Dirty Dragging

The concept of dirty dragging allegorizes on both the ambivalence of ‘dirty’ and ‘drag’/dragging to reformulate queer theoretical reflections on drag from a transoceanic perspective, and explores different mimetic practices in view of their contexts or histories of political violence. Evelyn Annuß thus expands the reading of drag as gender bending to include perspectives on blackface and ‘racialized drag’. Accordingly, she interrogates both violent, locally situated performative transgressions and the entanglement of queer and creolized resistance against identitarian divide and rule – a reminder of the potential joy in collectively bringing societal conditions to dance despite and against the current political backlash.