Queering identity

becoming queer in the work of cassils

Cath Lambert

pp. 131-155

in: Nicholas Monk, Mia Lindgren, Sarah McDonald, Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou (eds), Reconstructing identity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter explores the work of genderqueer artist Cassils in order to address the question of what it is to be human from a queer perspective. The challenges from queer and postmodern scholarship to the "identity politics' so central to earlier activist and academic agendas have been well documented. Yet, notwithstanding these valid critiques, identity remains a powerful organizing concept in contemporary experience. These contradictory stances on identity serve as a prompt for thinking about what queer brings to our understandings of being human now and in the near future.