Desire in the biopolitics of the now: scalar performativities in a homoaffective dating app

Abstract

Considering the biopolitics of the now - a process that includes both the re-occidentalization of the world and contemporary dynamic stability - and a performative linguistic ideology, the article reports on an ethnography of mobility in a homoaffective dating app. It does so by analysing interseccional scalar performativities of gender, sexuality and race. The theoretical-analytic constructs of indexicality and scale are also relied on to illuminate how bodies are semiotized in the app. Two ethnographic interviews with two participants are focused on. Despite the myriad bodies and desires semiotized in an accelerated dimension, the intelligibilty matrix for racialized homoerotic male bodies in operation draws attention to two scale projections which speak to the re-occidentalization of the world both in relation to hegemonic masculinity performativities and to anti-black racist performativities. The article ends by evoking an alternative radical political futurity in conjunction with a critical view of the biopolitics of the now.