Queer Renaturalisations: Guy Hocquenghem’s Contradictory Nature Politics, Between Identity and Desire

Abstract

Queerphobic discourses variably frame nature as defined by reproductive heterosexuality or as defined by unruly desires that civilised heterosexuality promises a progress away from. This article argues that both these politicised determinations of nature follow the logic of ‘renaturalisation’ – a strategy that invokes nature and the natural to reinforce a normative process – and that the ambiguity in nature discourses stems from the conflictual construction of queerness as both social and antisocial. Because queerness oscillates between being a recognisable identity and a critique of everything social, nature discourses used to justify heteronormative ontologies are contradictory and must change according to the context of the argument. Excavating a theory of renaturalisation from Guy Hocquenghem, this article suggests that queer politics should take nature seriously not because nature is inherently progressive or conservative but because this very duality materialises through cultural anxieties around queerness.