The Queer Public and its Problem with Representation

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The tension between demands for more and "better" queer media representation and queer theory's antagonism toward identitarian politics has plunged the queer community into a debate about who and what can claim queerness. At one epicenter of this debate is the film Call Me by Your Name. Following Michael Warner's suggestion that a public can be analyzed as discourse produced in response to a text, in this article I examine the contradictory existence of the queer public through a discourse analysis of one of its most recent canonical texts.