via link above (or copy paste: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/jo... more Full text available (open access) via link above (or copy paste: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/4955 )
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth. Beginning with an auto-ethnographic reflection on the way the ‘significance’ was recognised and misrecognised in one polyamorous ‘thrupple’, I introduce three case studies of people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships in order to bring a cultural studies method of the particular to the study of intimacy. For the individuals in these case studies, the practice and experience of non/monogamy is inextricably linked to the ideas and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, sex work, friendship, HIV status and ability. Sketching a middle path between the romantic’s dream of love as a state of exception or exemption from the social and the theorist’s map of the patterned effects of hetero- and mono-normativities, this article attends to the contingency, flexibility and incoherence which so often underpins the sense we make of relationships, even as that sense is shaped by the practices, ideals and institutions of intimacy, love and friendship.
Sexualities, 2015
Sexism, heteronormativity and mononormativity are constitutively entangled, but to what extent do... more Sexism, heteronormativity and mononormativity are constitutively entangled, but to what extent does undoing one undo the others? Through a reading of HBO’s Big Love, a television series about a polygamous family that is conservative in every way except their plural marriage, this article argues that there are ways in which intimacy might be politically transgressive even as it reinforces gender and sexual norms. Expanding on the definition of ‘mononormativity’ through analogy to Berlant and Warner’s (1998) ‘heteronormativity’ it is argued that in order to do justice to the complexity of intimate politics we must attend to relational norms and their transgression.
Book Reviews by Jessica Kean
Cultural Studies Review, Nov 2015
Celibacy: it might be more fun than it sounds...
Review:
Benjamin Kahan
Celibacies: American Mo... more Celibacy: it might be more fun than it sounds...
Review:
Benjamin Kahan
Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life
Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013
ISBN 9780822355687 RRP $23.95
Australian Feminist Studies, 2017
Follow the link for access to the full article.
Review of
'Undoing Monogamy: the politics of sci... more Follow the link for access to the full article.
Review of
'Undoing Monogamy: the politics of science and the possibilities of biology' (Angela Willey, 2016)
'Fraught Intimacies: Non/monogamy in the public sphere' (Nathan Rambukkana, 2015)
News Media Articles by Jessica Kean
Star Observer, 2017
Imagine waking up one morning a few months from now knowing that marriage equality has been achie... more Imagine waking up one morning a few months from now knowing that marriage equality has been achieved.
You’re lying in bed the morning after the legislation finally passes and perhaps you’re wondering “what next?”
Well, the postal survey was fought on the back of that ‘what next’.
Archer Magazine (online), 2015
There is something thrilling about watching a cheater get caught. It’s a story with all the good ... more There is something thrilling about watching a cheater get caught. It’s a story with all the good stuff – transgression, deception, exposure, betrayal. The recent hack of infidelity hub Ashley Madison promises all those pleasures, on an unprecedented scale, with the bonus thrill of vigilante justice. Like so many internet-savvy Batmen, the hackers responsible have swooped in on spooky, self-righteous wings to unveil our private Gothams.
It’s going to be a bloodbath.
Right now the internet is waiting with bated breath to see which cheating heads will roll, but as we gear up for the sport, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethics of the game itself.
The Drum, 2013
As a woman and feminist in a long term non-marriage partnership Julia Gillard has taken a strong ... more As a woman and feminist in a long term non-marriage partnership Julia Gillard has taken a strong public stance against the idea that the legitimacy of a union rests on the ability to put a ring on it. It's a politically interesting and sophisticated response, so why does it fall on deaf ears?
Sydney Morning Herald, 2015
This film has us talking about sexual and emotional boundaries, about how they can be dangerously... more This film has us talking about sexual and emotional boundaries, about how they can be dangerously messy as well as willfully ignored. That such conversations are being openly pursued over popcorn is a cause for cautious optimism.
The Conversation, 2015
We are taught that there are boys and there are girls. Later, if we’re lucky, we are taught that ... more We are taught that there are boys and there are girls. Later, if we’re lucky, we are taught that sometimes “boys” become girls and “girls” become boys.
But is it always one or the other? Genderqueer people, among others, say “no”.
Papers by Jessica Kean
Feminist Media Studies, 2017
Abstract The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies ... more Abstract The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.
Hypatia, 2018
Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their... more Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their intimacy becomes increasingly entangled with the young and tempestuous Xavière. Many readings of the novel explain Françoise's bad feeling and eventual violence as symptoms of sexual jealousy. The book has also been read as a veiled autobiography of Beauvoir and Sartre's similar entanglement with Olga Kosakiewicz, so that, very often, Françoise's jealousy is assumed to stand in for Beauvoir's own. This article is about misreading in two ways. First, I argue that the common view that this is a story in part or in whole about sexual jealousy reflects a radical simplification of the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of the “trio.” Second, I argue that this interpretive simplification is in fact common in mainstream readings of nonmonogamous relationships, where “jealousy” is used to name any and all bad feelings in the vicinity of the nonmonogamous relationship, and wher...
Feminist Media Studies, 2017
Abstract The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies ... more Abstract The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.
Hypatia, 2018
Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their... more Simone de Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay follows Françoise and her partner Pierre as their intimacy becomes increasingly entangled with the young and tempestuous Xavière. Many readings of the novel explain Françoise's bad feeling and eventual violence as symptoms of sexual jealousy. The book has also been read as a veiled autobiography of Beauvoir and Sartre's similar entanglement with Olga Kosakiewicz, so that, very often, Françoise's jealousy is assumed to stand in for Beauvoir's own. This article is about misreading in two ways. First, I argue that the common view that this is a story in part or in whole about sexual jealousy reflects a radical simplification of the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of the “trio.” Second, I argue that this interpretive simplification is in fact common in mainstream readings of nonmonogamous relationships, where “jealousy” is used to name any and all bad feelings in the vicinity of the nonmonogamous relationship, and wher...
Sexualities, 2018
In queer theory ‘heteronormativity’ has become a central tool for understanding the social condit... more In queer theory ‘heteronormativity’ has become a central tool for understanding the social conditions of our sexual and intimate lives. The term is most often used to shed light on how those lives are patterned in a way that shapes and privileges binary genders and heterosexual identities, lifestyles and practices. Frequently, however, ‘heteronormativity’ is stretched beyond its capacity when called upon to explain other normative patterns of intimacy. Drawing on Cathy Cohen’s (1997) ground breaking essay ‘Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer?’, this article argues that analysing the political landscape of our intimate lives in terms of heteronormativity alone fails to adequately account for the way some familial and sexual cultures are stigmatised along class and race lines. This article gestures towards examples of those whose intimacies are unquestionably marginalised and yet non-queer, or at least not-necessarily-queer, placing Cohen’s ‘welfare q...
Cultural Studies Review, 2017
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-mono... more This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth. Beginning with an auto-ethnographic reflection on the way the ‘significance’ was recognised and misrecognised in one polyamorous ‘thrupple’, I introduce three case studies of people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships in order to bring a cultural studies method of the particular to the study of intimacy. For the individuals in these case studies, the practice and experience of non/monogamy is inextricably linked to the ideas and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, sex work, friendship, HIV status and ability. Sketching a middle path between the romantic’s dream of love as a state of exception or exemption from the social and the theorist’s map of the patterned effects of hetero- and mono-normativities, this article atte...
Cultural Studies Review, 2015
A review of Benjamin Kahan, Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (Duke University Press... more A review of Benjamin Kahan, Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life (Duke University Press, 2013).
Uploads
Journal Articles by Jessica Kean
[Full article available open access via link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/bqbzFMMzqBpIb2YkNN6w/full ]
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth. Beginning with an auto-ethnographic reflection on the way the ‘significance’ was recognised and misrecognised in one polyamorous ‘thrupple’, I introduce three case studies of people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships in order to bring a cultural studies method of the particular to the study of intimacy. For the individuals in these case studies, the practice and experience of non/monogamy is inextricably linked to the ideas and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, sex work, friendship, HIV status and ability. Sketching a middle path between the romantic’s dream of love as a state of exception or exemption from the social and the theorist’s map of the patterned effects of hetero- and mono-normativities, this article attends to the contingency, flexibility and incoherence which so often underpins the sense we make of relationships, even as that sense is shaped by the practices, ideals and institutions of intimacy, love and friendship.
Book Reviews by Jessica Kean
Review:
Benjamin Kahan
Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life
Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013
ISBN 9780822355687 RRP $23.95
Review of
'Undoing Monogamy: the politics of science and the possibilities of biology' (Angela Willey, 2016)
'Fraught Intimacies: Non/monogamy in the public sphere' (Nathan Rambukkana, 2015)
News Media Articles by Jessica Kean
You’re lying in bed the morning after the legislation finally passes and perhaps you’re wondering “what next?”
Well, the postal survey was fought on the back of that ‘what next’.
It’s going to be a bloodbath.
Right now the internet is waiting with bated breath to see which cheating heads will roll, but as we gear up for the sport, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethics of the game itself.
But is it always one or the other? Genderqueer people, among others, say “no”.
Papers by Jessica Kean
[Full article available open access via link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/bqbzFMMzqBpIb2YkNN6w/full ]
This article develops case studies from qualitative interviews with people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships to ask what discursive or practical factors besides non/monogamy might play a role in assessments of a relationship’s structure or worth. Beginning with an auto-ethnographic reflection on the way the ‘significance’ was recognised and misrecognised in one polyamorous ‘thrupple’, I introduce three case studies of people in negotiated non-monogamous relationships in order to bring a cultural studies method of the particular to the study of intimacy. For the individuals in these case studies, the practice and experience of non/monogamy is inextricably linked to the ideas and practices surrounding gender, sexuality, sex work, friendship, HIV status and ability. Sketching a middle path between the romantic’s dream of love as a state of exception or exemption from the social and the theorist’s map of the patterned effects of hetero- and mono-normativities, this article attends to the contingency, flexibility and incoherence which so often underpins the sense we make of relationships, even as that sense is shaped by the practices, ideals and institutions of intimacy, love and friendship.
Review:
Benjamin Kahan
Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life
Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013
ISBN 9780822355687 RRP $23.95
Review of
'Undoing Monogamy: the politics of science and the possibilities of biology' (Angela Willey, 2016)
'Fraught Intimacies: Non/monogamy in the public sphere' (Nathan Rambukkana, 2015)
You’re lying in bed the morning after the legislation finally passes and perhaps you’re wondering “what next?”
Well, the postal survey was fought on the back of that ‘what next’.
It’s going to be a bloodbath.
Right now the internet is waiting with bated breath to see which cheating heads will roll, but as we gear up for the sport, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethics of the game itself.
But is it always one or the other? Genderqueer people, among others, say “no”.