by Tim Dean

About Tim Dean

Tim Dean is Professor of English at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where he is also director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture. He is the author of several books, most recently Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (2009), and coeditor of Porn Archives (2014).

Queer

book Keywords for Disability Studies

Historically, the term “queer” was a stigmatizing label that often included disabled people in its purview. A century ago, for instance, someone with a missing limb or a cognitive impairment might be called “queer.” In recent decades, sexual minorities have reclaimed “queer” as a badge of pride and a mark of resistance to regimes of the normal, mirroring the embrace of terms like “crip” and the capaciousness of the term “disability” itself. These are all political, highly contested terms that refuse essentializing meanings. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the activist group Queer Nation’s chant “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” was historically concurrent with the disability rights activist slogan “Not dead yet.”