789454

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QIXXXX10.1177/1077800418789454Qualitative InquiryEngel

Visibility and Methodological Perspectives

Qualitative Inquiry

Queer Reading as Power Play:

2019, Vol. 25(4) 338­–349
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800418789454
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for Discourse Analysis of Visual Material journals.sagepub.com/home/qix

Antke Engel1

Abstract
This article considers the social productivity of images through a methodological reflection on various ways of presenting
and challenging visual materials through textual means. I suggest employing a power-sensitive method of ekphrasis which renders
methodologically productive desiring relations implied or performed by the image (in short: engaged ekphrasis). Concerning
discourse analysis of visual material, two questions are of particular interest: What does it mean to invoke a discourse
through visual means? And what does it mean to confront a particular piece of visual material with a discourse that is not
explicitly invoked by this material? Reconsidering the method developed in an earlier monograph, this article asks how one
can incite an exchange between a visual work and a discursive formation. Does this process depend on or make particular
use of aesthetic forms and strategies, as well as visual rhetoric? How does such an exchange contribute to the analysis
of social power relations? What can be learned about the relevance of visualizing practices and conditions of visibility in
reproducing or transforming social relations? I introduce the notion of images as instruments and agents of governmentality to
develop these methodological reflections. A particular focus lies on the overlaps between economic and queer discourses.
I support my arguments through close readings of two commercial advertisements.

Keywords
images, ekphrasis, discourse and visuality, queer cultural politics, power, desire, governmentality

Intermediacy: Beholders, Images, and
Contexts in Mutual Engagement
Two old ladies in a slow, close dance: there is an intimacy
between them that suggests we read them as a couple.
However, in their given context, the intimacy between them
provides a contrast to an awkward situation: Their dance
takes place in the rainy gray of a public square dominated
by a heavy iron construction, possibly of a bridge or a rail-
way track, which looms above the women’s heads. Thus,
their dance must defiantly overcome inhospitable circum-
stances. And the women succeed. Even though they are
dressed in worn winter coats and look a bit shabby, their
demure dance expresses an energetic drive and a certain
erotic power inherent to their complicity with one another.
Why does this dance take place in a public square? Is it that
the women just don’t care about exposing their private
moment to the public eye? Or is there a political thrust to
this dance that challenges the public/private divide or intro-
duces another transformative vision into the scene?
cannot personally engage with the represented women to find
out about their desires and politics. Yet, a picture, or for that
matter any other kind of (audio)visual cultural material, invites
other forms of mutual engagement which can unfold political
dimensions embodied in cultural materials—diagnostic, criti-
cal, as well as performative and transformative ones. The start-
ing point is on purpose a subjective reading, which does not yet
include background knowledge that is not provided by the
actual representation; a reading, which does not pretend that
there is any objective or correct description. In offering my
personal, idiosyncratic entry, I take the chance of confusing
more habitual or conventional approaches, for example, in see-
ing a lesbian couple and an erotic encounter, where others see
sisterhood and mirroring. The point is to provoke dissent—
between me and the picture, and me and the reader—and see
where we possibly meet or continue to disagree over the course
of an argumentative engagement to come.
1
Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin, Germany

In Dialogue With an Image: Mutual Resistances Corresponding Author:

Antke Engel, Institute for Queer Theory, Am Sudhaus 2, D 12053 Berlin,
As what I am describing is a picture—a photograph by the Germany.
Czech artist Milena Dopitová called Sixtysomething (2003)1—I Email: engel@queer-institut.de
Engel
I see the social productivity of images unfolding in such
forms of engagement, and this is what I would like to
explore in this article. First of all, it is important to acknowl-
edge that this social productivity of images is not inherent
to a particular cultural product, but rather evolves from its
processes of reception as well as the context of its presenta-
tion and circulation and the conditions of its production (G.
Rose, 2007). This complex, multi-dimensional in-between-
ness captures me as a reader, conditions my encounter with
the formal and material—in this case: photographic and
digital—reality of the work, and carries traces of its pro-
ducer. My methodological considerations on the social pro-
ductivity of visual material derives from and relies on such
intermediacy (“‘Dazwischen’ geraten und produktiv gewor-
den,” Engel, 2009, p. 199), which is also the conceptual-
material terrain where discourses as well as theoretical
notions and creative ideas turn up. The methods I am offer-
ing consist of a careful reading of objects in their contexts,
including a discourse and power analysis, combined with
analytical and transformative techniques of making discur-
sive and theoretical elements enter the processes of recep-
tion, context production, and circulation.
Methodology in Five Steps—An Overview
Revealing theoretical premises. My methodology is built on
two theoretical premises, namely, Michel Foucault’s (1991)
concept of governmentality and Elspeth Probyn’s (1996)
theory of desire. While the former invites a power analysis
and has prompted the thesis that images may function as
instruments and agents of governance, the latter, based on
an understanding of desire as movement, claims that images
are means of transport of desire, reinforcing or crossing
governance. Taken together, these theoretical premises per-
mit the analysis of relations of power and desire in the pro-
duction, reception, and circulation of images. For queer
reading practices of visual materials, the specific challenges
of understanding, criticizing, and transforming the interplay
of power and desire detected in particular images and their
display or contextualization become paramount.
Engaged ekphrasis: A queer reading method. The method that
I am proposing to pursue such a queer reading is what I call
a power-sensitive desiring (in short: engaged) ekphrasis. It
extends the usual understanding of ekphrasis as a meticu-
lous verbal/lingual description of an art work, which as
such often become relegated to an elucidating role in the
wider textual context, for example, of a political pamphlet,
or a pedagogical instruction. My version of ekphrasis
extends the conceptual frame by overcoming the unidirec-
tional relationship of text capturing image, which also
means opening up textual space for the image to resist its
functionalization for the research process. Rather, my aim is
to collaborate with the image as a research agent, which
339
contributes to the production of knowledge and theory-
building as well as to the transformation of established rela-
tions of power and desire. The aim of this article is to
demonstrate this complex process using two exemplary
images selected out of eight, which have received a close
reading in my book Bilder von Sexualität und Ökonomie
(Images of Sexuality and Economy; Engel, 2009).
Formulating the research question and relating images to dis-
courses. The choice of the (original eight) images follows
a social science research question, inviting images that
contribute Indizien (engl. indications) to the relevance of
this question or potential answers2 Whether one refers to
art works, or commercial advertising, as I did, or to any
other kind of audio-visual product depends on the ques-
tions one asks; there is nothing particular to any media that
enables or disables its participation in a research question.
In my case, I had been asking whether there are overlaps
between queer and neoliberal politics. Since on the level
of political and theoretical discourses, queer theory mostly
distances itself from neoliberalism, my assumption was
that turning to visual material one might possibly find oth-
erwise unacknowledged similarities. Linked to this
inquiry, I had a second question: If the images indicate any
overlaps, are we to interpret them as appropriations of
queerness by the neoliberal hegemony? Or would it be
possible to also detect and/or inspire resistance, or at least
mutual power dynamics? These questions belong to wider
interests in the social productivity of images, and as such
also hint at the discourses which frame and undergird this
particular research—that is, the pluralization of genders
and sexualities under conditions of neoliberal economic
transformation.
Sampling and corpus of images. Choosing the particular
images is and can be a heuristic process, as it is not the
images themselves, but the dynamics of the reception that
define my methodological approach. The concrete image
gains relevance and particularity in the in-between of image
production, reception, and contextualization, which I am
producing in the research setting and which I am part of.
From this point of view, the images chosen do not need to
be representative, nor is a large sample required. Rather, the
rigorous criteria are (a) whether the images are suitable for
engaging with the research question posed and (b) whether
the researcher feels subjectively addressed, enticed, or chal-
lenged by the image.
As candidates for a close reading the chosen material
does not have to be representative, but, on the contrary, it is
given a chance to have its singularity attended to. In distinc-
tion from a hermeneutic interpretation, Lektüren (engl.
readings), explicitly aim at subverting the authoritative
position of the recipient/researcher This fits well with ana-
lyzing the interplay of power and desire I am aiming at. A
340 Qualitative Inquiry 25(4)

reading becomes queer, I would argue, once desire enters

the analysis as a topic and/or a device (“desire’s method”;
Probyn, 1996, p. 61ff.), is questioned about its interplay
with power, and is allowed to draw new and unexpected
connections.3

Techniques of analysis and transformation of discourses. An

engaged ekphrasis has an analytical as well as a transforma-
tive dimension. To analyze the relations of power and desire
that organize how readers are implicated in the research
process, and how discourses relate to images and vice versa,
I propose to focus (a) on the addressing, (b) the argumenta-
tion, and (c) the discursive field (see 3.3). To furthermore
achieve a transformative dimension that challenges estab-
lished relations of power and desire, I offer three techniques
of engaged reading that allow the image to critically partici-
pate in queer reading as a research practice: the punctum
(Barthes) as an entrance point for discourses; a paradoxical
doubling of the image through inventing a headline; and,
finally, the staging of omissions and unspoken consensus
(see 4).
Returning to my research question about the overlaps
between neoliberal and queer politics, I come to the conclu-
sion that overlaps exist. I show that they take the form of
paradoxes fed by a process of social integration (see 2.2)
that I call projective integration, and that this inspires a new
form of queer politics of paradox (see 5). None of these lat-
Figure 1. Advertisement of Erste Bank (2005), photography:
ter theoretical concepts could have been developed without Milena Dopitová Sixtysomething (2003).
the images collaborating in the research process. They do Courtesy. Erste Bank, Wien.
not simply illustrate social phenomena or articulate a cer-
tain discourse, but function as productive and resistant
widows, forlorn to the heterosexual norm of coupling, and
research agents, as much as they might function as instru-
how post-Socialist political regimes and civic societies are
ments of governance, or means of transport of desire.
left out of the international market economy. Only the capi-
In the following, I will develop in more detail the five
steps of discourse analysis of visual material that I have talist financial sector can save the old women, respectively,
sketched here: These five steps might be called five elements, the post-Socialist regime, and organize their development,
as they do not necessarily follow a predefined order nor are this ad suggests. Yet, does the free leg raised for a step, the
they neatly separable, if one understands the research process leading hand on a shoulder, and the twist in the women’s
as recursive. Yet, first of all this has to get more concrete. bodies unequivocally submit the women to the capitalist
order? Or should the reader concentrate instead on the fact
that the women’s gazes are not directed far into the future,
Reading a Demure Dance4 but rather are turned inward, as if they are contriving some-
Returning to Dopitová’s image Sixtysomething, it is signifi- thing—conspiring in the shared space of their looks?
cant that this photograph was published and circulated in Considering the site of presentation, the usage, con-
2005 as part of an advertising campaign by the Austrian sav- sumption, or strategic deployment of an image is an impor-
ings bank Erste Bank, which is known for sponsoring art and tant dimension of analyzing its meaning and agency: The
culture in Eastern Europe (Figure 1). The text of the adver- image cannot simply be subsumed to its instrumentalization
tisement reads, “Kontakt. The Art and Civil Society Program. in advertising, propaganda, or the art market. Instead,
Erste Bank Group in Central Europe” and “In relationships potentials of the image to resist such unambiguity must be
it is always the people who matter.” The appropriation of tapped methodologically. To recognize or even strengthen
this artwork for a marketing campaign makes use of a com- the resistant potential of an artwork, I often rely on Roland
parison between the poverty of elderly women and the deso- Barthes’s concept of the punctum, which he defines as a
late economies of outdated post-Socialist regimes. It also minor, far-fetched, or odd detail in images, which captures
invokes a comparison between stereotypes of spinsters and a particular reader’s attention (Barthes, 2010, S. 42f.). I
Engel
understand the punctum as offering itself as a point where
the discursive or theoretical elements of my reading hook
up with a formal element of the image (see 4.1.1). In the
case of Dopitová’s picture, the punctum for me is how the
gaze of the woman on the left of the photograph leads her in
a different direction than her free leg suggests.
Relating Discourses to Images—and Vice Versa
Apart from this, my reading strategy, which aims at opening
up space for transgressing the commercial contextualization
of the photograph, consists in offering theoretical notions or
discursive figures and letting them hook up with elements of
the picture. For example, Homi K. Bhabha’s (2004) notion of
unhomeliness develops an attachment to the iron beam, which
in return expands its menacing effects. The beam’s intimidat-
ing appearance results from its dark materiality that overpow-
ers the width of the picture and hovers only a short distance
above the women’s heads. It also develops from an uncanni-
ness, which, according to Bhabha, arises when the border
between the public and the private becomes porous (Bhabha,
2004). This may refer to moments when one realizes, as
Bhabha suggests, that colonial history enters the home;
becomes personal and expresses itself through embodied sub-
jectivity; or when moments of the so-called personal fate
claim public recognition, for example, experiences of poverty,
sexual violence, or same-sex intimacy. If one combines such
Bhabhaian exchange with Dopitová’s image with Jacques
Derrida’s considerations that the political is built on male
homosocial bonding—a bonding that explicitly excludes het-
erosexual friendship, female homosocialiality, or any kind of
open sexual bonding (Derrida, 2005)—then the uncanny
unhomeliness of Dopitová’s picture results from bringing a
non-heterosexual, non-commercialized intimacy into the pub-
lic sphere. If, furthermore, the advertisement deploys the
dancing women for political and economic means (namely, to
expand private capital Eastward through the sponsorship of
art and culture), then indicating how the dancing women rep-
resent political agents rather than (or as well as) political alle-
gories undermines the idea of a simple cooptation of the
artwork by the bank. Furthermore, one should, maybe, con-
sider that the photographer is a famous and award winning
Czech artist. This complicates the question about the picture’s
resistant moments: do they depend on a tension, which arises
due to a chiastic intertwinement: the bank not simply coopt-
ing, but also aligning itself with an acclaimed artwork, which
then, paradoxically, subverts the impression of economic suc-
cess on a visual level?
Images as Instruments and Agents of
Governmentality
If discourse analysis is interested in current power relations
and hegemonic forms of governance, this method works
341
well in tandem with Michel Foucault’s concept of govern-
mentality. To consider the role of visual material, visualiz-
ing practices, and orders of visibility in neoliberal forms of
governance, I would like to introduce the notion of the
image as instrument and agent of governmentality as a
device of discourse analysis and transformative reading
practices (Engel, 2009).5 My particular interest lies in devel-
oping methodological suggestions concerning the inter-
twining of visual and textual elements, of presenting visuals
through textual means (e.g., ekphrasis), and of presenting
visuals in textual contexts, to evaluate the social productiv-
ity of images. This involves two systematic questions: What
does it mean to invoke a discourse through visual means?
And what does it mean to confront a particular piece of
visual material with a discourse that is not explicitly invoked
by this material?
Foucault offers the concept of governmentality as a
means of understanding how changing forms of (state)
power and domination (Herrschaftsformen) on one hand
and modes of subject formation and subjectivation on the
other hand are intertwined (Foucault, 1991; Gordon, 1991;
Lemke, 2002). In late-modern Western societies, Foucault
argues, neoliberal governance functions through activating
the freedom and agency of individuals. Neoliberal gover-
nance exerts its power through fostering consensus produc-
tion, agreement, and integration, rather than through
mechanisms of repression and exclusion. Biopolitical ways
of ruling populations correlate with technologies of the self
(Foucault, 1988), which allow individuals to form them-
selves according to normalized ideals of subjectivity, soci-
ality, and economy. Social power differences in the
late-modern West—formerly organized according to clas-
sifications of class, race/ethnicity, religion, sex/gender, age/
ability—more and more develop along ingenious self-man-
agement and skills of structuring the agency of others.
Methodological Implications of Governmentality
Research
In my book Bilder von Sexualität und Ökonomie (Images of
Sexuality and Economy; Engel, 2009), I used Foucault’s
concept of governmentality to think through the transfor-
mations of sexuality and gender in late-modern Western
societies. Pluralizations of sexual and gendered forms of
existence, I argue, function as a model field of neoliberal
self-management and flexibility under conditions of pre-
cariousness. Here, I am interested in how queer and neolib-
eral political discourses overlap. Both discourses foster
ideas of flexibility and pluralization and yet cannot be sim-
ply equated with one another. As I understand these dis-
courses to be mediated at least partly by public imagery, in
my book, I pursue my analysis through what I call a power-
sensitive ekphrasis of visual material produced in art and
commercial advertising, which renders productive desiring
342
relations implied and performed by the image (in short:
engaged ekphrasis). Methodologically, I suggest starting
from a close reading, which carefully describes an image
and then brings the image in dialogue with political as well
as theoretical discourses. This method, takes on the form of
a pleasurable power struggle. It develops agency, thanks to
the exchange between my reading practice, the discursive
insertions, and the formal characteristics of the image. To
say that the method develops agency does not say that “it”
takes on the role of the subject or has agency of its own, but
that it is efficacious, that it works exactly due to a complex
interplay of forces (in German: wirkmächtig rather than
handlungsfähig). As a reader and author, I am part of these
forces, but I am not the controlling subject.
In accordance with my research question, I apply this
method to the analysis of visual material that intertwines
queer subversions of stable identity constructions with neo-
liberal celebrations of diversity. While the former disrupts
the power of regimes of normalcy, the latter delegates social
inequalities to the realm of private responsibility. My inten-
tion is to understand how visual material becomes a part of,
or a means of transport for, particular political discourses,
and at the same time how visual material functions as a tool
of or incentive toward sociopolitical intervention and
transformation.
Conditions and Effects of the Framing Discourse:
Projective Integration
A decisive process of neoliberal cultural politics is what I
have recently termed projective integration (Engel, 2007,
2009, 2013), a mechanism of integrating social differences,
which makes use of visual imagery, to install an affirmative
relation to difference or to code difference as cultural capi-
tal. I characterize projective integration as a particular form
of social integration (in contrast to or interplay with assimi-
lation and multicultural tolerance) that has developed over
the last two to three decades. As a characteristic moment of
neoliberal governance, projective integration fosters indi-
vidualization and distinctiveness to motivate people to
actively work themselves into the established socioeco-
nomic relations. Rather than assimilating difference into the
norm or creating multicultural niches next to the norm, pro-
jective integration aims at turning difference into cultural
capital. It does so through providing cultural imagery that
invites people to identify with precarity as a form of indi-
vidual freedom.6 Differences are not simply affirmed, but
images function as screens of projection, interpellating its
readers to dwell on the threshold of difference as promise
and difference as threat.
Projective integration fulfils a double function: normal-
ized subjects can project their desire onto images of differ-
ence, while dissident or marginalized subjects enjoy
inhabiting an avant-garde position.7 If today we can find
Qualitative Inquiry 25(4)
“positive” images of dissident sexualities and gender ambi-
guities, this is not primarily a sign of social recognition.
Instead, these images function as screens of projection that
stand in for individuality, flexibility, and, above all, the abil-
ity to manage the contradictory demands of late-modern
life. In representing the economic utility of social diversity,
discriminatory forms of rejection, exclusion, or assimilation
are transformed into normalization, which rules through
comparison and the according hierarchies. Yet, it is exactly
the tension of difference being simultaneously a promise as
well as carrying the risk of turning into stigma, I argue,
which effect the contemporary activation of individuals.8
When I argue for understanding images as tools and
agents of governmentality, which take on a special role in
projective integration, it is important that this notion sees
images as being instrumental for certain discourses, while
simultaneously holding an uncontrollable potential, if not
as actors then as agents. To get a deeper understanding of
the methodological implications of the instrumental and
agentic quality of images, the following paragraphs will
explain the method of ekphrastic reading as a struggle over
relations of power and desire.
Engaged Ekphrasis as a Method of
Discourse Analysis of Visual Material
The idea of mutual engagement and intermediacy that I sug-
gest at the beginning of this article is in dialogue with
Renate Brosch’s (2004) understanding of ekphrasis as a
power struggle as well as Elspeth Probyn’s (1996) idea that
images transport desire. And it underlines Renate Lorenz’s
(2012) question: “How can queer art be taken up in a way
that does not classify, level, and understand, but continues,
by other means, the denormalization that it incites, the
desire for being-other, being-elsewhere, and change?”
(p. 17).
Ekphrasis as Power Struggle
Brosch presents ekphrasis—a form of writing about cultural
material based on careful description—as a power struggle.
Brosch analyzes the power dynamics and asymmetries that
take place between the image and the text (or rather, between
the image and the descriptive reproduction of the image).
For her, ekphrastic readings always bear a danger of the
produced text dominating the image. Therefore, she is inter-
ested in strengthening the image in processes of reception
and highlights how images develop agency in the context of
reading practices and social contexts. To avoid the impres-
sion of the image taking on the status of subject, she sug-
gests the term “agency function” (Brosch, 2004, p. 63) of
images. Agency, for her, develops out of a back and forth
between an ascription of meaning and a resistance originat-
ing from formal, aesthetic characteristics of the image. Such
Engel
resistance undermines appropriation; it interpellates,
touches, or captures the recipient in unexpected ways.
However, rather than solely claiming a temporary effect in
the moment of perception, Brosch proposes that agency can
be seen in the fact that images “constitute social relations
and identities as well as taking on regulating functions”
(Brosch, 2004, p. 63; translation ae).
My notion of images as instruments and agents of gov-
ernance draws on Brosch’s tension between ascription and
resistance. I concur with this tension Brosch identifies
when I argue that images are functionalized for processes
of economic and cultural transformation, but nonetheless
cannot be reduced to passive objects in the hands of politi-
cal subjects. Rather, images take on an agency function9
when becoming constitutive forces of (e.g., neoliberal)
relationships and subjectivities—or, alternately, when
becoming critical blockages. The term critical blockages
captures the idea that images do not necessarily affirm but
may also challenge the conditions of possibility of what
may be said or seen within a particular discourse, or even
provoke a break in a particular historical regime of images
(Eder, Oliver & Christina, 2014; Rancière, 2007; Schade &
Wenk, 2011).
Accordingly, it is methodologically more viable to see
those who produce and/or read images as carriers of an
agency function rather than seeing them as autonomous,
intentional subjects of strategies. Producers and readers of
images are constituted through social interactions—includ-
ing interactions with images (e.g., through projective inte-
gration). These producers and readers are involved in (re)
designing social situations, though they are never in full
control of this process. When taking part in ekphrastic read-
ings, producers and readers foster the social productivity of
images through creating an imaginary doubling of the
image through its—more or less careful, mediated, or men-
tal—description. Thus, two, if not three, four, five, or more
images result from an ekphrastic reading. These imaginary
multiplications of the image develop a potential for change,
as the imaginary doubling tends, as Brosch points out,
toward an “aesthetics of the performative” (Brosch, 2004,
p. 61). This means that while gaining authority and power
from repetition, the reproduction is never an exact copy, but
goes along with unexpected shifts and ruptures. Thus, polit-
ically, one needs to ask about the quality of these shifts.
Does a certain performative displacement of an image
transgress established normative orders and power rela-
tions, and if so, how?
Ekphrasis as Desiring Relation
According to queer theorist Elspeth Probyn (1996), desire
travels in images and images function as a means of trans-
port for desire: “These . . . images . . . work not in relation
to any supposed point of authenticity but in their transversal
343
movement, in the way they set up relational lines of desire”
(p. 60). These movements draw lines on the surfaces of the
social, reinforcing old trodden paths or initiating unex-
pected lines of flight, as she suggests following Gilles
Deleuze and Felíx Guattari (2009). Drawing consequences
from her critique of psychoanalytic interiority, which cap-
tures desire in the inner depths of the subject, she shifts
attention to bodies as images, and these images as transport-
ing desire. Correspondingly, it is no longer the object who
or which may satisfy desire; instead, desire becomes move-
ment. To figure out which directions desire takes, at which
speed it travels, and what kind of intensity it takes on, one
must look at the images that function as its means of trans-
port. The formal and aesthetic qualities of the images may
hook up with well-established imaginaries of dominant cul-
ture, as well as with idiosyncratic personal fantasies. Desire
may turn out to be normative, affirmative of the given
regime, or transformative. It may travel in conservative
images, which foster, for example, the moral righteousness
of the monogamous, heterosexual, reproductive couple.
However, desire may also disrupt established power rela-
tions. It may, for example, trouble the hierarchical subject-
desires-object constellation, or it may confront the formerly
controlled and controlling subject with the otherness of
itself.
To probe desire’s effects, one needs to analyze desire
along two different theoretical trajectories. In a Foucauldian
(1990) sense, we can analyze desire along the power/knowl-
edge and power/desire complexes that organize a particular
material-discursive field. In a Deleuzo-Guattarian (2009)
sense, we can analyze desire to figure out the processes of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization forming a partic-
ular assemblage. The questions are as follows: Can one rec-
ognize a transformation of power relations in a given social
field due to new connections drawn by an (audio)visual
piece? Does a redistribution of agency take place? Which
hierarchies are diagnosed and do they get steeper or lose
strength? Does rigid normativity transform into flexible
normalization? Who or what gains recognition? The point is
to ask these questions not in relation to the content of a par-
ticular cultural product, but to the contexts that this product
is circulating in, as well as the conditions of its production
and reception. This will become more concrete in the fol-
lowing reading practice.
Analyzing Modes of Addressing and Visual
Argumentation
Reading cushioned investment risk10. “Why are these people so
happy and gay?” asked an advertising headline I found in the
Gay Community News in Dublin in 2003 (Figure 2).11 The
double meaning of the term gay enables a form of targeted
advertising, which has been firmly established through new,
“culturally sensitive” methods in marketing catering to
344
Figure 2. Advertisement of Lifestyle Finance (2003), photographer: Unknown.
Source. Gay Community News, Dublin, November 2003, p. 38.
non-heterosexual and ethnicized consumers. The ad offers
real estate financing and praises attractive mortgage condi-
tions, and it does so through presenting a photograph of a
group of moustached males in tight, black leather shorts
swiveling cheerleader pompoms. The gently eroticized image
of male homosociality is combined with a little narrative
about Paul and Patrick, who have bought a house together.
The visual scene is staged on a public sports field, thus pro-
viding a legitimate setting for male bonding, which the ad
cheerfully and ironically camps up through the public display
of a hybrid mix of masculine embodiment and feminized
comportment and accessories. In contrast, the accompanying
text about the men promotes privacy and coupledom.
This advertisement creates a contradiction between its
visual and textual narrative. While the photograph presents
the public staging of an uncommon, gently sexualized
homoeroticism (bulging pants, no touch) beyond the every-
day, the accompanying text refers to petit-bourgeois values
of homeliness and coupledom: realizing the dream of your
own home in compliance with the ideals of austerity. The
text reads: “Paul and Patrick borrowed 150,000 Euro to pur-
chase a new house and pay only 133,96 per week.” The ad’s
headline connects (and promises to overcome) the tension
between the two dimensions: If there are subjects, like Paul
and Patrick, who know how to combine the different life-
styles, why can’t you, the reader, find an equally virtuosic
way of overcoming neoliberal tensions? Just try to be spe-
cial and yet very normal. Take a venture and a gamble, but
also be economically responsible. Show your individuality
Qualitative Inquiry 25(4)
but also your team spirit. The ad sets up the neoliberal poli-
tics of paradox: it activates the individual to make possible
the impossible and overcome or endure social inequalities
through the adequate employment of technologies of the
self (Foucault, 1988). It is exactly this contradiction between
the ad’s visual and textual message that makes this image
representative of neoliberal discourse.
The ad’s different forms of addressing indicate how con-
sensus production across divergent social groups is accom-
plished. The headline of the advertisement supports a
multiple address: “Why are these people so happy and
gay?” Built around an interpellative hail of “these people,”
the headline implies a distancing gesture on behalf of the
speaker (the speaker, here, is clearly not part of the group it
hails). Yet, this distancing question could equally have been
issued by a gay male speaker who would not be seen jump-
ing around in public in feminized masquerade (e.g., as a
cheerleader), or by a heterosexual speaker, male or female,
for whom the harmless hint to gayness allows a sympathiz-
ing proximity, without giving up the position of curiously
consuming the spectacle. In any case, the represented scene
is designed attractively: hetero-masculinity is not endan-
gered, thanks to the playful attitude; gayness is deployed in
such a way so as to combine subculture and domesticity; the
male or female heterosexual gaze may find voyeuristic
pleasure in the forbidden object; and lesbian femme_butch_
trans subjects may connect with the men via projective
identification. Thus, the advertisement functions through
addressing multiple audiences or contradictory traits within
Engel
a single reader who may use the image as a screen for pro-
jecting their respective desires (Engel, 2009). Double or
multiple addresses allow us to analyze which traditionally
divergent or even antagonistic groups are called into shar-
ing public space under the headline of market economy.
This process is, I argue, not without tension or ambiguity
and is built upon the mechanism of projective integration.
Analytically, it is revealing to ask about the visual argu-
ment made by this advertisement, an approach which com-
bines well with analyzing modes of addressing. Visual
argumentation is understood as a form of persuasion that
builds on a structure of “proposition—reason—conclusion”
that is inscribed into the visual material. This form of per-
suasion takes on the rhetorical form of enthymeme, a syllo-
gism where a premise is left out and must be filled by the
reader (Blair, 2004). One would then need to ask what
visual elements or aesthetic strategies are deployed to acti-
vate the particular “evocative power” (Blair, 2004, p. 51) of
an image, to understand how the unmentioned premise may
be taken for granted. In case of the cheerleading ad, the
premise of the ad, I contend, consists in setting up the lov-
ing couple in need of a home for its happiness as a universal
value that lies beyond sexual and cultural differences. The
argument the ad makes—that it is worth taking risks (in the
form of mortgage or kinkiness) to reach this ideal—becomes
persuasive as the figures depicted function as erotic spec-
tacle for various audiences. I would argue that such pro-
cesses of visual argumentation, which build on active
participation of the reader, are decidedly different from
what in Alexander and Bartmanski (2012) is called “iconic
power.” As Alexander and Bartmanski point out in their
introduction, icons provide “believer-friendly epiphanies
and customer-friendly images” (p. 2), they allow for a
“sense of participation” (Alexander & Bartmanski, 2012)
without demanding that the reader or user understands the
script or the arcanic code. Yet, as such icons nevertheless
function very well as what I call “agents of governmental-
ity,” exactly because of their material force and symbolic
power.
From Analytical to Transformative
Reading of Images
As the aim of this article is to understand the social produc-
tivity of images in the field as a force that does not only
affirm but also challenges discourses, the following sec-
tions ask about possible strategies of transformative read-
ing. The question is how interventions may simultaneously
acknowledge the power of images as well as audiences in
processes of meaning production, reception, and circula-
tion, rather than proposing one-dimensional agency or
undisturbed intentionality. As in the scope of this article I
have to limit myself, my focus will be mostly on processes
of reception. However, in principle, my interest in dynamics
345
of power and desire as constitutive forces in relations of
(audio-)visuality (or better, multimodality, Meier, 2011)
may also be extended to the production and circulation of
(visual) cultural material.12
Techniques of Transformative Reading
Activating images as agents makes use of a complex and
oscillating notion of the image as picture, metaphor, and
imagination. No matter whether one focuses on the form
and matter of a picture, on its verbal imagery, or on mental
imagination, a tension between cultural imaginaries and
personal fantasies plays out (Engel, 2009). By cultural
imaginaries, I mean the archive of images available at a cer-
tain time to a particular public. This archive is organized
according to certain rules, modes, and technologies of rep-
resentation, including a system of evaluation that installs
hierarchies. Kaja Silverman (1996) calls this the visual
field, governed by gaze, look, and screen; Teresa de Lauretis
(2007) suggests to distinguish public and private fantasies.
Personal fantasies are not beyond cultural imaginaries.
Nevertheless, they do not necessarily follow the rules of the
symbolic order, but instead are open for infringements,
irregularities, and inventions. Affects and emotions, sensa-
tions, and (possibly unconscious) wishes, desires, and fears
attach to normative discourses and symbolic orders. If one
understands fantasy as an imagination fueled by desire, as
psychoanalysis suggests, this would turn desire into an
ineluctable moment of (audio)visual culture and meaning
production. However, one would still need to designate how
desire attends to the formal characteristics and aesthetic
design of a particular (audio)visual piece—how desire
draws connections between the image and its context, and
possibly punctures or leaves its frame.
The punctum as a means of transport of desire. As I noted
previously, Barthes’s (2010) notion of the punctum is help-
ful in articulating how the social productivity of images
works. I will now discuss the punctum as a means of trans-
porting desire. In turning toward the punctum, one may be
able to develop a narration concerning the tension between
cultural imaginaries and personal fantasies or, more pre-
cisely, how personal fantasies make use of the punctum as
an escape route. Returning once more to the elderly dancing
couple of Sixtysomething, let’s fly away from the cultural
image of spinsters and widows toward a personal fantasy
(or perhaps a shared fantasy scenario). Let’s imagine a joint
practice and undefined future driven by the gaze of the
woman on the left, which leads her in another direction than
her free leg suggests. The woman on the right joins into the
twist by having her hand rest around her partner’s waist.
The punctum, here consisting in the contradictory direc-
tions of gaze and leg, is a detail that might be overseen by
many or most beholders, but functions as the subjective
346
motivation of the reading practice. While the punctum is
clearly not a product of the reader’s mind but an element
provided by the picture, it becomes the moment that ripples
and disrupts the more expectable interpretations of the pic-
ture that are gained from what Barthes calls the studium, the
study of formal elements and composition as well as histori-
cal and discursive contextualization. To foster a transforma-
tive tension, I either contrast or enforce the punctum issued
by the picture with a “gift” from my side: a creative textual/
lingual doubling of the image in form of an invented
headline.
A polysemic/paradoxical headline doubling the image. In
addition to desire traveling in the punctum, I suggest
assigning a polysemic and/or paradoxical headline to the
(audio)visual cultural product, thus having desire travel-
ing toward the image. The idea behind this technique of
queer intervention is to create a doubling of the image not
through careful description (ekphrasis) but rather through
a forceful act. It is not important that the headline is a
friendly support to or mirroring of the cultural product, but
that it opens up meaning and provides an entering device
for discourses or theoretical notions that might hijack the
image from its established place (Engel, 2009). Riffing on
Brosch’s characterization of ekphrasis, the headline might
be the occasion for a power struggle to develop, activating
the agency function of the image. In my book, I chose the
headline of “The Demure Dance” for the bank advertise-
ment that uses Dopitová’s photograph. Here, I am aiming
for a double provocation. The headline lays bare what is
expected from the women, who stand in allegorically for
Eastern European political economies: namely, to
demurely submit to a capitalist takeover. The headline also
motivates the reader to form a coalition with aesthetic ele-
ments of the picture to rebel against the de-eroticizing dis-
empowerment of the dance. For the cheerleading guys, I
have suggested “Cushioned Investment Risk” (Abgefeder-
tes Investitionsrisiko), thus drawing an ironic connection
between the contradictory dimensions of the advertise-
ment. With the use of the adjective “cushioning,” I inter-
twine the pillowy pompoms of the photograph with the
investment appeal of the text, making explicit the implicit
paradox of an advertisement that promises a home and
security while simultaneously fostering the neoliberal
strategy of privatization of risk in that it promotes taking
out individual mortgages.
The idea of offering headlines is by no means a tech-
nique of typologizing, which would stand in stark contrast
to queer critique of categories, but on the contrary supports
the singularity of each reading as non-normative desiring
relation. Which brings me to the third method of queer
intervention in the intermediate processes of producing,
reading, and circulating (audio)visual cultural products:
revealing omissions and unspoken agreements.
Qualitative Inquiry 25(4)
Revealing omissions and unspoken agreements. The examples
of headlines I suggest above show how unspoken (eco-
nomic, political, and cultural) discourses that underlie the
advertisements can be explicated, and how this can be done
through simultaneously revealing how gender and sexual
premises organize the political dimensions of the visual cul-
tural material. The gendered, sexual, and erotic imagery in
both advertisements helps to conceal the images’ economic
ideology. However, it is the reader’s work of queer sexual-
ization that fosters a subversive social productivity of
images, and may possibly redirect the viewer’s gaze. This
queer sexualization calls attention to the role of gender,
sexuality, and desire in constituting the hegemonic agree-
ments to forms of governance and modes of oppression and
exploitation. Therefore, on the practical level of reading
strategies, one is advised to find ways of making the unspo-
ken speakable without reproducing stereotypical imagery.
Here, it seems particularly important to critically assess rac-
ist, sexist, classist, heteronormative, and ablebodied imag-
ery, and to open up space for transgender embodiments and
non-normative desires hidden in the depiction or invited by
the context of its presentation.
Queer Reading as Visual Analysis and
Cultural Politics
Intertwining conceptual and methodological consider-
ations, the final chapter of this article poses the question:
What can visual and cultural analysis gain from understand-
ing reading and interpretation as a pleasurable, joyful, lusty,
and desiring power struggle? The methods and techniques
of reading presented here are part of a field of queer cultural
politics, employed in academic as much as in activist con-
texts. Queer cultural politics foster the power of resignifica-
tion. They drive discriminatory language and regimes of
normalcy into processes of denormalization and equivoca-
tion. Instead of striving for “positive” images, which prom-
ise visibility, recognition, or “truthful” representation but
inevitably produce new exclusions and homogenizing
inclusions, queer cultural politics support ambiguities and
polysemic articulations that provide space for difference
beyond a logic of categorization (Engel, 2011).
I call my own reading practice a power-sensitive, desiring,
in short, engaged ekphrasis. In addition to Brosch, I not only
ask about power dynamics but also about desiring relations
that unfold when producing, reading, writing about, curating,
or otherwise working together with images (Engel, 2009). To
create space for the image, I rely on an attitude that strives to
talk with rather than about the image (Dorrance & Engel,
2012). Furthermore, I understand myself as being part of the
image, that is, residing in an assemblage of images, bodies,
signs, affects, and objects that form a more or less dynamic
network that is in constant change due to processes of pro-
duction, reception, and circulation. Acknowledging the
Engel
intermediacy or mutual involvement of images, texts, and
readers fosters the reflexivity of the research process as well
as the potential of images as agents contributing to the trans-
formation of theoretical knowledge and political discourses.
Discourses Entering the Image, Images Meddling
With Discourses
To actively inhabit this assemblage—to play out desiring
agency—I draw connections between images and dis-
courses (see 1.4 / 2.2). This takes place through looking for
entrance points, that is, formal elements of the cultural
product, and through concatenating these entrance points to
discursive elements. The resulting chain becomes the start-
ing point for a theoretical or political argument, which more
and more intertwines (audio)visual and textual elements.
The transport works in both directions: discourses entering
the picture and the picture meddling with the discourse.
Concepts derived from theories (academic or popular) may
very well function as hybrid hinges: they often take on the
form of a verbal image or metaphor while also functioning
as constitutive part of a discourse. Thus, agency cannot be
easily designated to one side or the other. In case of the
dancing elderly women, Bhabha’s notion of unhomeliness
would be such a hybrid candidate. In case of the real estate
advertisement, my new headline—“Cushioned Investment
Risk”—could turn into such a hybrid agent, if one were to
develop a theoretical model inspired by the visual material.
As mentioned before, the analysis of modes of addressing
and visual argumentation (see 3.3) are particularly suited for
understanding the role of imagery in interpellating beholders
into regimes of governance, for example, neoliberal indi-
vidualization, privatized responsibility, and managing pre-
carity. Both modes function through actively involving the
audience. Each audience member, each single beholder, is
expected to participate in the production of meaning. This
kind of active involvement is characteristic of the contempo-
rary/neoliberal deployment of the individual in upholding
relations of power and domination through consensus and
affirming action. Rather than submitting the whole popula-
tion to a singular norm or horizon of value, which would
wipe out or negate differences, diversity politics appeal to
each of us to present our differences and particularities as
supporting capitalist utilization. Projective integration is the
term I offer for this form of deploying difference as cultural
capital—I built this theoretical concept out of my ekphrastic
engagement with imagery that carried elements of, or offered
entrance points into, queer and neoliberal discourses.
Deducing a Theoretical Concept: Queer Politics
of Paradox
In these research fields as much as in queer cultural politics,
strategies of unfolding ambiguities and paradoxes are
347
methodologically productive: In my previous book Wider die
Eindeutigkeit (Against Unambiguity; Engel, 2002), I sug-
gested a queer strategy of equivocation or undisambiguation
as a means of disrupting heteronormativity in particular and
regimes of normalcy in general (see also Engel, 2006).
However, I was also already problematizing neoliberal forms
of embracing ambiguity, ambivalence, and polysemy. Later,
through carefully reading the deployment of visual material
in queer and neoliberal discourses, I refined the strategy of
equivocation into a queer politics of paradox (Engel, 2009).
The idea is now to make use of paradoxes as simultaneously
logical, rhetorical, psychic, and political figures to initiate an
endless dynamic of circular tension that can be either strate-
gically accentuated into antagonism or softened into ambigu-
ity. Here, a difference between ambiguities and paradoxes is
made productive: while ambiguities indicate a permanent
shift in meaning—an unfixability and impossibility of clo-
sure—the paradox is an agonistic figure that points out what
is irreconcilable but reconciles them anyway (Engel, 2013).
Even if paradoxes can never be fixed, thanks to the contradic-
tory simultaneity of “neither/nor” and “as well as,” there are
nevertheless definable elements of paradoxes. Therefore, the
paradox pushes a strategy of equivocation that destabilizes
normative identity constructions and binaries into an agonis-
tic struggle.
Rhetorically, the paradox also results from combining
incongruous strategies of inversion and ironic euphemism.
As such, it is mimicking on an aesthetic level what is also a
question of political strategy: does one more effectively
change relations of domination by occupying available roles
of the hegemonic order and claiming their power or by
deprivileging or decentering dominant positions and under-
mining the principles of identity and categorical differentia-
tion that underlie these positions? In not answering but rather
raising this question, queer cultural production and reading
strategies become sites of political struggle. As such, para-
doxes are the ideal candidates to explore the social productiv-
ity of images as instruments and agents of governmentality—be
they neoliberal or queer. This article, I hope, offers some use-
ful methods, reading strategies, and modes of mutual engage-
ment between images, readers, texts, and contexts to foster a
playful power struggle between neoliberal and/or queer ele-
ments in the fields of (audio)visual production. These are all
tools that can help challenge the hegemonic discourses that
govern cultural as well as sociopolitical life.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
348 Qualitative Inquiry 25(4)

Notes Materiality and meaning in social life: Toward an iconic

turn in sociology (pp. 1-12). Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave
1. The photograph has originally been produced as part of the
Macmillan.
project Something (2003), a series of four short videos; the
Babka, A., & Hochreiter, S. (Eds.). (2008). Queer Reading in den
one referred to by the photograph called A Dance (2001, sin-
Philologien: Modelle und Anwendungen [Queer reading in
gle channel video, 12 min). It has been shown in poster-size
philology]. Wien, Austria: Vienna University Press.
and color in 2005 at Siri Svestka Gallery, Prague.
Barthes, R. (2010). Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography
2. They might even be read as indicators of a Zeitdiagnose
(R. Howard, Trans.). New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
(diagnosis of the times), which I am tying in by confronting
Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. London, England:
them with my thesis that processes of social integration cur-
Routledge.
rently take a particular form, that I call projective integration.
Blair, A. (2004). The rhetoric of visual argument. In M. Helmers
Although, this is a special case and not necessary for under-
& C. A. Hill (Eds.), Definiting visual rethorics (pp. 41-61).
standing and making use of power-sensitive desiring ekphra-
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
sis as a social science method.
Bröckling, U. (2007). Das unternehmerische Selbst: Soziologie
3. For an extended exploration of aims, modes, and methods of
einer Subjektivierungsform [The entrepreneurial self: A
queer reading, see Babka and Hochreiter (2008).
sociology of modes of subjectivation]. Frankfurt am Main,
4. See 4.1.1 for the choice of this headline.
Germany: Suhrkamp.
5. I have developed this concept in critical engagement
Brosch, R. (2004). Die “gute” Ekphrasis: Grenzgänge der
with Hentschel (2007) and Holert (2000, 2008). See also
Repräsentation [“Good” Ekphrasis: Border crossings of
Mayerhauser (in Maasen, Mayerhauser, & Renggli, 2006),
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6. See Lorey, 2015, for a distinction of precarity, precarious-
Germany: Trafo.
ness, and precarization, the latter a process of neoliberal
Cassin, B. (2014). Dictionary of untranslatables: A philosophical
governance that seduces people into submitting to individu-
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alized management of precarity through creating states of
de Lauretis, T. (2007). Public and private fantasies in David
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Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly. In T. De Lauretis (Ed.), Figures of
7. For processes of normalization, see Link, 1998, who, in col-
resistance: Essays in feminist theory (pp. 118-148). Urbana:
laboration with Margarete and Siegfried Jäger (Duisburger
University of Illinois Press.
Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung) also provides meth-
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2009). Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and
odological considerations on linguistic discourse analysis of
schizophrenia. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
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Derrida, J. (2005). The politics of friendship (G. Collins, Trans.).
8. See also Bröckling (2007); N. Rose (1999); and Traue (2010).
London, England: Verso.
9. Brosch uses the English term agency in her German article
Dorrance, J., & Engel, A. (2012). (Ed.). Bossing images: The
and speaks of an “agency-Funktion,” which I try to capture
power of images, queer art, and politics / Macht der Bilder,
in my translation (instead of speaking of an agentic function).
queere Kunst und Politik. Berlin, Germany: NGBK
For the linguistic difficulties of the term agency, see Cassin
Eder, F., Oliver, K., & Christina, L. (Eds.). (2014). Bilder in
(2014).
historischen Diskursen [Images in historical discourse].
10. See 4.1.1 for the choice of this headline.
Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.
11. The Gay Community News (GCN), founded in 1988 and
Engel, A. (2002). Wider die Eindeutigkeit.Sexualität und
based in Dublin, is distributed over Ireland, South and North
Geschlecht im Fokus queerer Politik der Repräsentation
with an approximate readership of 33.000. GNC can be seen
[Against unambiguity: Gender, sexuality, and queer politics
as one of the typical free lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-
of representation]. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus.
gender (LGBT) publications delivered in mayor cities around
Engel, A. (2006). A queer strategy of equivocation: The destabili-
Europe as means of providing visibility, making political
claims, and providing information on cultural activities. sation of normative heterosexuality and the rigid binary gen-
12. See also Schmid (2011) on reading desire to understand the der order. Interalia: A Journal of Queer Studies, 1. Retrieved
politics of the production and reception of images. Traue from http://www.interalia.org.pl/en/artykuly/2006_1/02_a_
(2013) draws attention to the fact that contemporary forms of queer_strategy_of_equivocation.htm
image production and circulation grow more and more from Engel, A. (2007). No sex, no crime, no shame: Privatized care and
autodidactic and practical visual and media compentences, the seduction into responsibility. NORA—Nordic Journal of
with the effects that self-organized groups actively position Feminist and Gender Research, 15, 114-132.
Engel, A. (2009). Bilder von Sexualität und Ökonomie: queere
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Author Biography
Antke Engel is director of the Institute for Queer Theory in Berlin
(http://www.queer-institut.de). She received her PhD in philoso-
phy at Potsdam University in 2001, and has since then worked as
independent scholar, lecturer, and visiting professor in the fields
of queer, feminist and poststructuralist theory, political philoso-
phy, and visual cultural studies. Apart from the visiting professor-
ships at Hamburg University (2003/2005), at Vienna University
(2011), the Alice Salomon University Berlin (2016), and the TU
Darmstadt (2018/2019), she has been a senior research fellow at
the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI-Berlin, 2007-2009), and at
the Gender Institute of the London School of Economics and
Politics (2017/2018), she has published widely on political theory,
sexual politics, the intersection of sexuality and economy, as well
as visual culture and media art, including the two monographs:
Wider die Eindeutigkeit (transcript 2002) and Bilder von Sexualität
und Ökonomie (Campus 2009). Also she co-edited Global Justice
and Desire: Queering Economy (Routledge 2015) and Hegemony
and Heteronormativity: Revisiting “The Political” in Queer
Politics (Ashgate 2011).