Queer silence : on disability and rhetorical absence
Publication Information
Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2022]
Physical Description
287 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Summary
In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Reading a range of cultural artifacts whose relative silence has failed to attract queer attachment, from anonymous profiles to Grindr to ex-gays to belated gender transitions to disability performance art, Smilges argues for silence's critical role in serving the needs of queers who are never named as such. Ultimately, they urge queer activists and queer studies scholars to reconcile with their own ableism by acknowledging the liberatory potential of silence, a mode of engagement that disattached queers use every day for resistance, sociality, and survival--back cover.
Contents
- Introduction: Unspeakably queer
- 1. To speak of silence
- 2. White squares to black boxes
- 3. Queer(crip) masquerading
- 4. Disidentifying silence
- 5. Neuroqueer intimacies
- Epilogue: Shameful disattachments and queer illegibility.