Difference, Disagreement and the Thinking of Queerness

Chas. Phillips

Abstract

This article uses the work of Jacque Rancière and Gilles Deleuze as resources for reorienting the theoretical underpinnings of queerness as a political idea. Specifically, I use Deleuze’s understanding of difference and Rancière’s description of disagreement to describe queerness as contingent, creative, and averse to certain modes of identity politics. I begin by looking at Rancière’s notion of disagreement as stemming from the (mis)counting of ‘parts’ in a political order. A group that is not counted (and therefore does not exist as a political entity) ‘comes to be’ through the declaration of a wrong. As this group emerges or actualizes, it fundamentally changes the overall constitution of the police order. Deleuze’s conception of pure difference coming from the creative realm of the ‘virtual’ helps provide a genetic principle for the unanticipated inception of these groups. By placing it under this Rancière-Deleuzian lens, I distinguish queerness from competing neoliberal attempts to deal with sexuality.

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© borderlands ejournal 2009