12.2 Debates on queer futurity and anti-social thesis

Queer futurity challenges traditional ideas about the future, imagining a world beyond heteronormativity. It explores alternative possibilities for queer lives, relationships, and communities, emphasizing the transformative potential of queerness to create new forms of intimacy and social organization.

The anti-social thesis in queer theory argues that queerness is fundamentally at odds with the social order. It embraces queer negativity and rejects the imperative to be positive or future-oriented, challenging the politics of respectability and the desire for social acceptance.

Queer Futurity and Utopian Queerness

Imagining Queer Futures

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  LGBTI activists face growing opposition across Eastern Europe - The Loop View original

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  DARK BEHAVIOUR - Queer Futures | Photo: Tim Courtney | TheArches | Flickr View original

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• Queer futurity concept that envisions a future beyond heteronormativity and binary gender norms
• Challenges the dominant narrative of linear progress and reproductive futurism (idea that the future is dependent on heterosexual reproduction)
• Imagines alternative possibilities for queer lives, relationships, and communities not bound by traditional notions of family, marriage, or reproduction
• Emphasizes the transformative potential of queerness to create new forms of intimacy, kinship, and social organization

Utopian Potentials of Queerness

• Utopian queerness explores the radical possibilities of queerness to transform society and create more just, equitable, and liberating futures
• Recognizes the utopian impulses within queer culture, activism, and artistic expression (drag performances, pride parades, queer art and literature)
• Envisions a world where queer identities, desires, and practices are celebrated and affirmed rather than marginalized or oppressed
• Imagines utopian spaces and communities that foster queer belonging, creativity, and resistance (queer communes, intentional communities, activist collectives)

Queer Temporalities and Non-Linear Time

• Queer temporality challenges the linear, chronological understanding of time and progress that is central to heteronormative society
• Recognizes the ways in which queer lives and experiences often do not conform to normative life trajectories or milestones (marriage, reproduction, career advancement)
• Explores alternative temporalities that are non-linear, cyclical, or asynchronous, allowing for multiple possibilities and paths
• Emphasizes the importance of queer history, memory, and intergenerational connections in shaping queer futures (oral histories, archival projects, mentorship)
• Imagines queer futures that are not predetermined or teleological but open-ended and constantly evolving

Anti-Social Thesis and Queer Negativity

The Anti-Social Turn in Queer Theory

• The anti-social thesis, developed by theorists like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman, challenges the assimilationist tendencies of mainstream LGBT politics
• Argues that queerness is fundamentally at odds with the social order and cannot be fully integrated or normalized within heteronormative society
• Emphasizes the radical potential of queer negativity, refusal, and rejection of social norms and institutions (marriage, family, citizenship)
• Critiques the politics of respectability and the desire for social acceptance that can lead to the domestication or depoliticization of queer identities and practices

Queer Negativity and the Rejection of Futurity

• Queer negativity embraces the negative, antisocial, and even self-destructive aspects of queer experience as a form of resistance to heteronormativity
• Rejects the imperative to be positive, productive, or future-oriented, and instead affirms the value of queer failure, loss, and negativity
• Challenges the idea of reproductive futurism, which posits that the future belongs to the child and is secured through heterosexual reproduction
• Imagines alternative forms of queer existence that are not oriented towards the future or invested in social reproduction (chosen families, non-monogamy, BDSM)

The Politics of "No Future"

• The concept of "no future," articulated by Lee Edelman, suggests that queerness represents a radical negation of the social order and its investment in the figure of the child
• Argues that queerness has no stake in the future as it is currently imagined and must resist the politics of hope, progress, and redemption
• Embraces the death drive and the jouissance of queer sexuality as a form of resistance to the life-affirming logic of reproductive futurism
• Imagines a queer politics that is not oriented towards the future but towards the present moment and the possibilities of queer pleasure, desire, and transgression
• Recognizes the ways in which the politics of "no future" can be a response to the precarity and vulnerability of queer lives in the face of violence, discrimination, and marginalization (HIV/AIDS crisis, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, hate crimes)