Message n6
Queer the world!
To be a fag is not enough to be 'queer'. It's necessary to subject your own identity to critique. (Preciado)
It's the opening of my show in Milan, and I spend a big part of the evening trying to respond to people's question 'what is Queer'?
Many of these people are not asking what's my take on queerness, or my interpretation of it but to give them a definition of a term they’ve never encountered before.
I think that after all, that's fair. Italy has no historical connection to the word Queer.
I could spend the night repeating to people how activists in the US and UK have reappropriated the word, how it was an insult, like culattone, checca, finocchio, offensive words to describe gay men in Italy. Then I scan into my brain trying to find offensive words for lesbians, but there aren’t any.
Queer the world!
To be a fag is not enough to be 'queer'. It's necessary to subject your own identity to critique. (Preciado)
It's the opening of my show in Milan, and I spend a big part of the evening trying to respond to people's question 'what is Queer'?
Many of these people are not asking what's my take on queerness, or my interpretation of it but to give them a definition of a term they’ve never encountered before.
I think that after all, that's fair. Italy has no historical connection to the word Queer.
I could spend the night repeating to people how activists in the US and UK have reappropriated the word, how it was an insult, like culattone, checca, finocchio, offensive words to describe gay men in Italy. Then I scan into my brain trying to find offensive words for lesbians, but there aren’t any.