What is asexuality? Is it a naturally-occurring sexual orientation some people are born with? May it be related to illness, disability, or trauma? Is it conceptualized in the same way across various cultures? This lecture argues for the need to move beyond understanding asexuality exclusively within the framework of sexual orientation developed in Western science and culture. According to most messaging about asexuality, it cannot be a result of disability, illness, or trauma (because asexuality occurs naturally, like other sexual orientations), it is not the same as celibacy, nor can it include an element of choice (because attraction or lack thereof is wholly involuntary). In contrast to these mainstream approaches, whose goal is to legitimize asexuality in the Western regime of sexuality, this lecture engages with alternative formulations of asexuality, ones that represent asexuality as entangled with other phenomena, such as celibacy, disability, illness, or trauma, as well as those developed by asexual people of color. By applying the lens of queer theory, as well as Indigenous and postcolonial theories of sexuality, to personal accounts which consider sexual orientation to be an insufficient frame to understand asexuality, I discuss formulations of asexuality that are based on and contribute to understandings of sexuality developed in tension with the contemporary Western model of sexuality.

This lecture is funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

Anna Kurowicka works at the American Studies Center at University of Warsaw. She was awarded the Kosciuszko Foundation grant to conduct research at Emory University. She has published on asexuality in Sexualities, Feminist Formations, and a recent collection Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives (Routledge, 2024). She is the co-chair of the Gender/Sexuality Research Group at the ASC and a member of the European Association of American Studies Women’s Network Steering Committee. As part of an international research team of scholars from the University of Warsaw and the Humboldt University of Berlin (“Queer Theory in Transit: Reception, Translation, and Production of Queer Theory in Polish and German Contexts”), she investigates the reception of American queer theory in Polish academic publications. She is currently working on a book exploring the construction of asexual subjects in American popular culture.