yuri theory: a workbook
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| Title: | yuri theory: a workbook |
| Creator: | tshirt |
| Date(s): | Feb 2024 |
| Medium: | print, online |
| Fandom: | Yuri Fandom |
| Topic: | Yuri |
| External Links: | in Yaoi Zine Vol. 3 (PDF) |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
yuri theory: a workbook is an essay written by tshirt and published in the third volume of Yaoi Zine, which was themed "Yuri Zine." As the title suggests, it is formatted as a workbook; the reader is meant to answer prompts with pen and paper in order to facilitate their development of their own theory of yuri. In the author's words:
i want to join other theorists who talk about yuri in its own terms. to collectively develop a grammar of yuri, that’s different from just “manga with women and their relationships with each other."
Some Topics Discussed
- What does it mean to say everything is yuri?
- Yuri, pleasure, and Freudian psychoanalysis
- Iori Miyazawa's thoughts on spectatorship vs. self-insertion
- Miyazawa's theory of "strong yuri" and "weak yuri"
- What kind of "gaze" is at play in yuri?
Excerpts
we see in miyazawa’s yuri theories a tension between the simultaneously dehumanizing and humanizing processes that yuri acts upon him.
it is dehumanizing because i the observer am less than human;
it is humanizing because i the writer become human.
is the fantasy of yuri about finding a way to become a person, when you don’t feel like one?
or is the fantasy of yuri the fantasy of a euphoric nonexistence outside of lesbianism (that is, existing only within it)? or both—or neither?
can we imagine a woman who looks at other woman? who simultaneously objectifies and identifies? (so this gaze is twofold: a present gendered observer, with identification/attraction to the gendered object)
now, this is basically the oft-repeated “do i want her or want to be her?” that people throw around a lot. or, rephrased in blakey vermeule’s words, “how do i ‘do’ her?” is this identity play what yuri can come down to?
i don’t want to reduce the question of whether a yuri gaze exists down to simply whether a lesbian gaze exists, though. i think maybe the question i’m really trying to ask here is, as my friend daffy phrased it:
how do lesbians fit into yuri?
A. looking
B. participating
C. objectifying
D. absenting themselves
E. all of the above