has a master’s degree in contemporary philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He writes for Philonomist.
Photo © Mariette Thom
is a journalist with a master's degree in philosophy from the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, where he also graduated from the Institute of Political Science. He regularly writes for Philonomist.
Picture: © DR
studies at France’s ESCP business school and philosophy at the Sorbonne. He writes for Philonomist.
They are trans, queer, non-binary or genderfluid – but as far as you’re concerned, it’s complicated. You’re always on your guard, afraid to put your foot in it. If you’re not sure which label goes with what, we’re here for you!
See part 1 of our A to Z.
Queer
The office is in turmoil this morning. Your colleague Rachel, a trans woman, did not take kindly being referred to as queer by Charlotte – who’s actually no stranger to LGBTQ+ issues.
The thing is, queer, in its sense of “strange” or “weird”, used to be a homophobic insult. But victims gradually began calling themselves queer, which reversed the stigma attached to the word. Over time,“queer” became an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities – non-heterosexual individuals and/or people who consider that the (feminine or masculine) gender assigned to them at birth doesn’t correspond to their identity. The first academic use of the term was in the feminist review Differences, in a 1991 article by Italian academic Teresa de Lauretis. She was looking for an alternative to “gay and lesbian”, in frequent use at the time, but which she saw as contributing to invisibility. The idea was to broaden the spectrum of minorities.
Little by little, the term took on the idea of “gender subversion”, to which American philosopher Judith Butler drew attention in Gender Trouble (1990). It became a way of blurring boundaries between masculine and feminine, including from an aesthetic point of view, and not necessarily with a political stance. These days, anyone with good intentions and an open mind is welcome at a queer party, whether or not they belong to the LGBTQ+ community. Freedom of tone, appearance and expression has a broad appeal.
‘For Michel Foucault, care of self implies lifestyle choices’
Such aesthetic choices are close to what Michel Foucault calls “care of self”. This notion is part of Foucault’s notion of aesthetics of existence, an elaboration of the ancient conceptualisation of ethics as more of an art of living than mere philosophy. In The Use of Pleasure, volume 2 of The History of Sexuality (1976), he develops the idea of “arts of the existence”, which consist of conscious acts of will relative to the mastery of one’s own body and the exploration of its various possibilities, going against a legacy of “standards”. If we are going to have a body, then we should accept that clothing, diet, sport, posture, intonation, leisure and excesses imply lifestyl
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