Feeling Fear,Feeling Queer: The Peril and Potential of Queer Terror

Abstract

This essay considers what we are calling queer terror, an affective condition not limited to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) or other minoritarian subjects, and its relationship to fear, hate, and factionalism (or isolationism). That is, queer terror is both terror against queer subjects and a queering of terror culture itself. We ask whether, through the act and its viral media representations, queer terror creates minoritarian public sphere that can be shared by queer people of color (QPOC) and allies alike. This affectively queer allyship begins with a racially and queerly attentive politics and seeks community both in response to and as a refusal of the kinds of terror that made Orlando possible.

Keywords

queer terror Orlando affect queer feelings allyship

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