Affirming QUARE as a term of protection critiques the umbrella of “queer” and creates house relations between the black LGBQT communities.
E. Patrick Johnson 2001, E. Patrick Johnson is the dean of the Northwestern University School of Communication. He is the Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University, "Quare" studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother, Text and Performance Quarterly, 21:1, 1-25, DOI: 10.1080/10462930128119, Acc 7/19/23 [tvisha]
Because much of queer theory critically interrogates notions of selfhood, agency, and experience, it is often unable to accommodate the issues faced by gays and lesbians of color who come from ‘‘raced’’ communities. Gloria Anzaldu´ a explicitly addresses this limitation when she warns that ‘‘queer is used as a false unifying umbrella which all ‘queers’ of all races, ethnicities and classes are shored under’’ (250). While acknowledging that ‘‘at times we need this umbrella to solidify our ranks against outsiders,’’ Anzaldu´ a nevertheless urges that ‘‘even when we seek shelter under it [‘‘queer’’], we must not forget that it homogenizes, erases our differences’’ (250). ‘‘Quare,’’ on the other hand, not only speaks across identities, it articulates identities as well. ‘‘Quare’’ offers a way to critique stable notions of identity and, at the same time, to locate racialized and class knowledges. My project is one of recapitulation and recuperation. I want to maintain the inclusivity and playful spirit of ‘‘queer’’ that animates much of queer theory, but I also want to jettison its homogenizing tendencies. As a disciplinary expansion, then, I wish to ‘‘quare’’ ‘‘queer’’ such that ways of knowing are viewed both as discursively mediated and as historically situated and materially conditioned. This reconceptualization foregrounds the ways in which lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgendered [LGBT] people of color come to sexual and racial knowledge. Moreover, quare studies acknowledges the different ‘‘standpoints’’ found among lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered people of color—differences that are also conditioned by class and gender.3 Quare studies is a theory of and for gays and lesbians of color. Thus, I acknowledge that in my attempt to advance quare studies, I run the risk of advancing another version of identity politics. Despite this, I find it necessary to traverse this political mine field in order to illuminate the ways in which some strands of queer theory fail to incorporate racialized sexuality. The theory that I advance is a ‘‘theory in the flesh’’ (Moraga and Anzaldu´ a 23). Theories in the flesh emphasize the diversity within and among gays, bisexuals, lesbians, and transgendered people of color while simultaneously accounting for how racism and classism affect how we experience and theorize the world. Theories in the flesh also conjoin theory and practice through an embodied politics of resistance. This politics of resistance is manifest in vernacular traditions such as performance, folklore, literature, and verbal art.