In the context of human existence, time is an essential aspect that allows individuals to experience changes in their personalities, behaviors, and thoughts. Similarly, sex, sexuality, eroticism, and intimacy are phenomena whose nature and intensity vary within a given society, culture, or historical moment. These dimensions of human life tend to shape how people relate to one another and create new possibilities for living together. In this essay, I will explain how queer desire reshapes philosophical notions of change, continuity, and becoming through its temporal dimension. To do so, I will explore how queerness challenges traditional conceptions of temporality while proposing alternative ones.
The study of temporality is crucial because it helps understand how processes operate and progress in time, giving meaning to different moments of life. According to Bergson, time flows and has no beginning and no end. It operates as a sequence of irreversible events unfolding over time. Therefore, if the notion of time suggests a specific structure, such as chronology, then the perception of temporality involves the awareness of past, present, and future and the flow from one moment to another.
Bergson's understanding of time differs from Heidegger's analysis that time reveals itself through the Being-in-the-world (Dasein).
The present is always fleeting, passing into the past, and the past cannot be recovered except by memory. In addition, according to Heidegger, being-toward-death implies that our existence is finite and limited, which brings us closer to death than life.
Deleuze and Guattari challenge these temporalities' linear and binary divisions by arguing that they are only one way of organizing reality. They propose an "assemblage" concept to account for the heterogeneity of phenomena that interact with each other without being causally connected. In their view, there is no primordial unity or identity that could constitute a foundation for all things. Thus, the assemblage theory recognizes nonlinear temporal relations between distinct elements, allowing them to mix and blend, creating new forms of becoming. This approach offers a more complex view of temporality since it understands it not as something that unfolds in a straight line but rather as a set of processes that occur simultaneously.
How does the temporality of queer desire reshape philosophical notions of change, continuity, and becoming?
Queer theory is an academic discipline that examines how power relations shape sexual orientation, gender identity, and other forms of embodiment. It challenges traditional notions of binary genders, normative sexualities, and heterosexuality. Temporality plays a significant role in understanding queer desires as it highlights the disjunction between time and space. Queer desire challenges the idea of linear time, which privileges certain identities and experiences over others.