{"id":480,"date":"2015-02-18T22:19:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T03:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=480"},"modified":"2015-02-19T13:31:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T18:31:56","slug":"brother-sestra-the-queer-family-space-in-orphan-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2015\/02\/18\/brother-sestra-the-queer-family-space-in-orphan-black\/","title":{"rendered":"“Brother-Sestra”: the Queer Family Space in Orphan Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cQueer uses of time and space develop\u2026in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction. They also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification\u201d (Halberstam 1).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Halberstam\u2019s articulation of queer time and space here reframes queerness as a state of existence, one that seeks to transgress the linear path toward Hetero Happiness. Although seemingly complex, queer space and time are concepts present and identifiable in contemporary fiction. Orphan Black<\/em><\/a>, released in 2013 by BBC America, is a show that follows the struggles of a group of clones to reclaim their bodies and their personal freedoms from the corporation that created them, with focus on a clone named Sarah whose backstory includes time spent in foster care. Sarah is both a clone and an orphan, someone who lacks access to her biological parents\u2014and thus capacity to be a \u201cdaughter\u201d in the traditional sense\u2014and also has an unconventional yet still significant connection to the other clones who literally share her DNA. Orphan Black<\/em> engages with Halberstam\u2019s conception of queer space and time in how its characters create their own queer family identities, ones that still foster community and connection without any origins in normative family spaces.<\/p>\n

Although most of the clones inhabit the queer family space in their reference to one another as \u201csisters,\u201d it is actually a non-clone, Felix, who exists in perhaps the queerest family space in the show. As Sarah\u2019s foster brother he has no \u201clegitimate\u201d familial relation to her, yet Sarah fiercely defends his status as family whenever its legitimacy is questioned. When her clone-sister Helena behaves aggressively toward Felix (in episode 2×05<\/a>), Sarah immediately insists: \u201cHey, you treat him with respect, you got it? That\u2019s my brother, which means he\u2019s one of our sisters. Family<\/em>.\u201d Sarah\u2019s assertion is that Felix\u2019s connection to her, which is not through blood, necessities a connection to Helena, who is also a \u201csister\u201d of Sarah\u2019s. She even uses the word \u201csister\u201d to describe Felix, not \u201cbrother,\u201d since Helena would accept more easily the word that is also used to describe their clone family, with whom their connection is inexplicable but deep. Sarah\u2019s sense of her family space is queer\u2014it transgresses the common notion of what family is or ought to be. By creating characters whose identities inherently defy tradition in this way, Orphan Black<\/em> seeks to highlight and\u00a0valid the queer family space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cQueer uses of time and space develop\u2026in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction. They also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification\u201d (Halberstam 1). Halberstam\u2019s articulation of queer time and space here reframes queerness as a state of existence, one that seeks to transgress the linear path toward Hetero … Continue reading “Brother-Sestra”: the Queer Family Space in Orphan Black<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2611,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}