About the Term Queer and its Latin American Drifts: Against the North-South Narrative and the Alleged Theoretical Importation

Abstract

This article examines the uses, translations and re-appropriations of the term queer in dialogue with queer theory. Given the occurrences of the term in other geopolitical spaces and the debate about its possibilities in Spanish-speaking areas, different versions of “queer” as well as other situated modalities (cuir-kuir) will be explored in order to question the alleged north-south directionality for the so-called “queer thought”. The different versions of queer in its context of emergence (United States) also question the idea of a single, self-contained and coherent version of queer and queer theory. In this sense, the idea of "importation" of queer would goes into crisis when thinking about sex-subversive appearances in other geopolitical spaces outside of the U.S. queer node. Likewise, the idea of queer in dialogue and dispute with the category of sexual dissidence is taken up again, to put forward a theoretical proposal for rethinking the transability/untranslatability of “queer” and its effects and feedbacks in situated contexts in Latin America.