The Texture of ‘Lives Lived with Law:’ Methods for Queering International Law

ABSTRACT

Queer theory’s obligations to critique and problematise the mechanisms of power and discourse, especially law, remain important for revealing, unsettling and destabilising established sexual and gender norms. However, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues, the emphasis on paranoid or critical practices in queer theorising must be counterbalanced by recognising the queer methods of repair evident in the way LGBTQIA+ people engage with systems of oppression in empowering and transformative ways.¹, ² In this paper, I draw on the methodological tools that Sedgwick provides to examine LGBTQIA+ engagements with international law in terms of their creative, generative and sustaining capacities. Focusing on the experiences of two Australian LGBTQIA+ activists, Rodney Croome and Dianne Otto and the objects they brought to the interviews I did with them, I highlight the queer sensibilities, or queer reparative practices, operating in and through their commitments to law. In doing so, I expand the registers through which to conceptualise queer theory in relation to law and instantiate the queer jurisprudential work occurring in international law.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer jurisprudence
• LGBTQIA+
• international law
• activism
• sexuality
• gender
• law reform
• legal materiality
• queer
• jurisprudence

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rodney Croome and Dianne Otto for their many years of activism and scholarship and for agreeing to be a part of this project, as well as Ann Genovese and Beth Gaze for their expert guidance and support as my PhD supervisors. This paper has benefitted enormously from the comments and suggestions of the peer reviewers, and I thank them for their considered reading and constructive feedback. This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I draw here on the work of Ann Genovese, Shaun McVeigh and Peter Rush who examine ‘how we might care for the lived experience of lawful relations’. They describe ‘Lives Lived with Law’ as bringing ‘into relation the scholarly experiences of disciplinary technique, and the experimentation over time with style and forms that help to show what the conduct of lawful relations can be between peoples, between everyday and official experience of law … ’: Ann Genovese, Shaun McVeigh and Peter D Rush, ‘Lives Lived with Law: An Introduction’ (2016) 20 Law Text Culture 1, 2–3.

2 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Duke University Press 2003); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (2007) 106 South Atlantic Quarterly 625.

3 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2); Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2). Some of the themes of this paper have been introduced in a previous publication: Odette Mazel, ‘Queer Jurisprudence: Reparative Practice in International Law’ (2022) 116 AJIL Unbound 10. I take the opportunity here to further expand on and deepen my engagement with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s work and the ways in which it speaks to the subjective experiences of those I have interviewed. This work forms part of my broader PhD project in which I interviewed 24 LGBTQIA+ people about their engagements with and responses to legal reform in Australia. Drawing on Eve Sedgwick’s technique of reparative reading and Michel Foucault’s ethics of care of the self and bringing these into relationship with the jurisprudential practices of Robert Cover, I develop in my thesis a method for reading and undertaking empirical legal research that highlights the queer sensibilities operating in the ways LGBTQIA+ people engage with law reform projects to instantiate a queer jurisprudence.

4 I use the acronym LGBTQIA+ to represent lesbian, gay, bi+, trans, queer (including gender non-binary and gender diverse), intersex, asexual people and others who identify with this collective, with the understanding that these terms might be experienced as fixed or fluid as well as co-existing. I acknowledge the limitations of the use of this acronym, especially with respect to the differing experiences of law and legal processes by people or groups within or across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

5 Kapur, reflecting on Sedgwick: Ratna Kapur, Gender, Alterity and Human Rights: Freedom in a Fishbowl (Edward Elgar Publishing 2018) 167. Kapur’s work has been influential to my scholarship and informs my own considerations of Sedgwick (and Foucault) in relation to legal reform.

6 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love (Beacon Press 1999) 207.

7 My work owes a debt to, and builds on, the queer legal scholarship of those who have come before me, for example: Wayne Morgan, ‘Queer Law: Identity, Culture, Diversity, Law’ (1995) 5 Australasian Gay and Lesbian Law Journal 1; Carl F Stychin, Law’s Desire: Sexuality and the Limits of Justice (Routledge 1995); Francisco Valdes, ‘Afterword & Prologue: Queer Legal Theory’ (1995) 83 California Law Review 344; Brenda Cossman, ‘Sexuality, Queer Theory, and “Feminism After”: Reading and Rereading the Sexual Subject’ (2004) 49 McGill Law Journal 847; Aleardo Zanghellini, ‘Queer, Antinormativity, Counter-Normativity and Abjection’ (2009) 18 Griffith Law Review 1; Janet Halley, ‘A Tribute from Legal Studies to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Introduction’ (2010) 33 Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 309; Robert Leckey and Kim Brooks (eds), Queer Theory: Law, Culture, Empire (Routledge 2010); Janet Halley and Andrew, Parker (eds), After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory (Duke University Press 2011); Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (South End Press 2011); Oishik Sircar and Dipika Jain (eds), ‘Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times’ (2012) 4 Jindal Global Law Review (Special Double Issue) 1; Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Duke University Press 2014); Chris Ashford, ‘Bareback Sex, Queer Legal Theory, and Evolving Socio-Legal Contexts’ (2015) 18 Sexualities 195; Margaret Davies, Asking the Law Question (Fourth edition, Thomson Reuters 2017); Kapur (n 5); Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018); Brenda Cossman, ‘Queering Queer Legal Studies: An Unreconstructed Ode to Eve Sedgwick (and Others)’ (2019) 6 Critical Analysis of Law 23; Senthorun Sunil Raj, Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge 2020).

8 Championed on the ground by activist organisations in the United States including the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACTUP), the Lesbian Avengers and Queer Nation, queer emerged in response to highly charged political and cultural conflicts around the AIDS crisis, the resurgence of violent homophobia and the ongoing legacy of the sex wars of the 1980s: Morgan (n 7) 29; Gayle Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Duke University Press 2011) 182–93.

9 Teresa de Lauretis’ work addressed the lack of representation of lesbianism in the prevailing gay and lesbian discourse: Teresa de Lauretis, ‘Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities: An Introduction’ (1991) 3 Differences iii, v–vii.

10 Gayle Rubin, ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality’ in Carole S Vance (ed), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Pandora 1984); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press 1990); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge 1990); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, vol 1 (Robert Hurley tr, Pantheon Books 1978).

11 Dianne Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018) 11; Francisco Valdes, ‘Queer Margins, Queer Ethics: A Call to Account for Race and Ethnicity in the Law, Theory, and Politics of “Sexual Orientation”’ (1997) 48 Hastings Law Journal 51.

12 Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Beacon Press 2003); Michael Warner, ‘Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet’ (1991) 29 Social Text 3; Janet E Halley, ‘The Construction of Heterosexuality’ in Michael Warner (ed), Fear of a Queer Planet (University of Minnesota Press 1993); Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press 2011).

13 Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press 1996) 96; Michael Warner (ed), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press 1993) xxvi.

14 Adam P Romero, ‘Book Review: Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism by Janet Halley; Methodological Descriptions: “Feminist” and “Queer” Legal Theories’ (2007) 19 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 227, 249.

15 Duggan (n 12) 50.

16 Christina Crosby and others, ‘Queer Studies, Materialism, and Crisis: A Roundtable Discussion’ (2012) 18 GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 127, 143.

17 Ratna Kapur, ‘The (Im)Possibility of Queering International Human Rights Law’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law (Routledge 2018) 132.

18 These debates are well trodden in feminist legal literature, and I acknowledge the work already undertaken in this space. In relation to international law see, for example: Sari Kouvo and Zoe Pearson (eds), Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law: Between Resistance and Compliance? (Hart 2011).

19 Kapur (n 5) 167; Robyn Wiegman, ‘The Times We’re in: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative “Turn”’ (2014) 15 Feminist Theory 4, 8.

20 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘How to Do Things with Words and Other Materials’ <<http://evekosofskysedgwick.net/teaching/ how-to-do-things-with-words-and-other-materials. html>.> accessed 17 September 2021.

21 Interview with Rodney Croome (Conducted by telephone, Croome in Tasmania, 16 April 2019).

22 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 128; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Introduction: Queerer than Fiction’ (1996) 28 Studies in the Novel 277, 278.

23 In a piece on a collection of writings in honour of Otto, Karen Engle reflects on her contribution to gender and international law as encapsulated in the phrase, ‘juggling critique and hope.’ This paper draws on this insight into Otto’s work: Dianne Otto, ‘Impunity in a Different Register: People’s Tribunals and Questions of Judgment, Law, and Responsibility’ in Karen Engle, Zinaida Miller and DM Davis (eds), Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press 2016) 295; Karen Engle, ‘“Juggling Critique with Hope”’ (2017) 18 Melbourne Journal of International Law 120.

24 ‘Life of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’ <https://evekosofskysedgwick.net/biography/biography.html> accessed 22 July 2022. See also the special edition celebrating Sedgwick’s contribution from legal scholars: Halley, ‘A Tribute from Legal Studies to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick' (n 7).

25 ‘Life of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’ (n 24).

26 Hannah McCann and Whitney Monaghan, Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures (Red Globe Press 2020) 136; Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (n 10); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (Columbia University Press 1985); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Duke University Press 1993).

27 Sedgwick, Tendencies (n 26) 8.

28 Sedgwick, ‘Introduction: Queerer than Fiction’ (n 22).

29 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 640.

30 This shift was influenced in some ways by her breast cancer diagnosis which also sparked her increased interest in Buddhist philosophy. Sedgwick wrote of her battle with depression following her breast cancer diagnosis and the ways in which she worked through that depression. This informed her interest in Melanie Klein and her work on reparative reading followed. See: Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love (n 6); Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2); Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2).

31 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 146.

32 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 635–6.

33 Foucault (n 10).

34 ibid 85.

35 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 634.

36 Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–1945 (The Free Press 1975).

37 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 638.

38 Ibid 633. Sedgwick refers here to Freudian analytic theory in which power is understood as implicitly omnipotent, see Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, tr James Strachey (Hogarth, 1953).

39 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 640.

40 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 12.

41 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 632.

42 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 13.

43 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 635.

44 ibid.

45 ibid 636.

46 In contrast, a paranoid position recognises only part-objects, the insistence of ‘all or nothing’ ‘good or bad’ ibid 631, 633; Melanie Klein, ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanism’ (1946) 27 The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 99, 149.

47 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 628, citing: Meira Likierman, Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context (Continuum 2002) 55.

48 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 629.

49 ibid 637.

50 Allen Durgin, ‘Depressives and the Scenes of Queer Writing’ (Doctor of Philosophy, City University of New York 2014) 3.

51 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 138.

52 ibid 137.

53 Silvan S Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness (Springer 1962).

54 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 115; see also Silvan Tomkins, ‘What Are Affects?’ in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank (eds), Shame and its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (Duke University Press 1995).

55 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 21; see also Silvan Tomkins (n 53).

56 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 637.

57 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 123–151.

58 ibid 124; see Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (Denis Savage tr, Yale University Press 1970).

59 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 124.

60 ibid 137.

61 ibid 146.

62 ibid 128.

63 ibid.

64 ibid; Sedgwick, ‘Introduction: Queerer than Fiction’ (n 22) 278.

65 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 130.

66 ibid 136.

67 Heather Love, ‘Truth and Consequences: On Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading’ (2010) 52 Criticism 235, 237–8.

68 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 146.

69 Love (n 67) 237–8.

70 Durgin (n 50) 5.

71 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 150–51.

72 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 631.

73 ibid 631–2.

74 Tyler Bradway, ‘“Permeable We!”: Affect and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity in Eve Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love’ (2012) 19 GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 79, 81.

75 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 637.

76 Hyo Yoon Kang and Sara Kendall, ‘Introduction: Special Issue on Legal Materiality’ (2019) 23 Law Text Culture 1, 2; Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce (eds), International Law’s Objects (First Edition, Oxford University Press 2018); Peter Goodrich, ‘Specula Laws: Image, Aesthetic and Common Law’ (1991) 2 Law and Critique 233; Peter Rush and Andrew T Kenyon, An Aesthetics of Law and Culture: Text, Images, Screens (Elsevier 2005); Leif Dahlberg (ed), Visualizing Law and Authority: Essays on Legal Aesthetics (De Gruyter 2012).

77 Hyo Yoon Kang and Sara Kendall (n 76) 3.

78 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 6.

79 ibid 17.

80 ibid.

81 ibid 6.

82 ibid 14.

83 Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love (n 6) 207.

84 Guy Davidson and Monique Rooney, ‘Queer Objects’ (2018) 23 Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 3, 4.

85 Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love (n 6) 199.

86 See for example approaches to sensory research methods in law as well as the social sciences: James EK Parker, Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi (Oxford University Press 2015); Sheryl Hamilton and others (eds), Sensing Law (Routledge 2016); David Howes, ‘Prologue: Introduction to Sensori-Legal Studies’ (2019) 34 Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 173; Sean Mulcahy, ‘Silence and Attunement in Legal Performance’ (2019) 34 Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 191; Jennifer Mason and Katherine Davies, ‘Coming to Our Senses? A Critical Approach to Sensory Methodology’ (2009) 9 Qualitative Research 587; Marilys Guillemin and Anna Harris, Using the Senses in Qualitative Interview Research: Practical Strategies (SAGE Publications 2014); Deborah Warr and others, Ethics and Visual Research Methods: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

87 Guillemin and Harris (n 86) 1; Mason and Davies (n 86) 590.

88 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Untitled’ <https://evekosofskysedgwick.net/art/dropped-calendar.html> accessed 22 July 2022.

89 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 631-2.

90 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 137.

91 ibid 146.

92 Bradway (n 74) 95.

93 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

94 The group was originally called the Tasmania’s Gay Law Reform Group.

95 Tasmanian Criminal Code Act (Tas) 1924.

96 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

97 ibid.

98 ibid.

99 ibid.

100 Rodney Croome, ‘The Local, National and International Impact of the UNHRC Decision against Tasmania’s Former Anti-Gay Laws’ (2013) 22 Human Rights Defender 6, 6.

101 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

102 Gay Law Reform: Tasmania Hypocrites and White Feathers Legislative Council Protest (1990) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtMjSs_UsnI> accessed 13 October 2022.

103 Rodney and Jason Turn Themselves in to the Police (1990) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wolwMWNGY> accessed 13 October 2022.

104 Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) art 1).

105 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

106 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 10 December 1948 UNGA Res 217 A(III) (UDHR).

107 Nicole Laviolette and Sandra Whitworth, ‘No Safe Haven: Sexuality as a Universal Human Right and Gay and Lesbian Activism in International Politics’ (1994) 23 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 563; Cynthia H Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press 1994).

108 The Human Rights Committee monitoring the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights found that the Finnish Government was justified in limiting freedom of expression for the sake of protecting public morals, see Human Rights Committee, Report of the Human Rights Committee, 37th sess, Supp No 40, UN Doc A/37/40 (22 September 1982) annex XIV, 165 [10.3]–[11] as cited by Otto in Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’ (n 11) 8.

109 Dudgeon v United Kingdom (1981) Series A no 45; Norris v Ireland (1988) Series A no 142; Modinos v Cyprus (1993) Series A no 259.

110 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

111 ibid.

112 These sections criminalise sexual activity between consenting adult men in private: Criminal Code Act 1924 (Tas).

113 Toonen v Australia Communication No 488/1992, 50th sess, UN Doc CCPR/C/50/D/488/1992 (4 April 1994) (Human Rights Committee) para 2.1-2.7.

114 ibid para 2.4.

115 Toonen v Australia (n 113); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976) 999 UNTS 171 (ICCPR).

116 Toonen v Australia (n 113).

117 ibid para 8.7. While Article 26 did not form the basis of the Committee’s decision, this issue was picked up and substantiated in Mr Edward Young v Australia Communication No 941/2000, 78th sess, UN Doc CCPR/C/78/D/941/2000 (18 August 2003) (Human Rights Committee).

118 This was by virtue of the effect of s109 of the Australian Constitution, which states that when a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth the latter will prevail. The High Court held that s109 was effective in this case: Croome v Tasmania (1997) 191 CLR 119.

119 Interview with Rodney Croome (n 21).

120 ibid.

121 ibid.

122 ibid.

123 ibid.

124 For example, in 2013 the Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights Launched Free & Equal, a campaign aimed at promoting equal rights of LGBTI people; in 2015 12 UN entities release a joint statement calling for the end to violence and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people; in 2016, the UN Human Rights Council created the mandate of Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; and in 2019, a number of UN entities came together to develop a Programmatic Overview of the role of the UN in combatting discrimination and violence against LGBTQIA+ people: ‘OHCHR and the Human Rights of LGBTI People’ (United Nations) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity> accessed 14 October 2022.

125 For example: Mr Edward Young v Australia (n 119); Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka CEDAW/C/81/D/134/2018, 23 March 2022; Laurence R Helfer and Alice M Miller, ‘Sexual Orientation and Human Rights: Toward a Unites States and Transnational Jurisprudence’ (1996) 9 Harvard Human Rights Journal 61; Corinne Lennox and Matthew Waites, ‘Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: From History and Law to Developing Activism and Transnational Dialogues’ in Corinne Lennox and Matthew Waites (eds), Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in The Commonwealth (University of London Press 2013). Further, in 2006, a group of 29 international human rights experts from across 25 countries developed and adopted the Yogyakarta Principles (updated in 2017) outlining a set of principles relating to international human rights law and its application to sexual orientation and gender identity: ‘Yogyakarta Principles: Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’ <www.yogyakartaprinciples.org> accessed 13 October 2022.

126 How Gay Rights Debate Began at the UN (2011) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd9dGN6dBwA> accessed 13 October 2022.

127 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 150–51.

128 ‘Tasmanian Memorial Celebrates State’s “transformation” on LGBTIQ Rights’ (QNews, 23 October 2018) <https://qnews.com.au/memorial-unveiled-to-celebrate-tasmanias-transformation-on-lgbtiq-rights/> accessed 17 September 2021.

129 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 632, 637.

130 Elsewhere I have worked with the methodologies of Robert Cover to show how LGBTQIA+ commitments to law are queer and jurisprudential: Odette Mazel, ‘Violence in the Name of Equality: The Postal Survey on Same-Sex Marriage, LGBTQIA+ Activism and Legal Redemption’ (2022) 48 Australian Feminist Law Journal 137.

131 Otto, ‘Impunity in a Different Register: People’s Tribunals and Questions of Judgment, Law, and Responsibility’ (n 23) 295; Engle (n 23).

132 Interview with Dianne Otto (West Brunswick, Victoria, 28 May 2019).

133 Otto, Queering International Law (n 7).

134 Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’ (n 11) 7.

135 ibid 2.

136 Wayne Morgan, ‘In Honour of the Queerly Curious: Professor Dianne Otto’ (2017) 19 Melbourne Journal of International Law 133, 134.

137 Hillary Charlesworth, ‘Celebrating Di Otto’ (2017) 18 Melbourne Journal of International Law 118, 119. See also: Loveday Hodson, ‘Queering the Terrain: Lesbian Identity and Rights in International Law’ (2017) 7 feminists@law 1.

138 ibid.

139 Engle further points out that Di often insists on the ‘hope of critique’: Engle (n 23) 121.

140 Interview with Dianne Otto (n 132).

141 ibid.

142 ibid.

143 ibid.

144 See for example: Pierre-Marie Dupuy and Luisa Vierucci (eds), NGOs in International Law: Efficiency in Flexibility? (Edward Elgar Publishing 2008).

145 Interview with Dianne Otto (n 132).

146 ibid.

147 ibid.

148 ibid.

149 ibid.

150 ibid.

151 ibid

152 Dianne Otto, ‘Lesbians? Not in My Country’ (1995) 20 Alternative Law Journal 288.

153 Interview with Dianne Otto (n 132).

154 Love (n 67) 237–8.

155 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka (n 125).

156 For further details see: Christine Chinkin and Keina Yoshida, ‘CEDAW and the Decriminalisation of Same-Sex Relationships’ (2022) 3 European Human Rights Law Review 288.

157 Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka (n 125) para 9.7

158 ibid para 7.3 and 7.4; Chinkin and Yoshida (n 156) 295.

159 Otto, ‘Introduction: Embracing Queer Curiosity’ (n 11) 11.

160 ibid.

161 Interview with Dianne Otto (n 132).

162 ibid.

163 ibid.

164 Sedgwick, ‘Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes’ (n 2) 637.

165 Dianne Otto, ‘Resisting the Heteronormative Imaginary of the Nation-State: Rethinking Kinship and Border Protection’ in Dianne Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risks (Routledge 2018) 256.

166 Genovese, McVeigh and Rush (n 1).

167 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 21.

168 ibid 37.

169 ibid 61.

170 ibid 41.

171 ibid 21.

172 ibid.

173 Otto, Queering International Law (n 7).

174 Sedgwick, Tendencies (n 26) 3.

175 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 17; Genovese, McVeigh and Rush (n 1).

176 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (n 2) 13.

177 ibid 17.

178 Bradway (n 74) 95.

179 Sedgwick, Tendencies (n 26) 3.

180 Photo provided with permission from HA Sedgwick. See also: Kate Collins, ‘Work and Love Are Impossible to Tell Apart: The Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Papers’ (The Devil’s Tale, 28 April 2022) <https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2022/04/28/eve-kosofsky-sedgwick-papers/> accessed 22 July 2022.

181 Photos provided with permission from HA Sedgwick: see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Untitled’ <https://evekosofskysedgwick.net/art/dropped-calendar.html> accessed 22 July 2022.

182 Photo provided with permission from Roger Lovell.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Odette Mazel

Odette Mazel (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Melbourne Law School and Senior Research Fellow for the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, The University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the lived experience of LGBTQIA+ people and Indigenous peoples and the ways in which to queer and decolonise social, cultural and legal encounters. For a recent publication, see: Odette Mazel (2022) Violence in the Name of Equality: The Postal Survey on Same-Sex Marriage, LGBTQIA+ Activism and Legal Redemption, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 48:1, 137-163, DOI: 10.1080/13200968.2022.2138184