Intimate attunements: Everyday affect in Sydney’s drag king scene

Abstract

For over a decade, attending events featuring drag king performances—a subcultural phenomenon where women consciously perform masculinity—proved a popular pastime in Sydney, Australia. Established within a broader tradition of live performance culture but also part of a wider urban night-time economy catering to lesbian patrons, Sydney’s drag king scene sustained a range of activities and interactions that took place in the vicinity of the performances on stage. In this article, I draw on data collated from a series of group discussions with scene participants, alongside my own immersive form of participation over a sustained five-year period, to review the role of affect within the drag king scene. Combining Lauren Berlant’s account of queer intimacies with Kathleen Stewart’s rendering of atmospheric attunement, I consider how the act of being together engenders an intimate attunement of the everyday potentialities of the scene.