(Anti)Queer : introduction


Autoria(s): McKee, Alan
Data(s)

1999

Resumo

The ‘anti- of ‘(Anti)Queer’ is a queer anti. In particle physics, a domain of science which was for a long time peddled as ultimately knowable, rational and objective, the postmodern turn has made everything queer (or chaotic, as the scientific version of this turn is perhaps more commonly named). This is a world where not only do two wrongs not make a right, but a negative and positive do not calmly cancel each other out to leave nothing, as mathematics might suggest. When matter meets with anti-matter, the resulting explosion can produce not only energy - heat and light? - but new matter. We live in a world whose very basics are no longer the electron and the positron, but an ever proliferating number of chaotic, unpredictable - queer? - subatomic particles. Some are ‘charmed’, others merely ‘strange’ . Weird science indeed. The ‘Anti-’ of ‘Anti-queer’ does not place itself neatly into binaries. This is not a refutation of all that queer has been or will be. It is explicitly a confrontation, a challenge, an attempt to take seriously not only the claims made for queer but the potent contradictions and silences which stand proudly when any attempt is made to write a history of the term. Specifically, ‘Anti-Queer’ is not Beyond Queer, the title of Bruce Bawer’s 1996 book which calmly and self-confidently explains the failings of queer, extols a return to a liberal political theory of cultural change and places its own marker on queer as a movement whose purpose has been served. We are not Beyond Queer. And if we are Anti-Queer, it is only to challenge those working in the arena to acknowledge and work with some of the facts of the movement’s history whose productivity has been erased with a gesture which has, proved, bizarrely, to be reductive and homogenising.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/42010/

Publicador

Taylor & Francis

Relação

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/42010/2/42010.pdf

DOI:10.1080/10350339909360430

McKee, Alan (1999) (Anti)Queer : introduction. Social Semiotics, 9(2), pp. 165-170.

Direitos

Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis

This is an electronic version of an article published in [Social Semiotics, 9(2), pp.165-170]. [Social Semiotics] is available online at informaworld.

Fonte

Creative Industries Faculty; Film & Television

Palavras-Chave #190200 FILM TELEVISION AND DIGITAL MEDIA #queer theory #filmic texts
Tipo

Journal Article