Magdalena Beljan, Pascal Eitler, Benno Gammerl, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung; Ulrike Schaper, Freie Universität Berlin

Zeit: February 2015
Ort: probably in Berlin
Deadline: 31.03.2014

The sexual as well as the exotic are prominent markers of the unknown, of alterity, and of “excess”. These different dimensions of unfamiliarity often mutually intensify each other, for example when the racial Other is sexualized or when certain erotic practices are exoticized. Ideas about extra-European animalistic savagery testify to this, as do images of deviant sexual encounters happening in obscure and exciting settings. The dynamics of sexualizing the Other or of othering certain sexual practices can thereby unfold in discriminatory, idealizing, emancipatory or normalising registers. The intricate complexity of colonial intimacies around 1900, the sexualisation of non-white bodies in the 1920s entertainment business and the significance of faraway places for sexual experimentation in the 1970s demonstrate this. These examples hint at a long tradition of … read more and source.