The relevance of the “antisocial thesis” for a politics of queer time

Abstract

This article analyzes the perspectives of two of the main exponents of the so-called “antisocial thesis in queer theory”—Edelman and Halberstam—, to show its relevance for a politics of queer time. To this end, I will argue that for both authors the value of the antisocial thesis lies in its powerful criticism of hegemonic heterosexual practices that reproduce a linear, continuous, and despotically future-oriented temporality. I will then attempt to show how Edelman —aiming to avoid the promotion of a queer identity politics and its derivation into an assimilation as just another minority— insists on the necessity of holding on to the destabilizing negativity of queer. This restrictive position, I will suggest, will lead him to fail to elaborate an alternative politics of time to reproductive futurism. Finally, I will try to show how Halberstam, from a less radical perspective regarding the value of such negativity, avoids falling into a queer identity politics, by appealing to Elizabeth Freeman’s proposal of a politics of time of temporal drag. This is so because it is an appeal to an impure, discontinuous, non-progressive temporality of interruption, repetition and delay that defies all identity.