Reading Sense8 : Visual Interchangeability and Queer Possibility in a “Post-Racial” World

AbstractThe science-fiction Netflix series Sense8 features eight “sensates” across the world who suddenly become telekinetically connected, able to inhabit each other’s bodies. I put forth the term visual interchangeability to explain these cinematographical swaps, when audiences perceive one character temporarily standing in for another. Able to experience each other’s arousal, the sensates partake in transglobal orgies: as bodies of different races interchange with each other, individual sensates’ sexual orientations and preferences are seemingly rendered irrelevant. Praised for its LGBT + representations, and particularly of trans identity, Sense8’s utopic implications suggested by the sensates’ apparent pansexuality and race-blind dissolution of difference is undermined by its essentializing, inaccurate depictions of non-white and -western cultures.DisclaimerAs a service to authors and researchers we are providing this version of an accepted manuscript (AM). Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proofs will be undertaken on this manuscript before final publication of the Version of Record (VoR). During production and pre-press, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal relate to these versions also. Notes1 While most of the actors are from the same countries as their characters, African sensate Toby Onwumere was born in Nigeria and raised in the United States. In interviews, he speaks with a U.S. American accent, and his UC San Diego actor profile (http://theatre.ucsd.edu/Showcase/Actors/2015/TOnwumere/index.html) lists “West African/Nigerian Pidgin” as a language, which the creators likely assumed approximates a Kenyan accent—although Africans are no doubt able to identify the difference and likely resent this conflation.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnna E. LindnerAnna E. Lindner (MA, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University) is a doctoral candidate in the Communication Department at Wayne State University. A critical/cultural media historian, her dissertation focuses on how mediated discourses reflect white supremacy, national/colonial identity, slavery, and resistance enacted by African descendants in mid-nineteenth-century Cuba. Her other research interests include formations of cultural identity, racialized linguistics and education, intersectional feminisms and queer studies, critical whiteness studies, and racial justice activism. E-mail: anna.lindner@wayne.edu