Queer negativity
Between queer failure and cruel optimism — language for queer existence in an era that promises “it gets better” as things actually, get much, much worse.
As the description reads, this is an attempt to animate (or abandon) the academic genre. My audience here on norainbows.net is explicitly public — you, whoever you are.
Classically, queer theory is devoid of class analysis. I have to table the thrust of productivity to learn to write like a person again, or something. For now, I want to write to the city that I am writing with. And, I want to write to the city that I am writing about.
More than ever, I have to watch it on both the pacing and the jargon.
Today, I want to introduce both a concept — queer negativity — and also introduce a format for working with other concepts I’m calling “queer theory.” As a writing project and public performance of the oftentimes private, my pacing will always be too fast for some and too slow for others. Awkwardly, my goals involve writing theory that is both more accessible and engaging. As I see it, queer failure is something of a precursor to queer negativity (Halberstam, 2011, p. 123). And although it doesn’t seem it yet, queer negativity is still generative.
No Rainbows includes my own unpublished academic writing and fieldwork on the topic of rainbow crosswalks. But my orientation to the rainbow crosswalk is as follows: I’m not thrilled. As such, I anchor my critique in accessible examples or case studies, layering them with explicit components of queer theory. In this case, queer negativity is offered as my orientation to the rainbow motif in general. This posture is annoying to some and explicitly threatening to others, though neither are meant.
This work takes up my so-called open-palmed encounters with rainbow crosswalks in cities across Canada and the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States. This is an ongoing project. I am caught up in what Berlant and Freeman (1993, p. 167) described as “‘the urban redecoration’ project on behalf of gay visibility.” These ideas are mostly written elsewhere as queer theory, but without such practical examples. No Rainbows takes up the rainbow crosswalk as fodder for thinking about public art, power, and placemaking. This negative posture is important because burnouts and defacings are a regular addition to most rainbow crosswalks. No Rainbows brings a leeriness to pride flag painting budgets that is protective. “Progress”?
The queer negative does not vie for inclusion. The queer negative is more passive than it is insurgent. I read Bersani’s (1987) essay Is the Rectum a Grave?, and the academic debate that followed, so that you do not have to. Its main offering is the “antisocial thesis” in queer theory. Today’s queer negativity might ask: How is “hope” an imperialist project? (Halberstam, 2006). Radical passivity involves unbecoming, or defiance to become (e.g., academic, woman) (Halberstam, 2011, p. 173). My move out from behind the paywall and into the public domain isn’t an attempt to restore (or renaturalize) queer theory to its rightful place. I’m not being corrective. There is no pure queer theory (Berlant & Warner, 1995). As an academic genre or discourse of critique, queer theory shouldn’t exist — certainly not in the university (Berlant & Warner, 1995). But it does. I think it’s in my email signature, for now.
So, as political and philosophical stance, queer negativity presents a mode for queer existence in an era that promises “it gets better” as things actually, get much, much worse.
Next concept: cruel optimism