Strange, peculiar, odd, perverse ... how queer!
"Queer is a term that desires that you don't have to present an identity card ..." [1]
I.
Originally meaning strange or peculiar, the word queer now serves either as a synonym for homosexual - having been reclaimed as a term of pride by gay activists - or as a wider umbrella term for anyone who locates themselves on a colourful spectrum of non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities, but which, nevertheless, remain precisely that; i.e., identities, or expressions of self-sameness by which one wishes to be known.
As someone who finds the empty secret of non-identity philosophically more interesting than the open secret of same-sex desire, I find this problematic and would challenge those who use queer as an overarching, unifying, or trendy academic label
for what are often distinct forms of practice and behaviour that have nothing to do with sexuality or gender.
For me, the appeal of queerness is precisely that it deconstructs all categories (particularly those that rest upon binary opposition) and offers a form of resistance to the idea of essential identities as if these were natural givens and thus afforded a privileged relationship to truth and being, rather than contingent cultural-historical
formations belonging to an insubstantial world of free-foating and accidental attributes and disappearing cats who leave only a smile behind (to be queer is to be not quite here or there).
II.
Now, I appreciate that some people who assemble beneath a rainbow flag and delight in adding more letters to the ever-extending initialism they repeat like a mantra, will vehemently object to my use of the term queer. They consider this to be at best a dubious reappropriation and, at worst, an offensive misappropriation on behalf of someone who hasn't experienced oppression, discrimination, or violence for their sexual orientation or gender identity.
And so, they will argue that as a cisgender heterosexual - their terms, not mine - I have no right to a word which now belongs in their vocabulary and which, whatever its past meanings or etymology, now only means what they say it means. Almost, it laughably becomes a question of intellectual property rights, with queer trademarked as a kind of communal identifier.
But, as I hope to have made clear above, I do not accept that there can be a queer community; nor indeed that any individual can ever say I am queer as a way of informing others who and what they are; queerness is a form of not-being (neither this nor that, or even the other).
And so, whilst (as a theorist and critic) I feel at perfect liberty to continue using the word, I'm not doing so in order to self-identify, nor am I trying to place myself on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum simply for the cultural and political cachet.
On the other hand, nor am I trying to be gratuitously offensive. I'm simply trying to suggest that queerness is primarily about what Judith Butler terms contestation and it should never be something that is clearly defined, or tied to just one area of life (or one set of life experiences), or owned by one group of people; for to do so is, ironically, to normalise it in some sense (i.e., rob it of its very queerness).
Notes
[1] Judith Butler, 'The Desire for
Philosophy', an interview conducted by Regina Michalik, Lola 2, (Lola Press, May 2001).
As Butler makes clear, when queerness as a movement first emerged it was very much about suspending the question of identity and challenging the politics of such; it was an argument against normativity.
