Family Time Gone Awry: Vogue Houses and Queer Repro-Generationality at the Intersection(s) of Race and Sexuality

Abstract

The paper at hand interrogates the queer temporal politics of “houses” in the ballroom and voguing scene. Houses constitute the axiomatic unit of this community marked by racial and sexual marginalisation and as such create alternative familial relations between members in response to rejections from the biological family and society in general. Mirroring the traditional family institution, vogue houses not only become a source of protection, care, trust and knowledge; their very structure, I argue, induces a queer repro-generational time. Countering the sequential heteronormative time of lifetime milestones and age-fitting achievements, the queer time of voguing is a temporal disidentification that jumbles around and constructively misappropriates generational and reproductive imperatives. In doing this, the politics of voguing opens the horizon of possible futures: it is a spark of embodied resistance with a queer utopian imaginary.