Twisting Language

Cuir and cyborg resistance politics

Abstract

Language, for its fictitious narrative as original and superior, works with a series of mechanisms that regulate its use. Its implementation is the result of a whole series of colonial violences, designating places and corners to specific bodies within the social field, a matrix of phonetic, visual and somatic order. What means do we have to create disorder within language? How can we mutate and twist it? Let's look at two strategies. The first will be to look at queer politics, a body generating political tension within majority systems, demonstrating what minority groups are capable of. The second will be to demonstrate how cyborg feminism can enable us to imagine and express new and alternative stories, creating resistance against the medical narrative and the disease as a stigma, specifically homosexuals infected with HIV/AIDS. Finally, artist and writer Pedro Lemebel will be the combining component for both strategies, we will look at his book Chronicles of the Sidario (1996), where he exposes how sexual minorities in Chile have formed resistances.