Queerness as/and Political Attunement

Abstract

This article offers a brief response to Anderson & Knee’s (2020) Queer Isolation or Queering Isolation? by encouraging readers to embolden themselves with queer theory for its liberatory intent and potential. In particular, this article troubles notions of queer space and time to illuminate the ways queers are not hapless victims to gentrification (amidst COVID-19 or otherwise) and encourages us to continue imagining and enacting more hopeful, equitable futurities.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• gentrification
• queer
• resistance
• temporalities

Notes

1 Writing “athwart” queer theory borrows from Sedgwick’s (1993, p. xii) etymology of “queer,” where: “Queer itself means across – it comes from the Indo-European root –twerkw,” which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), and English athwart.”

2 And it should be noted that lesbian and gay bars are not necessarily the be-all-end-all of queer leisure, particularly as these spaces can be exclusive to other embodiments and expressions of queerness beyond the “L” and “G” (e.g., Hartless, 2018).

3 Losing work at the (first) peak of the pandemic was a startling reminder ofthe ways that poverty is traumatic and it was also a call to action: Now is not the time to relegate myself to victimhood. I must keep dreaming and committing to more humane, equitable worldings, and work to cultivate the necessary solidarities to bring these to fruition. After all, all we have is each other.