Cultivating Queer Publics with an Uncivil Tongue: Queer Eye's Critical Performances of Desire

Abstract

This essay examines the civilizing rhetorics performed on Bravo's reality television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and the role they play in processes of queer worldmaking. We contend that despite charges of assimilation and depoliticization, Queer Eye enacts an “uncivil” tongue, opening up a discursive space for the circulation of nonnormative forms of desire. These performances of desire reimagine relationships between bodies, surfaces, spaces, and pleasure. In doing so, Queer Eye's uncivil tongue provokes a rethinking of desire itself—a strategy that, we argue, is integral to the cultivation of a queer public culture. This essay, then, extends critical scholarship pertaining to publics, performance, and queer worldmaking.