Queer life writing as self-making

Queer life writing as self-making

This chapter engages with the notion of queer life writing. I say the notion of queer life writing because, as yet, a distinct queer life writing has not emerged as a robust literary genre or practice. Queer life writing at this stage is largely a proposition, an unfulfilled promise. At the heart of this promise is a life writing that contains a critical and radical deconstruction of identity, of heteronormativity and of binary gender and sexual norms. A queer life writing cannot be just autobiography or memoir produced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people but writing by any person that consciously works against phallogocentric norms and also foregrounds the processes and practices of conscious self-making. Such a life writing would work against the idea that there is any essential or lasting nature to subjectivity and would counter the notion that certain subjectivities or identities are somehow inherently or meaningfully linked to certain (corresponding) bodies and biological sexes. As queer life writing is, for the most part, still only a promise, this chapter focuses on the theoretical context of such a writing rather than specific writing practices or examples.

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