Part-time Psychopomp

“I’m interested in the original meaning of the word queer, as something similar to strange or weird. We center human queerness and culturally-rooted queerness in the context of this moment in Western culture. But we also are trying to center other-than-human queerness, which is actually available to everyone, not just not just LGBTQ people. This connects with the interest in reviving this kind of arcane meaning of queer as something cryptic or mysterious.

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Strange basically means something that is external or outside of what is familiar. It’s from the Latin word extraneous. Weird is a similar word. And that refers to something that seems like it shouldn’t belong, but yet it’s here. Like it does belong somehow. It’s really interesting because when the status quo is toxic and damaging, like white supremacy, for example, then what is weird or what is strange within the status quo can actually be good. It can even be enchanting. It’s pointing to something sacred, I think.

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For me, with “queer” and in the term Queer Nature, there’s a promise of healing our estrangement with the more-than-human world, our ancestors, and with land. If I think about nearly every memorable experience or connection with other-than-human life or death that I’ve had, those experiences have all been what I would describe as “strange” or “eerie”. Like holding a stick full of mycelium that’s growing green because it’s bioluminescent. The first time I encountered bioluminescent fungus was a very strange and eerie experience. It wasn’t because it felt wrong, but because it felt right.

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There’s this earthly, strangeness or queerness that is almost like a spirit and, and we need to be possessed by it or something. As other trans thinkers like Susan Stryker have written about, there’s so much in the root of the word monster, which means portent. Like what is revealed about the hidden truths in ourselves. Revealing things that we can’t process or come to consciously.

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@borealfaun

from our

@alignedmag

1. Detail from Abraham Ortelius map of Iceland, 1598 

2. Detail from Honorius Philoponus, Nova typis transacta navigato, 1621

3 & 4. The curious career of the flying turtle 

5. Still from Alien: Covenant 

found in Sea Monsters: on Medieval and Renaissance Maps by Chet Van Duzer