When the Checkpoint Becomes a Counterpoint: Stasis as Queer Dissent

Abstract

This article was born out of a sense of discomfort with the privilege accorded to movement and mobility in critical scholarship in the social sciences and the humanities, including critical work on the relationship between language, sexuality and space. It is our contention in this article that stasis can be deployed as a radical practice of defiance, and therefore can be queer too. In order to argue that stillness can be a form of social action carrying the potential of forging a radical politics of dissent, we take as a case in point the checkpoint in the context of Israel/Palestine. Drawing upon Said’s (1984, 1994) notion of the counterpoint and Stroud’s (2018) theorisation of linguistic citizenship, we illustrate how the checkpoint can become a bodily, discursive and material counterpoint that activates the irreconcilable tensions between utopia and dystopia in the pursuit of “thorough resistance to regimes of the normal” (WARNER, 1993, p. xxvi).

Language, gender and sexuality in 2020

“…Such pinkwashing was opposed by queer Palestinian activists and queer Israeli groups from the left. Milani et al show how protesters used references to and imagery of the checkpoint -a material technology of movement reduction and a metaphor for Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza -and turned it into a queer counterpoint (drawing on Edward Said), 'an instrument of sexual insubordination through which to speak back to Israeli pinkwashing' (Milani et al 2020(Milani et al :1662. By blocking the march, slowing it down or refusing to acknowledge it, these protesters queered the status quo.…”