Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology

How can someone explore new feelings and ideas of sexuality, even begin to find their position in the world when queerness and disorientation are often presented as one and the same? Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology explores how we can understand the ways in which bodies are oriented and disoriented in the world. Or in rethinking our lines in the world, how we should negotiate the spaces we live in. According to Ahmed, disorientation is a “crisis of losing one's place in the world,” and it is an effect that prohibits us from blending in with a calming background (139). She also suggests that disorientation is a fundamental aspect of queer experience, as normative understandings are challenged. In this essay, I will analyze Ahmed's position

It is a fundamental aspect of the human experience as we often are forced to question and rethink, iterate upon ourselves and our relationship to the world. The feeling of being lost can be caused by various forms of violence, such as racism, sexism, or homophobia. Ahmed mentions that disorientation is often a productive state, as it allows us to imagine and create alternative methods of interacting with the world (158). But also witnessed as “a violent feeling, and a feeling that is affected by violence, or shaped by violence directed toward the body” (Ahmed 160). The relationship between disorientation and queerness appears to take place in a shared disruption of normative understandings of identity. Queerness is often seen as a challenge to normal heterosexual practices, a rejection of ‘normal’ expectations around gender and sexuality. But for Ahmed, queerness is not simply a matter of nonconformity. It is a radical reimagining of the possibilities for embodied existence or a disruption of the coherence and stability of normative cultural norms and

Public spaces are often understood as neutral, apolitical arenas, but for queer individuals, they can be sites of intense anxiety and disorientation (Ahmed 129). The heteronormative assumptions that underlie public space can make queer individuals feel as if they do not belong, disorienting their sense of identity, and forcing upon them a line used to maintain straight privilege. For example, a trans person may feel disoriented in a gendered space that does not align with their gender identity, such as assigned bathrooms and locker rooms. A gay person may feel disoriented in a space that is hostile to homosexuality and overtly advertises heterosexual relationships as the necessary way to achieve happiness. Ahmed argues that by recognizing and embracing the disorienting aspects of queer experience, we can challenge and transform the norms that shape public space and therefore change the lines of how we are oriented in the