ABSTRACT
What are the possibilities and potentialities for rethinking queer studies? Are there distinctions to be made between possibilities and potentialities that can reimagine the politics of queer and the queering of politics? This chapter takes this distinction into critical examination by linking queer to possibilities and post-queer to potentialities. Queer theory's emergence in the latter part of the twentieth century transformed our understandings of the body by fostering new ways to explore the relationships amongst bodies, identities and culture. ‘The body’ became a central point of critique and quite often an essential point of departure for identity politics. Although important shifts from identity politics to a politics of identity have transpired through queer theory's commitment to exposing the injustices attributed to fixed and stable bodies, queer bodies (often cited as mobile and fluid materialities) maintain their proximity as fundamental entry points of analysis. In this chapter's exploration of a post-queer time and space, I am not suggesting a ridding of queer per se but an eradication of ‘bodies’ in relation to contemporary queer studies and theories. I am arguing for a radical reinvigoration of queer theory's body politics by challenging current conceptualisations of bodies in queer studies and theories through the creation of new spaces to think about bodies in a post-queer time and space. What follows confronts the inherent positions, utilisations and overall conceptions of ‘the body’ as a predominant lens of analysis in various queer theories that have surfaced in the late twentieth century and continue to materialise well into the new millennium. This assertion is not implying that the body has in some way become less significant to the politics of queer. In contrast, there is no better time than now for queer theory to critically reexamine (queer) bodies and to develop a vital resurgence capable of engaging the present and future politics of our world.
