Extract

MINDY FENSKE

On the eve of a New Year, a promise was made. A union sanctioned not by an institution, but by the force of people moving and being together. Outside, gathered in a circle around a fire, revelers counted the year down. The count staggered at first, but quickly individual bodies and voices found a common rhythm. Shoulders and heads bobbed in tempo with the count as smiling glances were exchanged. The rhythm infected the celebrants inside as the countdown spread throughout the gathering. At the moment the New Year struck, the vows were exchanged and the union authorized by the synchronicity of the count, the bodies connected through the ritual, and the joyous exchange of hugs and kisses. Hugs and kisses not “meant” for the private ceremony, but nonetheless integral to it. A bond adhered in this moment, through this community constituted of bodies, rhythms, intensities and desire.

This “wedding” snapshot illustrates the potential capacity of embodied collectives to produce queer transformations and becomings. In this example, the gathering, celebratory countdown, and the hugs and kisses of the collective of bodies constituted not only the context of the event, but consecrated the vows. The New Year’s Eve revelers created the field within which the union emerged. In related, yet constitutively different, formations the bodies collected in Goltz and Zingsheim’s Gayla also produced moments of becoming. In each of these celebrations bodies came together creating collectives that both participated in the “meaning” of...