Queer documentary : parodic premise and the subjectification of the insider outsider or how to do (queer) things with reflexive and performative strategies

This dissertation explores the reflexive and performative practices found in Mocha Jean Herrup's documentary work, POM, LESBIANFILM, and A FEW GOOD DYKES. By exploiting realism's failure to ever fully represent, reflexive and performative techniques enable a queer discourse. These techniques create 1) a parodic premise that calls attention to the disjunction between documentary's legitimizing conventions and queer as a viable subject, 2) a subjectification of the insider-outsider that troubles distinctions between the audience and the subject and the filmmaker and the subject, and 3) enables the embodied knowledge of queer subjectivity to emerge.