"Methodologies Not Yet Known: The Queer Case For Relational Research" (book chapter)

In this chapter, I interrogate the limits of research as a practice within queer rhetorical scholarship as both remain energized by the whiteness of contemporary queer identity politics (construed as settler colonial futurity). Constellating across cultural rhetorics, de- and anticolonial theory and practice, settler colonial studies, Black and Native studies, and Critical University Studies, I argue for a divestment from the settler colonial undercurrents of queerness (as identity, practice, lifeway) and, in their place, the advancement of a decolonial horizon within research projects—and a refusal to do research when the queer researcher cannot imagine a decolonial future.

I begin by highlighting the interlinked nature of queerness with ongoing colonization in settler colonies (primarily within North American and specifically the United States, my context) via the integration of queerness within settler liberalism, springboarding from this criticism into the leaky potential of de/anticolonial theory to dissolve queer stasis as a force for good—as a means of refusing settler futurity. I conclude this chapter by offering solutions to readers derived from my community organizing and approaches to research with(in) marginalized communities. With these questions, I implore readers to begin the work of queerly relational research, or methodologizing in a manner that forecloses the settler imaginary—the totalizing intellectual purview of research—and that advances Black/Indigenous futurity.

The collection was released April 2022, and you can purchase it at this link. That said, the book is quite expensive, so if you would like a PDF, see the above link!