Queer stays, and pur moves! : still about Queer and past material culture

Abstract

The new conservative and moralist wave that has been rolling over the country convinced me of the need to revisit queer and write this brief essay, focusing on its relations with material culture studies of the past. The queer theories, while forever indebted to younger social movements such as feminist and LGBT, aim to offer queer’s specific inputs and outlooks to sociopolitical stances against all incarnations of heteronormativity. Queer is an inclusive and challenging concept that can help us to envisage a much more complex and diversified past, and confront monolithic interpretations that may be propagating, congealing or legitimizing ingrained prejudices of the present. Given the renovated threats to paralyze diversity studies in our schools, more than ever, queer has to stay, especially because it is movement.