From queer to cuir: starting point and unnecessary translation

Abstract

Critical gender studies have given space to think a series of identities and corporealities from non-places, which were not necessarily considered as a matter of reflection in the academic world and which, without needing such approval, developed through different activisms and presences in Latin American society. These have broken with biologicisms and debate not only for public policies, but for the fact of inhabiting, there appears this reflection, which is considered in continuity with the work of both Diego Falconí (2014) and Sayak Valencia (2015) and which is enriched from what it implies to assume a bastard attitude (Galindo, 2022), that is, non-places are expanded from the non-recognized. Taking into account the criticisms of the term queer, mainly those referring to what would be a colonial imposition, the following text proposes the use of the term “cuir” as one of the possible alternatives. This term has two characteristics that I wish to highlight: first, it is an “empty concept”, a neologism that already has its own genealogy that does not come from the academy, for this reason the proposal is to fill it to overflow and accommodate so many forms of non-normative existences from Abya Yala. If so, the second emerges, this category could only exist as an “umbrella term”. Using the anglicism queer as a starting point, we will consider the grammatical functions that this word has in that language, that is, to function as a noun, as an adjective or as a verb. From this semantic richness, the following proposal reflects on pending tasks that land in the different struggles in favor of the diverse, so that moving from queer to cuir would not mean any adaptation or a transition, but a creative divergence that recognizes the genealogy, while remaining in fluid mode.   Taking into account the criticisms of the term queer, mainly those referring to what would be a colonial imposition, the following text proposes the use of the term “cuir” as one of the possible alternatives. This term has two characteristics that I wish to highlight: first, it is an “empty concept”, a neologism that already has its own genealogy that does not come from the academy, for this reason the proposal is to fill it to overflow and accommodate so many forms of non-normative existences from Abya Yala. If so, the second emerges, this category could only exist as an “umbrella term”.   Using the anglicism queer as a starting point, we will consider the grammatical functions that this word has in that language, that is, to function as a noun, as an adjective or as a verb. From this semantic richness, the following proposal reflects on pending tasks that land in the different struggles in favor of the diverse, so that moving from queer to cuir would not mean any adaptation or a transition, but a creative divergence that recognizes the genealogy, while remaining in fluid mode.