ABSTRACT. This work examines the way in which queer normativities produce hegemony within non-endocisheteronormative communities, ironically undoing the intent of queer dis/identification (Love, 2014). These dynamics are traced back to the coloniality of gender (Lugones, 2007), which forms the basis of the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990) that queerness is designed to resist, then explores how reterritorialisation strategies have tended to foster homo- (Duggan, 2002) and trans-normativities (Vipond, 2015). This dynamic is similarly perpetuated by the epistemologies of (post-Hegelian) recognition that underpin conceptualisations of queer performativity (Stark, 2014; cf. Butler, 1990). Like colonial notions of blood quantum, designed to undermine those who are marginalised by colonialities of power (Quijano, 2000; Jackson, 2020), the concept of a queer quantum emerges, whereby ‘belonging’ is rendered conditional on adequate queer performativity. Those who cannot or refuse to abide by queer normativities are rendered subject to the lateral violence of reterritorialisation. Rather than seeking to reterritorialise queer norms (again), this work employs agential realism (Barad, 2007) to diffract Māori responses to blood quantum with queer notions of ‘chosen family’ (Weston, 1997) and ‘crip ancestorship’ (Milbern, 2019), disrupting the deployment of queer quanta and the conditional affordance of belonging.

Keywords: queer quantum; (not) belonging; recognition; te ao Māori; chosen family; crip ancestorship; agential realism

How to cite: Pasley, A. (2024). Queer quantum: How communities police themselves. Knowledge Cultures, 12(2), 171-186. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc122202410.

Received October 16, 2023 • Received in revised form January 13, 2024
Accepted January 28, 2024 • Available online September 1, 2024