From discourse to assemblage

This article is an introduction to queer media studies, which examines the role of media technologies in the production and challenging of a heteronormative social order, structured by hierarchies of gender and sexualities, which are themselves intertwined with relations of class and racialization. The first part presents the contribution of Michel Foucault’s anti-essentialist approach to power relations, which avoids two dead ends in the politicization of media and sexualities: valuing all public expression of sexuality as a form of liberation, on the one hand, and the will to purify the domain of sexuality from all power relations, on the other. Four areas of research are reviewed: the discursive analysis of media representations; the affective approach of reception studies; the material approach of technology studies; and surveys on media production and regulation. The conclusion is that sexuality is a transversal dimension of social life, which potentially concerns all research on media and communication technologies.