Editorial: Queering Our Futures

In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz draws on "the queer utopianism [he] locate[s] within a historically specific nexus of cultural production before, around, and slightly after the Stonewall rebellion of 1969," so that he might highlight the utopian future promised within queerness (3). Muñoz's understanding of queerness is that it is never now or here, but can be "distilled from the past and used to imagine a future" (1). For Muñoz, queerness reminds us of the present's shortcomings: "a thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing" (1). Installed in the present, but always continually pointing to the past and the future, he argues that queer aesthetics—such as, but not limited to, queer theatre and performance—allow a glimpse of potential, more progressive futures, but do not ignore the material realities of our contemporary social contexts.

Turning to the aesthetic in the case of queerness is nothing like an escape from the social realm, insofar as queer aesthetics map future social relations. Queerness is also performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.

(1)

This edition of Views and Reviews is dedicated to covering Q2Q: A Symposium on Queer Theatre and Performance in Canada, which took place in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University, 20–24 July 2016. It was organized by C. E. Gatchalian, Peter Dickinson, Dalbir Singh, Jonathan Seinen, Kathleen Oliver, Maura Doherty, Robert Leveroos, and Jan Derbyshire. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend Q2Q, but based on the collection of responses gathered here, it seems that the symposium was one where queerness as Muñoz's theorizes it, especially its critical relation to what he calls the "quagmire of the present," and queer aesthetics' ability to both imagine and performatively move toward a utopian future, was discussed, theorized, and performed (Muñoz 1). Gathered here are reflections on the symposium by organizers and participants. By being both critical of the present and optimistically hopeful about the possibilities of the future, each piece enacts Muñoz's sense of queerness. This is certainly the case for the section's first two pieces, written by Q2Q organizers, C. E. Gatchalian and Peter Dickinson. In their articles, Gatchalian and Dickinson consider the symposium's motivations, its inception, and its outcomes—all of which invite a queer critical relation to the present that echoes Muñoz. Quoting the call for papers, Gatchalian asks, "In an era of same-sex marriage, anti-retrovirals, and sex-positive, anti-bullying campaigns, what does Canadian queer performance still need to get angry about? Is there a danger in becoming too complacent?" He sees a continuing activist spirit in the work of theatre artists and queer activists who gathered for the symposium, suggesting that participants in the symposium engaged "in difficult, painful conversations" and that "despite greater assimilation, the queer community's activist, combative streak—so instrumental in making possible the dramatic social changes the last four decades—is alive and well."

Similar to Gatchalian, Dickinson suggests that part of the symposium's remit was to ask, "in a climate of increasing 'homonormativity' and economic austerity, how can we continue to enable and support the production of queer work that is also feminist, sex-positive, anti-racist, and avowedly activist?" While Dickinson concedes that consensus on these issues was not always reached—and that there was not an insignificant amount of dissensus—there is no doubt about the value of the discourse that emerged from Q2Q's various provocations.

In "Hybrid between a Subjective and Critical Reflection on Q2Q: Symposium on Queer Theatre and Performance," Fay Nass uses her experience of the symposium to examine how her various identities intersect—and intersect differently—at different times and in differing contexts. A Vancouver-based writer, director, multi-disciplinary artist and scholar, Nass considers her identities as a queer woman of colour living in Canada, giving account of the...