Queer Silence : On Disability and Rhetorical Absence / J. Logan Smilges.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smilges, J. Logan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Silence (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (295 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, [2022]

Summary:

Championing the liberatory potential of silence to address the fraught disability politics of queerness In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Queer Silence begins by historicizing silence's negative reputation, beginning with the ways homophile activists rejected medical models pathologizing homosexuality as a disability, resulting in the silencing of disability itself. This silencing was redoubled by HIV/AIDS activism's demand for "out, loud, and proud" rhetorical activities that saw silence as capitulation. Reading a range of cultural artifacts whose relative silence has failed to attract queer attachment, from anonymous profiles on Grindr to ex-gays to belated gender transitions to disability performance art, Smilges argues for silence's critical role in serving the needs of queers who are never named as such. Queer Silence urges queer activists and queer studies scholars to reconcile with their own ableism by acknowledging the liberatory potential of silence, a mode of engagement that disattached queers use every day for resistance, sociality, and survival. Cover alt text: Background detail of a painting on canvas shows a partial view of the upper body and face of a figure, bearded and naked; title in painted script.

Contents:

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Introduction: Unspeakably Queer

Chapter 1. To Speak of Silence

Chapter 2. White Squares to Black Boxes

Chapter 3. Queer(crip) Masquerading

Chapter 4. Disidentifying Silence

Chapter 5. Neuroqueer Intimacies

Epilogue: Shameful Disattachments and Queer Illegibility

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Smilges, J. Logan Queer Silence

ISBN:

9781452968056