This lecture explores the queerness of use as well as uses of queer. The lecture begins with a reflection on the gap between the intended function of an object and how an object is used as a gap with a queer potential. The lecture does not simply affirm that potential, but offers an account of how institutional worlds are built to enable some uses (and users) more than others. To bring out the queerness of use thus requires a world-dismantling effort. The lecture reflects on how dismantling is framed as damage and considers the relationship between the creativity of queer use, violence and survival.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture with additional support from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, the California College of the Arts and the Queer Cultural Center.