A Queer Strategy of Equivocation: The destabilisation of normative heterosexuality and the rigid binary gender order

• Main Author: Antke Engel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ośrodek Studiów Amerykańskich Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 2006-09-01
• Series: InterAlia

The critique of identity politics has opened up a sceptical attitude towards normative categories and demands for the coherence and stability of sex, gender and sexuality. At the same time reflections on mechanisms of exclusion within emancipatory movements and politics have also gained attention. Thus, not only (hetero-)sexism and homophobia, but also discriminations pertaining to the rigid binary gender order as well as racist discrimination are issues of importance to queer politics. Considering the critique of identity or minority politics, I have come to the conclusion that rather than to proliferate or to dissolve categories of sex, gender and sexuality, it is more promising to render them ambiguous: that is what I call a queer strategy of equivocation. Nevertheless sexual ambiguity is not progressive or liberating in itself. Instead, we have to realize that queer/feminist struggles against normative identities, a destabilization of binary, heterosexual norms or new forms of gendered or sexual existence are quite compatible with the quest for individualization put forth by neo-liberal forms of domination. Therefore, a strategy of equivocation should include the fight against social hierarchies, inequalities, and normalizations. The task is to consider simultaneously the working of and the intervention into different mechanisms of power; normalizations and hierarchizations, inclusions and exclusions work together, but not always in the same direction or without contradictions.