Meii Soh: The queer dog: Ultrasonic Writing for Love Hunters

Thesis Supervisor: Ana Teixeira Pinto  

Thesis: The queer dog: Ultrasonic Writing for Love Hunters

July 2024 

Abstract

The queer dog: Ultrasonic Writing for Love Hunters argues for intersectional forms of knowledge production— theoretical, memory-based, fictional, conversational, and experiential—as a somatic body of work that traverses meditation on traditional hunting practices and their influence on contemporary forms of organizing gender relations, landscapes, and relationships between humans and non-human entities. The thesis proposes "ultrasonic matter" and "in-betweenence" as metaphors that oversee and encode new speculative languages, both within its writing and beyond. Through theoretical assessments intertwined with storytelling, the text dares to capture and engage the reader's attention,playfully creating space for intra-narrative understandings of the author’s biographic experiences as a queer person within an upbringing of hunters, dogs, hunters, and non-human agents within the Portuguese traditional practices. While doing so, it analyses inherently colonial practices and the complexities of survival methods that shapeshifting identities need to adopt in order to navigate between natural and cultural spaces. Beyond mere identification of these overarching problematics, the thesis reflects on the foundational principles of hunting to invite readers to reconsider how they perceive and interact with their surroundings. 

Author: Meii Soh