Survival of the queerest: queer survival and future possibilities

In the process of imagining, anticipating, materialising futures, narratives of survival play a central role. How we think about human survival, what narratives are used to think survival and from what social practices they derive, condition heavily not only our collective sense of futurity but also our stories and practices of futures-making. Marginalised communities have extensive and ubiquitous histories of surviving in environments that were meant to erase or destroy them. Queer lives are, by definition, precarious and under threat. The notion of survival is central to the queer existence and experience. Moreover, queering as a theoretical project holds transformative possibilities that can be applied to survival in ways that align with these “singular plural” lived experiences. This paper asks: what can we learn from queer stories and experiences of survival? What would entail the queering of our ideas of survival, and what would that mean for opening-up different forms of engagement with future possibilities? Examining a range of literature approaching stories and practices of queer survival, I explore four dimensions of queer survival and reflect on some of the implications for futures-thinking and making. These themes are care and community, resources, resilience and imagination. Queer temporalities run across these themes through the subversion of straight linear time. Far from heteropatriarchal ideologies of survival, defined through competition, violence and domination, queer survival entails dispossession, undoing of the self and ability to deal with ongoing loss while animating germs of possibilities for the future. • Imaginaries of survival are imbued with heteropatriarchal ideology. • Queer lives and theories present extensive knowledge in surviving differently. • Queering survival involves queering care, resources, resilience and imagination. • Queer survival offers an extension of future possibilities for collective survival.