Australian Queer Student Activists' Media Representations of Queer / Jessica Rodgers

J. Rodgers

Queer student activists are a visible aspect of australian tertiary communities. Institutionally there are a number of organisations and tools representing and serving gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, inetrse and 'otherwise queer identifying' (LGBTIQ) students. 'Queer' is a contentious term with meanings ranging from complex deconstructive academic theory to a term 'gay'. Despite the institutional applications, the definition remains unclear and under debate. In this thesis I examine queer students activists' production of printmedia, a previously under-researched area. In queer communities, print media provides crucial grounding for a model of queer. central to identity formation and activism, this media is a site of textuality for the construction and circulation of discourses of queer student media. Thus, I investigate the variuos ways Australian queer student activists construct queer, queer identity, and queer activism in their print media. I use discourse analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews to enable a thorough investigation of both the process and the products of queer student media. My findings demonstrate that queer student activists' politics are grounded in a range of ideologies drawing form Marxism, Feminism, Gay Liberation, Anti-assimiliation and Queer Theory. Grounded in Queer theoritcal perspectives of performativity this research makes a relativily new links between Queer Theory and Media Studies in its study of the production contexts od queer student media. In doing so, I show how the university context informs student articulations of queer, proving the necessity to locate research within its social-cultural setting. My research reveals that, much like Queer Theory, these representations of queer are rich with paradox. I argue that queer student activists are actually theorising queer. I call for a reconceptualisation of Queer Theory and question the current barriers between who is considered 'theorist'of queer and who is an 'activist'. If we can think about 'theory' as encompassing the work of activists, what implications mght this have for politics and analysis?