Queer temporality challenges dominant narratives of life, progress, and historical continuity because it subverts conventional conceptions of time, identity, and memory. Queer people often experience temporal ruptures caused by discrimination, stigma, trauma, and marginalization that disrupt their sense of belonging to certain periods or places in history. This can lead to feelings of fragmentation, alienation, and lack of connection to larger social and cultural structures.
Queer temporality also allows for alternative ways of remembering and imagining the past, present, and future, creating new possibilities for resilience, resistance, and creativity. The concept of "queer time" was first articulated by feminist scholars such as Elizabeth Freeman and Judith Butler, who argue that gender is socially constructed and fluid rather than fixed biologically. Queer time is characterized by a refusal to conform to normative expectations about sex and sexuality, and a rejection of binaries between past, present, and future. Queer people may reclaim memories of their own lives or those of others, or create new ones through storytelling, performance, and collective action. They may also use archives and artifacts to challenge dominant narratives and create counter-histories that center marginalized voices and experiences. By rejecting linear narratives and embracing nonlinear forms of temporality, queer people can challenge heteronormative assumptions about time and open up new possibilities for living, loving, and making meaning.
Queer temporality challenges the idea that progress is always linear and forward-looking. Instead, it emphasizes cyclical patterns and intergenerational connections, highlighting continuities between different eras and generations. Queer people may draw on traditions of resistance and solidarity from earlier periods in history, or envision alternative futures based on values of justice, equity, and liberation. This allows them to resist the pressure to assimilate into mainstream culture and instead imagine alternative ways of being and relating. Queer temporality can also disrupt traditional notions of historical continuity, which often privilege white, heterosexual, and male-dominated perspectives. It offers alternative ways of understanding change and transformation over time, emphasizing diversity, plurality, and intersectionality.
Some scholars have argued that queer temporality is rooted in Indigenous and diasporic cultures that prioritize relationships with land, ancestors, and spirituality rather than a linear progression towards modernity. In sum, queer temporality provides a unique lens through which to understand social change and cultural transformation, while offering hope for creating more just and inclusive societies.
How does queer temporality challenge dominant narratives of life, progress, and historical continuity?
Queer temporality challenges dominant narratives of life, progress, and historical continuity by disrupting conventional linear time-lines, undermining assumed causal links between events, and highlighting non-normative forms of temporal experience that are often marginalized or erased within mainstream chronologies.