“Making Sense of Mess: Marginal Lives, Impossible Spaces”

Abstract

‘Queering’ and ‘messing up’ are activities and actions as much as ‘queer’ and ‘mess’ can be about states/status, positions, identities, and orientations. These various formulations of queer and mess are not independent of each other and are relevant to my discussion below. While people may balk at the idea of mess as ‘constituting’ queer, it is precisely the discomfort elicited and provoked by the idea and realities of mess that is at the heart of my formulation and provocation. (Martin Manalansan, “The ‘Stuff ’ of Archive”)1