Perversa tidsligheter : Ageplay och litenhet ur ett queertemporalt perspektiv

• This doctoral thesis investigates how temporality is constructed and negotiated in ageplay, a term for practices based on performative, non-chronological age and age differences. The empirical material consists of interviews with adults identifying with littleness. The experience of littleness emanates from assuming the position of a child or adolescent, or from a more abstract feeling of being little and in need of guidance. It is often acted out in a dynamic with someone assuming the position of a caregiving and/or authoritative adult. The thesis explores how ageplay opens up for understandings of time beyond the linear model that dominates Western discourse of temporality, and investigates how ageplay and littleness can add important perspectives to the theoretical field of queer temporality studies. The first chapter situates the thesis within the field of queer temporality studies, as well as within a broader field of critical research on age. It relates the thesis to earlier work on ageplay as connected to BDSM and queer sexual cultures, but also broadens this definition by treating ageplay as a complex cultural phenomenon that actualizes non-normative relations to temporality and age.The second chapter concentrates on how littleness can challenge (hetero)normative life lines. It investigates three different aspects of littleness which appear as “failed” in relation to normative ideals of individual development, and explores how these “failures” give the interviewees access to new, creative ways of being in the world. Queer temporality is often linked to the abandoning of a normative life line and its markers of success, which are closely connected to reproduction and social respectability. Thus, queer temporality is often equated with queer nightlife and public sex cultures. The interviewees’ experiences of being out of time are contrariwise anchored in domesticity and centered around everyday routines. The third chapter explores this friction, discussing how the concepts of home, family and everyday life are given meaning in ageplay, and how a focus on domesticity can contribute to the field of queer temporality studies.The fourth chapter discusses how the interviewees negotiate ideas of littleness as a progressive or “backward” position. It explores how littleness can be theorized beyond linear temporal concepts, such as nostalgia, which is commonly used about adults engaging in “childish” phenomena. The chapter stresses how this discourse creates a misleading image, since the interviewees are not seeking to return to their childhoods in the past, but to construct new possible worlds and intimate bonds in the realm of the here and now. The fifth chapter concentrates on how ageplay is associated with pedophilia. It critically investigates this linkage by exploring how the relation between fantasy and reality is negotiated in the interviews, and demonstrates how the interviewees challenge ideas of ageplay as a cover for underlying, more sinister desires. Working with the theoretical concept of the monstrous, the chapter stresses how ageplay poses a threat to the social order by melting together elements perceived as each other’s opposites, such as childish innocence and perverse sexuality.The final chapter ties together the thesis’ main arguments and reflects further upon the perverse temporalities of ageplay, and upon how experiences of littleness can contribute to the growing field of queer temporality studies.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Ageplay

queer theory

sexuality

temporality

BDSM

play

fantasy

gender

age

domesticity

figure of the Child

vulnerability

monstrosity

genusvetenskap

Gender Studies

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)