“A_society” as a model figure of ambiguity

Abstract

In the essay I will reconstruct the different epistemological steps from undisambiguation through queer politics of paradox to what I call today “queerness as lived ambiguity”. I will explicate how the notion of ambiguity fulfills a double function in queer theory, namely underlining ambiguity’s livability – multidimensional identities are neither stable nor coherent – and explaining its political potential – overcoming clearcut borders and simplified antagonisms. I will focus on a_sociality as figure of ambiguity, arguing that queerness as lived ambiguity goes along with an understanding of relationality and kinship defined by a continuum or simultaneity of sociality, anti-sociality, and asociality, named “a_sociality”. My thesis is that in avowing the ambiguity of a sociality it becomes possible to move towards forms of cohabitation under conditions of social and global heterogeneity.