“We are counter-nature defending itself” : Sex and symbioses

Résumé 0

Queer ecologies are full of unruly creatures that not only defy the male/female, hetero/homo, cis/trans binary schemas, but also the individualistic competitive worlds on which these binaries are founded. They are thus “counter-nature defending itself” from being counter-nature: they show that forms of gender, sexuality, kinship and family that are reputed to be deviant are far more widespread than heteropatriarchal sciences have been willing to admit. But they are also “counter-nature defending itself” against the onslaught of extractivist capitalism, showing the ideological character of ideas of predation, of struggle for survival and for the transmission of individual genetic heritage. Instead, following the lessons of Margulis’s bacteriology and the queer theorists who drew inspiration from it, this article argues that we need to think of forms of kinship and solidarity for living and dying on a symbiotic planet.