Celebrity Influences In Queer Spaces

Unpacking the affect of Necropolitics on the example of Roisin Murphy

Academic analysis often focuses on power dynamics between dominant and subordinate groups, which is crucial for understanding the factors that keep minorities in a subordinate position. The media, celebrities, and the online realm play significant roles in perpetuating the dominant culture's objectives. By framing marginalised groups as different or dangerous, the state can commodify their lives, reinforcing subordination for profit. This exploitation legitimises ridiculing their trauma as the dominant group maintains its superior position through territorial acquisition, economic control, and political agendas, using laws and policies to justify prolonging or ending lives.

In this text, we will first discuss ethics and how the asymmetrical power positions between dominant and subordinate cultures create flawed discourses leading to inequality. Drawing on Foucault's concept of Biopower, I will demonstrate how the state employs the human body and race as instruments to justify actions against perceived threats to the mainstream population. Later in the text, I will elucidate how traditional mechanisms and the notion of sovereignty reassert themselves over minority groups using the theorist’s framework.

Secondly, the case study of Irish singer Roisin Murphy will be brought into the discussion. Her position within the community will be discussed, drawing on media resources that exemplify her fame and self-identification with the LGBTQ+ community to explain her popular position. Additionally, we will explore how Murphy's art and presence in the scene had an affective power of togetherness for LGBTQ+ people, fostering a sense of belonging and solidarity within the community.

Finally, the essay will address the singer's recent controversy opposing trans-affirming care and analyse its impact on the transgender (TG) community. Using Foucault's biopower and Mbembe's necropolitics, I will explore power dynamics, including the intersection of race and gender identity. This examination reveals how Murphy's actions inadvertently harmed the LGBTQ+ community and strengthened laws and policies targeting TG individuals. The conclusion reflects on community movements and figures like Murphy in shaping social discourse.

Intercultural Ethics and Biopower

Deciding whether a person should live or die is a highly controversial and ethical issue that raises significant debates about power dynamics between cultures and questions the structures of interacting contexts. Who has the authority to make such decisions, and why? The interaction between cultures is a balancing act of benefit and equality, often leading to the subordination of one and the dominant assertion of another. Ting-Toomey (2011) provided an example of how this process can be understood regarding the concept of ethics. Ethical considerations are seldom straightforward by having one culture define what is ethical for them and assert this understanding over the other culture. When dealing with ethical issues, the complexity often increases due to the reciprocity between global standards—usually dictated by Western norms—and local underrepresented communities.

If this reciprocity is not equalised between cultures, the imbalanced dynamic will prevent effective communication and recognition of the less privileged, ignore disparities, and lead to severe real-life consequences for people. However, these standards conflict with minority realities, as they are grounded in particular communities' specific cultural, social, and historical contexts. Therefore, leading to confusion and difficulty in determining whether ethics are 'culture-bound' (p.335) understandings or if they are to be constituted separately within various contexts. Thus, globalised Western cultural standards are generally accepted rules or principles that include some but exclude others who do not align with these expectations (Rosenmann, 2016). This intercultural reciprocity, therefore, must involve proportionate giving and taking between parties for mutual benefit to produce parity. Yet, often, one culture dictates the ethics which produce these benefits, leaving the less dominant culture enabled or disabled in their privileges (Khan, 2021). In other words, the intended motivations of one culture toward another can overshadow the crucial and necessary dialogue needed to foster true equality between them. 

By imposing foreign ethics onto TG people who do not conform to them through laws and policies, these groups' existence is condemned. Consequentially, this leads to their lives ending, either directly or indirectly. Therefore, these actions need to be executed subtly so that the underlying life-dictating agendas do not become apparent (Caravaca-Morera & Padilha, 2018). To understand these measures, careful examination is necessary to expose tropes that lead to these lethal repercussions for minorities (Lewis et al., 2024; Spade, 2016). Examining the potential conflict between two cultures—where the dominant state exerts control over individuals under the guise of cultivation—and recognising the dangerous effects of these necro dynamics through these imbalanced discourses, Foucault's (2004) perspective on biopower offers an ideal foundation for further exploration. The theorist argues that the biological (the physical individual) has become a means for the state to rule over. He proposes to view the state as sovereign, like from days past, who ruled over their subjects and held the power to prolong their life or end it. As such, the subject becomes ‘neutral’ (p.240), which means that the individual does not have agency over themselves as their life can only make sense within the ethics dictated by the sovereign to maintain their culture. Foucault explains that the parameters for individual existence, under the sovereign, evolved from a monolithic understanding which focused on the body of a person to a ‘massifying’ process centred around all ‘man-as-species’ (p.243), which he coined biopolitics/biopower. 

The essence of these politics is built on the potential threat to a population posed by epidemics, which endanger both fertility and overall health. Furthermore, Foucault defines morbidity as an endemic posing a permanent severe illness that presents a lasting danger to society. This condition, viewed as difficult to 'eradicate' (p.244), must be addressed for society to function in a manner that benefits the sovereign. This ongoing threat to the mainstream population (and the sovereign) weakens societal productivity and incurs high costs due to the expensive treatments required. Thus, it lies in the state's interest to maintain a healthy population to their standards by using biopolitics to monitor the medicalisation and the personal reciprocity between humans to legitimise any interventions needed to control people based on their biology. To later exemplify how biopower influences politics and to understand the impact on minority communities I will first turn to the case study of Roisin Murphy.

She was part of our safe space

The Irish singer Roisin Murphy initially entered the music industry as the front singer of the band Moloko. The musical duo had a nameable career, with their most famous hit singles The Time Is Now and Sing It Back Bring It Back being featured on television and radio stations to this day. Following the band's dissolution, the Irish singer pursued a solo career. Through releasing several solo albums, her rise to fame, significantly supported by the LGBTQ scene, is further evidenced by her self-identification as a gay icon (Pires, 2018). The singer has also imprinted herself into the community by identifying herself and her appearance as drag (Levine, 2023; Damshenas, 2014), associating herself and her art directly with transness (Dougherty, 2017; Greaf, 2016). In an article published by the Irish Times (Murphy, 2020), the singer elaborates on her transition from being a member of Moloko to venturing into a solo career. Murphy underlines her deep connection towards the queer scene, comparing performing at Paris gay clubs to the feeling of coming home to a place where she was seen as a queen (Johnston, 2020). The artist is, therefore, not only accepted by the scene but also celebrated and has since become an Icon for LGBTQ+ people, who form her main audience and the artist capitalises on. An example of this advocation was her 2009 appearance at the Life Ball in Vienna, where she performed the hit The Time Is Now. The Life Ball, Europe's biggest charity event for HIV & AIDS, has been a flag holder for the LGBTQ+ community, including transgender people. For example, famously featuring TG model and drag icon Carmen Carrera fully exposed pre-surgery on the Lifeball poster photographed by David LaChapelle.

It is important to note that Murphy seldom took any verbal political stance during her performances. However, Murphy's presence at events like the Lifeball and her constant immersion in the queer scene not only 'makes absolute sense' (Levine, 2020) to the artist but must be seen as an advocation for the community due to her global celebrity, as any endorsement can be non-verbal (Barojan, 2022). Exemplified through music videos like Movistar, featuring a star-studded array of London drag queens and queer celebrities like Jodie Harsh and Theo Adams. Murphy's iconic fashion, crafted by queer designers like Gareth Pugh, Pam Hogg, Alexander McQueen, and Camilla Damkjaer, exemplifies her deep connection to queer culture. Damkjaer's 'Gendermess' suit, a highlight of Murphy's 2019 tour (Davidson, 2019), was also featured in an editorial for Clash magazine, where Murphy posed in her gender-fluid designs (Hill, 2021), showcases how she fully embraced and thrived through the vibrant queer scene.

Artists like Murphy, who not only inspire the queer movement but support it through their presence, become a part of a safe space for minorities and contribute to the affect on individuals within the queer movement. Vukov (2003) explains that affect refers to the collective sensations, resonances, and intensities that circulate socially 'between and among' (p.339) individuals, shaping the overall emotional atmosphere of a community. Unlike specific emotions, which are personal and subjective experiences, affect is less defined and more communal. It contains the shared feelings, moods and traumas that arise from interactions and accumulate to form the social setting of everyday life as it unfolds. Thus, in a society governed predominantly by heterosexual, middle-class white men, the need for safe spaces supported and enforced by artists like Roisin Murphy becomes apparent due to the high scrutiny LGBTQ+ individuals face who differ from what is deemed acceptable in Western society. As such, Murphy's advocation for this community set forth a personal trust between her and the community.

Roisin Murphy and Necropolitics: 

The Intersection of Celebrity and Trans Rights

 

In September 2023, Roisin   Murphy's sixth solo album was set for release. However, a few weeks prior, a Facebook comment from her private profile surfaced. The comment was made under a post advocating for the banning of trans-affirming care for youth with body dysmorphia (Figure 1). This sparked a significant online debate among her fans, many of whom are TG, and ignited intense discussions between the LGBTQ+ community and anti-trans supporters who rallied behind Murphy's viewpoint. A few days later, Murphy issued a statement on her Instagram stories and X (Figure 2), pleading to separate the art from the artist. She emphasised that people should focus on her music and its message of love, suggesting that her personal opinions should be seen as secondary to her work. Despite her attempt to reconnect by expressing pride in her audience and using the language of the LGBTQ+ community, her efforts appeared to overshadow her clear stance against the TG community. Interestingly, in her statement, Murphy does not see herself as an activist for the community, although her entire career and identity as an artist are built around the LGBTQ+ experience, as argued in the previous section. Furthermore, Murphy's argument that administering puberty blockers is dangerous for 'little mixed-up kids' (Figure 1) ties into previously discussed views on ethical perspectives. By aligning with the anti-TG lobby's stance that gender-affirming care for minors is unethical. Murphy, even if arguably unwillingly, not only endorses anti-trans tropes but also serves as a mouthpiece for these views. As I have mentioned in the previous section of this text, Foucault argues that biopolitics targets various threats, one being the temporary threat of epidemics and the other, more serious, the permanent threat of endemics and illnesses.

Theorist Archille Mbembe (2008) builds on Foucault's concept of Biopower, arguing that his viewpoint leads to necropolitics. Though Mbembe’s analysis does not specifically include gendered experiences, there are academic works which link the author’s concepts to queer theory (Dutta, 2015) and use it to describe how necropolitics are gendered (Islekel, 2022) by focusing on one of the main trajectories of the author, the state using emergency as an excuse to correct nationalism. To place this understanding into the context of the TG experience, it is crucial to understand that the state sees TG people as a deviation from a traditional Western binary gender model; they are categorised as morbidity, an infection to the healthy society (McHugh, 2015; Raymond, 1994). This state of emergency creates a hostile environment where the very existence of TG people is politicised, and their lives are rendered disposable. By applying Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics to the TG experience, we can better understand the lethal implications of state-sanctioned violence and neglect, highlighting the intersection of necropolitics with gender identity.

Keeping the notion of Western ethics in mind, the state can forcefully obstruct access to medication, leading to enhanced mental stress (Mallory et al., 2023; Mao & Wirtz, 2023) and subjecting TG people to fatal scrutiny through laws and policies (Brightman et al., 2024) to protect the fertility and the production value of the population this illness must be eradicated. I argue that the state implements measures against TG people under the guise of protecting the nation's heterosexual orientation and fertility, which are allegedly in a state of emergency due to the interpreted threat from the TG community, with celebrities like Murphy and the media perpetuating this viewpoint. From the Foucauldian stand, Murphy, therefore, represents the dominant state's (the sovereign) stance in promoting the notion that TG individuals are an illness and, consequently, must be cured by any means necessary.

Taking these factors into account, Mbembe & Corcoran’s (2019) argument gains validity as they highlight the intense stress experienced by minorities forced to live in environments that exclude them. This persistent harassment and marginalisation by the general population, exacerbated by state policies, effectively places minorities in a state of gradual death. This raises the question of how deeply Roisin Murphy truly understands and aligns with the realities of the queer community, especially when her stance on basic gender-affirming care for TG people has fueled a life-threatening discourse for this minority community. Despite this, she appeared to mock the situation just days later on her social media account, and although she initially stated that she would 'bow out of the conversation', she soon doubled down with a comedic approach (Figure 3; Figure 4). Was her involvement in the community genuine or merely performative? In a cisgender, heterosexual society, trans and queer identities are often viewed as exotic because they do not conform to binary norms. According to Hall (1997), the most ‘sophisticated’ form of modern advertising involves indulging in a new economic power that thrives on cultural difference and continuously entices itself with the allure of the ‘transgressive other’ to capitalise from their realities. Suggesting that Murphy's access to the queer community might be more about leveraging its perceived exoticism for personal gain rather than a heartfelt commitment to their struggles and needs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is essential to acknowledge the dual impact of Roisin Murphy's actions on the LGBTQ+ community. Firstly, her deep involvement in queer culture made her coming out as a TERF particularly painful. Secondly, her stance against the TG community has aligned her with far-right and anti-trans perspectives. These views see TG individuals as both a biological threat to societal health and a moral threat to the rigid gender binary imposed by the dominant cis-heterosexual state, thus advocating for their eradication. The anti-trans movement now co-opts Murphy's influential position within the LGBTQ+ community and uses her as an example to justify their measures against TG individuals.

Communities can use the affective power of togetherness and pride to unite and drive resistance against mainstream oppression, but they can also wield it to unite against a cause. Transgender exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) thus promote necropolitics as a unifying force against the TG community. They weaponise the trauma that women experience under patriarchal systems against trans women, perceiving them as men who perpetuate this trauma. Furthermore, by doing so, TERFs align themselves with a system that fundamentally does not support women's rights—in turn, doing the bidding of the sovereign and benefiting the state in two ways: by using necropolitics to eliminate threats to a healthy cis-binary population structurally and by exploiting the internalised identity conflicts within the feminist movement itself. Consequently, TG individuals face compounded threats to their existence from both the state and the dominant community at large.

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