To Queer or Not to Queer? - Sally Andarge

The first time I ever understood the power that words can have for marginalized people was when I learned the concept of Negritude, developed by French thinkers like Aime Cesaire. Negritude was the product of black writers and philosophers coming together to proclaim their cultural identity through French, rather than conforming to the black stereotype and only speaking pidgin. The concept that one could Weaponized their identity with language was completely foreign to me. My faith in the concept of negritude leads me to believe that queer can and should be openly used in the LGBTQIA+ community as well. In the introduction of his book “Queer Theories”, Hall explains why slurs exist. He says, “slurs and pejoratives were marshaled to ‘put people in their place’ and make sure that they understood the degraded nature of that place.” This reasoning only makes me believe in reclaiming words that were meant for destruction all the more. By normalizing and reclaiming the word, you can begin to shift that power dynamic that the dominant culture tries to perpetuate with the use of slurs. If the word queer is normalized in LGBTQIA+ culture and used as a word of celebration rather “identity shaming” the dominant normative culture loses another tool of oppression.

This leads me to my second point. Reclaiming the word queer allows the LGBTQIA+ community to change the demeaning and dehumanizing connotation that has been attached to that word for so long. When young queer people hear that word used and normalized it loses its double meaning. All of a sudden we will be able to see a shift in public consciousness where queer is used to describe and celebrate LGBTQ+ culture rather than it being used as a word to degrade it. Hall touches on this when he describes the word queer as a verb. “It [queering] may not destroy such systems but it certainly presses upon them, torturing their lines of demarcation, pressuring their easy designations. Furthermore, if the oppressed find coalitions across various forms of oppression -gender, race, sexuality, social class- they will greatly outnumber their oppressors and certainly if they take the worst slurs that society can hurl against them - “queer” or “nigger”- and undermine its power through different usages, a tool of those oppressors is potentially, palpably, weakened.” It would be naïve to assume that after reclaiming the word queer or any slur for that matter, The entire power imbalance would be solved, but as Hall puts it we create the ability To weaken a significant tool of the oppressor, which in this case is a normative culture/society. By undermining the power of a slur and creating different usages we not only weaponize our identities but we celebrate it by being both proud and unashamed. This “fearlessly me” mentality allows us to be ourselves while protesting and rejecting an exclusive normative societal structure!

This is why I believe in the reclamation of slurs. This is too great an opportunity to pass up, to undermine the “authority” of the majority and reclaiming space and power.