Near Life, Queer Death

Bibliographic Data

ID2923714
AuthorsEric A Stanley (corresponding author), Eric Stanley
Year2011
Volume29
Issue2
Pages1-19
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/01642472-1259461
OpenAlexW2108212687
LanguageEN
Citations received28

This article examines forms of queer (non)sociality I call near life that are forced to exist, as nonexistence, outside the bounds of possessive humanism. Through a reading of the brutal murders and disarticulation of a number of trans/queer people, I suggest the legal category of “overkill” as a way of apprehending a queer ontology that stands in contrast to the security of an LGBT identity. That the murdered were working class and largely people of color and/or trans/gender nonconforming marks this interpersonal violence as a restaging of larger iterations of necropolitical state violence. As antiqueer violence is written in the social as an outlaw practice, I argue, via Frantz Fanon's reading of Hegel, that these forms of violence are not an aberration but are central to the reproduction of liberal democracy in the United States. Against redemption—violence is the province of the queer, but this does not signal the totality of negation nor the end of queer resistance

Criminology · Queer · Sociology · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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