A Queer Approach to Illness in the Experimental Films of Barbara Hammer

Abstract

Since the 1970s, Barbara Hammer has been known for experimental films that recount and explore the lesbian experience through the body. Her extensive filmography also includes films that deal with illness, aging, and mortality. Especially notable are her films informed by the HIV epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, and by her ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2006. This article offers a comparative analysis of six of Hammer’s films that explore illness, taking a phenomenological and biopolitical approach to the images she presents to the viewer. The article concludes that Hammer’s somatic, tactile, and kinesthetic filmmaking approach establishes an affective and therapeutic queer gaze on the diseased body, de-pathologizing and de-instrumentalizing it in the cinematic medium.