Queer Witcheries: Put a Computational Hex on You 

Join us each month for lectures and events that 'follow the affective turn', as we hear from leading scholars working in and around the field of affect studies. To view our lecture series line-up and information about our summer symposium, click here.

Lecture description

An algorithm can function like a computational hex, a love potion (or something) for the digital age. While digital sexual labors have become commonplace over the last twenty years, algorithms are increasingly important to workers and the desiring alike.

One magick leads to another--performers perform in videos released online. Those videos serve to expose performers to broad audiences, and that exposure leads in turn to the production of new, more independent media, including, among much else, NSFW Twitter and OnlyFans accounts. The algorithm is an instrument, or ingredient, for lusty seduction.

During COVD-19, performers have had to extend their creative witching, as key income streams, tied to mainstream productions, as well as the escorting many workers engage in, have dried up. These are not the first plague years queers have faced, nor the first instance in which collective sexual inventiveness meets the moment.

Shaka McGlotten is Professor Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY. They focus on the messy entanglements between media, art, and technology from the perspectives of Black queer studies. They are the author of Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality (2013, SUNY Press) and Dragging: In the Drag of a Queer Life (2021, Routledge).

Following the Affective Turn is an interdisciplinary research project that hopes to invite discussion and reflection on the current state of affect studies. Formed between Royal Holloway UoL and the University of Brighton, we are excited to run a short series of informal reading groups, a public lecture series and a graduate symposium. This lecture series is kindly supported by the techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership. More here.

Join us for our next event, The Promise of Intensity and the Politics of Hope in Crisis Times, with Ben Anderson (Durham University) on the 6th October.