ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the characteristics of quare theory and queer theory. Queer theory and Quare theory promote productive conversations about power, privilege, and social justice. Queer theory is most productive for disrupting heteronormative expectations of intimate relationships, rebelling against cultural expectations tied to sexuality and desire, reclaiming peculiar, inappropriate, incoherent, and disgusting affects and offering new possibilities of thinking, doing, living, and loving. It is most productive for resisting white-washed notions of sexuality and desire, offering homegrown knowledges and appreciations of black culture, illustrating the necessity of the intersectionality, and acknowledging our communal relationships and allegiances. Autoethnography can also help quare and queer theorists excel with these commitments. Queer theorists can use autoethnography to ground abstract, esoteric, and impractical concepts in lived, material circumstances. When understood as a critical method, autoethnography uses the personal experience to describe and critique injurious cultural experiences, beliefs, and practices.
