Disidentification, the Arts, and Queer Energy

Abstract

This article engages in a conversation around the idea of queer energy; a term used by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to describe the nourishing and sustaining force of high and low cultural objects. In doing so, it examines the idea of disidentification as a queer reading practice integral to the formation and endurance of queer folk who must navigate their desires within straight systems of knowledge. Using the work of queer artists and personal accounts, the article follows how queer energy provides the impetus for aesthetic events that reveal queer potentiality and lead to queer turns in perspective.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The National School Climate Survey report includes information on LGBTQ+ middle and high school students’ experiences.

² By “straightened out” I mean to imply that queer issues in schools are often separated from desire, especially sexual desire, and aligned more with need for acceptance and assimilation. The question I raise here is, in the words of author Jeremy Atherton Lin (2021), if “the spark” of queer potentiality “is extinguished when an official story is made of the blast” (p. 28).

³ This work can be viewed at: https://www.acvetter.com/erei5exsvw6ww0wl9027x6rd0n753g.

⁴ By using the term “queer folk,” the article seeks to elevate the complicated gender and sexual politics that unfold in speaking on behalf or about such a diverse population of peoples.

⁵ This work can be viewed at: https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/works/untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a.

⁶ This work can be viewed at: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/5211.

⁷ For example, Muñoz (2009) used the Coke bottle as a way to show how artists (Frank O’Hara, Andy Warhol) have drawn utopic energy from this everyday object.

⁸ This work can be viewed at: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/14665.