How do terms like “Queer” and “Latino” obscure identities, and allow for isolation for some and reconciliation for others?
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How do terms like “Queer” and “Latino” obscure identities, and allow for isolation for some and reconciliation for others?
Johnson’s meditation entitled “Quare Studies” highlights how the term Queer allows for unity and protection in the face of danger from malicious actors, but can also ignore crucial differences with the LGBTQ+ community itself, such as class, race and ethnicity. This places community members at risk because their identities could be erased in the name of harmony and they do not recognise individuals' diverse expressions.
Johnson goes on to explore how traditional “queer theory fails to incorporate racialized sexuality” and that the term “Quare” allows for more diverse LGBTQ+ experiences to be accounted for. He does however also mention how the writings of Cherry Smith and Eve Sedgwick both discuss the reclaimed use of the word “Queer” and how “it opens up rather than fixes identities.”
In many ways, one cannot help but draw similarities between this logic and that of the word “Latino” analysed by Munoz in “Feeling Brown”. Munoz describes how group identities like that of Latino “does not subscribe to a common racial, class, gender, religious, or national category” such that the term almost loses meaning as it is such a generalisation. Munoz then poses the question “If a Nation can be from any country in Latin America, a member of any race, religion, class or gender/sex orientation who then is she? What if any nodes of commonality do Latinas/os share?” This pertains to Johnson’s writing on the term “Queer” as it too is such a generalising term that it also potentially loses any meaning it may hold.
I therefore question whether the supposed “broad” and “inclusive” nature of terms like “Queer” and “Latino” in reality erase the diverse and intersecting identities they attempt to represent and this, in turn, impacts their validity.