ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter raises more questions than it answers. What does ‘The “q” Word’ refer to? Why use ‘q’, which is more properly a letter, rather than spell out the word in full? Is there a reason for employing a lower case ‘q’ rather than a capital letter to represent this particular word? Are the quotation marks significant? Does the appearance of the term ‘the’ and the singular form ‘word’ mean that ‘q’ refers to one and only one term? Is ‘q’ operating here as an adjective (is there something ‘q’ about ‘the word’?) or a noun (is ‘q’ the word that we should take note of?)? If I am to offer the information that I intend for ‘q’ in this instance to stand in for ‘queer’, are we any closer to discovering what ‘The “q” Word’ signifies? Let us focus more closely on ‘The “queer” Word’ for a moment: am I intending for queer to represent a noun (‘x’ is queer, queerness), adjective (queer ‘x’), verb (to queer ‘x’, queering ‘x’) or adverb (‘x-ing’ queerly)? Each question leads, not to a resolution, but to another series of questions, thus continually frustrating our will to know, opening up a space of and for desire:
The minute you say ‘queer’ … you are necessarily calling into question exactly what you mean when you say it … Queer includes within it a necessarily expansive impulse that allows us to think about potential differences within that rubric. (Harper, White and Cerullo 1990, 30)
