Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Cruising Utopia
Queerness is not here yet. Queerness is an identity. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an identity that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness's domain.
"We are not yet queer." Hang on. People are coming out of the closet all over the place these days. So what is Muñoz talking about?
Here is where the queer identity and the gay identity start to come apart. One can be both gay and queer. And some people are gay, but not queer. Allow us to explain.
Being queer means never having to say, "I am x." The whole point is to declare: I have no definition. I am indefinable. I am moving towards some future where none of us have to be any categorical thing at all.
When Muñoz suggests "queerness is an identity," he qualifies it by saying it is a potentiality. Queerness is a "warm illumination" on the horizon. That's a great metaphor to think about. A horizon is off in the distance; it represents hope, a place where things change for the better.
But as you approach the horizon, another horizon inevitably appears. There is always an over there that is exciting and new and that over there effects how I behave right here. Muñoz tells us that a queer identity is never fully realized or explained or pinned down.
That's why it's so valuable. In essence: a queer identity is the fluid hope for a better, more fluid future.
If you don't claim a set identity, then you can always redefine yourself. Your identity is always temporary. That horizon is always ahead of you.