Queer theory is relevant as a form of critical and political thinking that acts on the mechanisms of subjectivation. It collapses the framework of subjectivity that is built by a system of isomorphic hierarchisation conditioned by language and representation.

Queer disrupts the western logic of isomorphic world perception. Such logic is entailed by symbolic regimes of signification (family, state, church) within polarisation. On the one side, a superior, fixed, central and determined term (the majoritarian). On the other side, an inferior, plural, opposite and subordinate term – the alterity or the othered (the minoritarian) (MacCormack 2021). Queer is a process of transformation that jolts such logic of signification by dismantling, disturbing and deconstructing the discourses (Derrida 1982 apud Louro 2022) that produce and sustain the symbolic order (Kristeva 1985). Indeed, queer produces becomings that create hybrid connections and forms of relationality beyond Cartesian divisions (Conley 2009).

Deliberately, queer stands in contradiction with any notion of norm and normativity. It assumes the place of abnormality (Spargo 2004) and the disdain towards everything that is legitimate and dominating while producing indeterministic possibilities (Halperin 1995). In designing its own theoretical praxis, the engendering of both the deviation from and the failure of the ‘self’ (Nigianni 2009) drives queer’s intransigence to any normalisation. As a consequence, this implodes the construction of the fixed and immutable subjectivity sustained by symbolic delimitations. Throughout history, such a development of subjectivation has undertaken the phallocentric constitution of compulsory heterosexuality as well as the production of alterity.

Giantini, G. (2024). The Non-Object of Queer Design: Anthropocentric Design on the Edge of Abjection, Perversion, and Ecstasy. Australian Feminist Studies, 39(122), 399–418. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2025.2499859

Queer resists all subjectification and stratification. (…) queer adamantly refuses to speak its own position of being, per se, over speaking a position of activism and advocacy which may or may not correlate with personal benefit. Queer is motiveless, which makes it dangerous to the majoritarian who masquerades their own motives behind ‘logic’ and ‘neutral objectivity’. (…) It is adamantly about the death of the human in order for the liberation of all life, defined in a non-discriminatory way. (60)

MacCormack, P. (2020). The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. (p. 60).




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