Queer Invisible Academy
Queer because we question sexualities and genders as we know them ; Invisible because we do not want to embrace policed sexualities and genders ; Academy because we want a new way to create knowledge.
The Queer Invisible Academy
QIA is an organising group that aims to create queer spaces in which to share experiences and create knowledge.
We intend these to be social spaces in which to experiment putting in practice a field of relationships that is not organised along the lines that cater for the many types of structural oppression and discrimination in contemporary capitalist societies. We want to challenge assumptions on gender, race, sexuality, body types and class and we aim to create the necessary spaces to make this possible. QIA makes a point of practically enacting this as we want our lives to be free from all these oppressions here and now, and not in an imaginary, utopic or post-revolutionary society yet to come.
When we call these spaces "queer" we don't necessarily refer to a sexual identity as much as to a political approach. (We always use the word "queer" as an adjective or a verb, never as a noun!) The queer approach means to identify, deconstruct and possibly deactivate the power relations and binaries embedded in our everyday practice. Challenging assumptions is not merely an outward process, but a self-reflective one as well; we do not assume other people's genders, sexualities or privileges - instead we question our own.
Queer practice can never be recuperated, co-opted, assimilated or institutionalised because it doesn't aim at extending privileges to hitherto underrepresented "minorities", but at challenging the structures that create these minorities in the first place. Politics of representation can only be rejected, as we do not intend to define or establish any normalised homogenous identity. We need to bend language into signifying our desires: reclaiming the spaces otherwise dominated by the unspoken normative assumption of heterosexuality is a need, not a privilege but a matter of survival.
QIA is open to everyone who is willing to work together in the spirit of these principles. We try to keep our group free from hierarchies as far as we can and to address informal hierarchies whenever they emerge. Our collective decisions are based on consensus.