The Radical Politics of Possibility: Towards a Queer Existential Phenomenology Through Chantal Akerman’s Je tu il elle (1975)

摘要

This article explores the temporalities at work in Chantal Akerman’s Je tu il elle (1975) using the prism of a Beauvoirian existential and phenomenological approach to queer embodiment. It argues that an existentialist approach to the queer focuses on doing rather than being. Through a comparison of Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics with Halberstam’s analysis of queer failure, the essay explores how Je tu il elle stages the tension between two differing versions of failure: one emerging from the anti-social thesis, resting on negativity, refusal, and passivity; the other from an existentialist ethics, engaging in a more positive politics of phenomenological generosity.