Queer Political Astrology

• Published in: GLQ 2021-01, Vol.27 (1), p.103-120
• Main Author: Winstanley-Smith, Alexa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1064-2684; 1527-9375
• DOI: 10.1215/10642684-8776890

The resurgence of fascism has quickly become an unavoidable fact of the Western world. Perhaps it comes as no surprise to today’s inheritors of cultural studies and critical theory that astrology has made its own comeback; however, it has made its comeback with a difference. The vanguard of today’s astrological movement is led by the queer Left. Uprooted from its role as fate’s theological handmaiden for mounting figures of authority and apparently removed from the (implicitly heterosexual) reproductive model of a mainstream “culture industry,” queer astrology has come to the fore as an antitraditionalist, anticonservative mode of rethinking human biography in community. The queer astrological model of self-understanding and self-analysis has potential: it is not held in thrall to the perpetually outmoded biological paradigms of scientific “fact,” nor does it require cleaving to secularized but still-fraught figures for the self such as the “martyr,” the “saint,” or the “heretic.” Queer astrology unquestionably breaks the fearful mold beheld by critics like Aby Warburg and Theodor Adorno. But is it political? And if it is, how so? What are its potentials? How do we construe a queer astrological politics that is capable of mounting more than a therapeutic alternative to tradition — one that can play an activist role in a political scene that has already donned the kitsch comb-over of that tabloid credential to which tawdry horoscopes once made their claims?