Disidentification, the Arts, and Queer Energy

Abstract

This article engages in a conversation around the idea of queer energy; a term used by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to describe the nourishing and sustaining force of high and low cultural objects. In doing so, it examines the idea of disidentification as a queer reading practice integral to the formation and endurance of queer folk who must navigate their desires within straight systems of knowledge. Using the work of queer artists and personal accounts, the article follows how queer energy provides the impetus for aesthetic events that reveal queer potentiality and lead to queer turns in perspective.