Epilogue for
Queer Methodologies Publication, 2021
Queer Methodologies Publication, 2021
In their own way, the writings in these volumes discuss artworks, thinkers, knowledge keeps, circumstances, texts, processes, methods, questions, lenses, and above all, ways of looking. Together, they chart a haphazard, unregulated, chaotic road map of queerness; queerness can have no other definition.
What does it mean to be queer?
We are outcasts, rebels, losers, refuseniks, lovers, fighters, fuckers, freaks, subverters, perverts, jerks, objectors,
disruptors, agitators, protesters; those who are objectified, fetishized, raped, castrated, imprisoned, burned, ridiculed, ignored, humiliated; we are less-than but never equal-to.
disruptors, agitators, protesters; those who are objectified, fetishized, raped, castrated, imprisoned, burned, ridiculed, ignored, humiliated; we are less-than but never equal-to.
We are painful, loud, arrogant; quiet, humble, determined; hurt, worn-out, destroyed; made spectacle.
We have been silenced, trampled, embarrassed, shamed, condemned, criticized, scorned, attacked, lambasted, arraigned, slurred, vilified.
We have been made to hide, to remain hidden, to justify, to clarify, to give in, to bow, to submit, to admit, and to accede.
Queer is rebellion, anarchy, revolt, dislocation, disobedient; it is revolution.
Queer lives in the margins, in-between, at the outskirts, in the cracks, down the holes, up in the eaves; it lives beyond the limits, with the side-show; outside of, adjacent to, tangential; but not together nor within.
Queer is people, places, things, actions, stories, untold histories, dark secrets, shadows in dark allies. It is the flutter in your stomach at the accidental kiss; it is the pink ruffled shirt and thigh-high boots, the black and white photo of friends on a picnic, the punk band on stage with dirty velvet curtains; it is the container of piss in the middle of a gallery, the othered body rapping from behind a table; it is the constant reminder of being different but being powerful.
Queer is the moment you recognize your superpower.
Queer is the challenge of working within institutions, the frustration of the patriarchy, the alienation of capitalism, the elimination by colonialism, the danger of being seen “because we are seen as being dangerous” (1).
Queer is not sameness. It is difference, it is otherness, and it is alien. Queer is the opposite side of the binary;
man-woman, winner-loser, straight-gay, able-unable, monogamous-promiscuous, rich-poor, vocal-mute, white-not white, positive-negative.
man-woman, winner-loser, straight-gay, able-unable, monogamous-promiscuous, rich-poor, vocal-mute, white-not white, positive-negative.
Queer is trans, and transition, we are everything in-between. We are both the winners and the loser, and we are neither the winners nor the losers; we are the men and the women, and we are not man nor woman; we are able, and we are not; we are happy, and we are sad, and we are neither happy nor sad; we have a lover, many lovers, and no lovers; we speak, and we are quiet. We are camouflage, and we are technicolour. We are positive and the embodiment of negative (2).
We are potential; we are provocative, daring, capable, triumphant, beautiful; we exist, we proliferate; we are wisdom, knowledge, experience; we are whole, we are together. We are contagious.
Queer eyes, Queer rise, Queerize.
1. Sarah Ahmed, What’s the Use, on the Uses of Use, 2019
2. “Positive thinking is offered up in the U.S. as a cure for cancer, a path to untold riches, and a surefire way to engineer your own success. Indeed, believing that success depends upon one’s attitude is far preferable to Americans than recognizing that their success is the outcome of the tilted scales of race, class, and gender.” (Judith Halberstam, Queer Art of Failure, 2011)