Queer / Quare

Queer

1: "Something that emerges out of a 'shared blackness'" (Best, 7); 2: an approach to the archive (Best, 26);  3: differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal; 4: homosexual” or otherwise “deviant” in sexual and/or gender identity; 5: to spoil the success of

See also: Black Feminism, Combahee River

Quare

“(Kwaˆr), n. 1. meaning queer; also, opp. of straight; odd or slightly off kilter; from the African American vernacular for queer; sometimes homophobic in usage, but always denotes excess incapable of being contained within conventional categories of being; curiously equivalent to the Anglo-Irish (and sometimes ‘Black’ Irish) variant of queer, as in Brendan Behan’s famous play, The Quare Fellow. —adj. 2. a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered person of color who loves other men or women, sexually or nonsexually, and appreciates black culture and community. —n. 3. one who thinks and feels and acts (and, sometimes, ‘acts up’); committed to struggle against all forms of oppression—racial, sexual, gender, class, religious, etc. —n. 4. one for whom sexual and gender identities always already intersect with racial subjectivity. 5. quare is to queer as ‘reading’ is to ‘throwing shade.’” (E. Patrick Johnson, 2)

Queer / Quare