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Queer Dis/inheritance and Refugee Futures
- WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly
- The Feminist Press
- Volume 48, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2020
- pp. 218-235
- 10.1353/wsq.2020.0026
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This essay investigates inheritance through queer reclamations of refugee lineage. I trace how queer dis/inheritance—as survival tactic, feminist epistemology, and aesthetic articulation—can make space for refugee futures. Looking at how Vietnamese American queer/artists navigate inherited traumas while fighting for belonging against xenophobia and racism, I forward queer dis/inheritance as a critical framework of refugee worldmaking beyond projects of recovery and recuperation. I read the refusal to make refugee experiences into something knowable, to preserve the silence and protect the unknown, and to rethink linear history into a sensory lineage, as manifestations of queer dis/inheritance.