The good bi : queer phenomenology, excess and non-monosexual representation

摘要

In this thesis I apply a queer phenomenological lens to the CBS serial legal drama TheudGood Wife (2009-present), theorizing bisexuality as an embodied practice, epistemological frame, and representational mode. Using the notion of ???spoiling??? - refusing to keep narrative secrets, challenging monosexual happiness scripts, and defying temporally-based ideas of identity - I explain how bisexuality has been cast a spoiler within political and cultural representation. I argue that triangulations offer points of contact that unsettle temporal demands of identity and progressive notions of minorityudvisibility, and that the courtroom as a bisexual space reveals how many of the tropesudassociated with bisexuality (opportunism, switching sides, ambivalence) are normalizedudin characters with social and political capital. By centering explicitly and ambiguouslyudbisexual secondary characters, and reading layered political and legal plotlines in TheudGood Wife I explore bisexuality materially and metaphorically to consider what bodiesudare deemed worthy of representation, both in its legal and media connotations. By exposing the limits of positive representation and of visibility as a bisexual politics I suggest the contingency of all desire and identity.