Re-reading sexuality as a life-practice: a conversation between Peter Banki and Nikó Antalffy

Taking as its point of departure Christine Beasley's provocation that heterosexuality has been addressed in scholarly literature as something that is "nasty, boring and normative" (Beasley et al. 2012), this conversation inquires into whether there may be alternative forms of heterosexuality both from point of view of queerness and polyamory. If, as Elizabeth Grosz (1994) argues, "homosexual relations and lifestyles...seep into and infiltrate the very self-conceptions of what it is to be heterosexual", we ask under what conditions it may be permissible to speak of a 'queer heterosexuality': one that would not "reinforce the very regimes of the normal" (Thomas 2009)? And to what extent polyamory (even if heterosexual) may put into question heteronormativity and patriarchal power relations? The specificity of our contribution to these debates is that we have dared to mix together academic research with autobiographical narration and reflection. We have done so with an awareness of the theoretical difficulties that such a gesture entails (See de Man 1983, Derrida 2000). Because such debates relate quite directly to how we read our intimate lives and fantasies, we have felt it not inappropriate in this context to speak of them, without being assured in advance of the legitimacy and interest of such a risk.