Talk by Benjamin Hegarty, medical anthropologist, Senior Research associate at Kirby Institute, UNSW Syndey, Research afiliate at Oxford University, and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (FIAS program), as part of the academic workshop organised by the Schwules Museum Berlin and the Freie Universität of Berlin.

Onsite event, closed to the public.
Workshop in English.

Presentation

Experimentations with pharmaceutical substances cradle queer potential – bodies and organisms transform, relations shift, emotions swell or fade into quietude. With capacities to intervene in life’s processes, drugs and medicines are not merely products of ‘Big Pharma,’ but agents of uncanny possibility. How might we imagine minor ‘pharmas’ in tension with or on the margins of the dominance, epitomized by the capitalized ‘Big’? Taking Queer Pharma as a counterpoint, this workshop invites submissions that ethnographically engage with uncertainties and improvisations in experimenting with bodies, substances, and affects – whether through drug use or other pharmaceutical practices (Race 2009, 2018). What new material and affective constellations might emerge if we were to focus on experimentation as a queer practice?

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