Whatever has been recognized by ANVUR (the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems) as a scientific journal for the Disciplinary Areas 10, 11, 14 and as an A-class scientific journal for the Disciplinary Area 11, Sector 11/C4.

From its very beginnings, queer has again and again proved its unpredictable productivity, its irrepressible vitality, its unconditional refusal to be circumscribed, defined, tamed. Queer is, of course, well established in the field of LGBTI studies, where it has quickly achieved the worldwide recognition it deserves; in addition, today, scholars and activists the world over are spinning queer outwards in a range of new and exciting directions, such as (to name but a few) neuroqueer, animal queer, queer economies, queer pedadogies, or the queer politics of migration. Their daring and original work is a powerful testimonial to the productivity and vitality of a clusterof theories which deserve to be more widely known and applied, both in scholarship, teaching and research, and in activism, advocacy and policy-making.

We would like Whatever to host, facilitate and promote a conversation among scholars working with these theories, whatever their research interests, methodological allegiances and disciplinary affiliations.

At its most abstract, queer’s research programme hinges on the questioning of categories and the decostruction of performances. Thus, a truly queer approach to scholarship and research cannot but begin by questioning the categories and performances which define normal and normative scholarly identities as they are constituted, exacted, and rewarded. Two of the most fundamental constructs in the production of academic normativity are the system of the disciplines, with its definitions, boundaries, and hierarchies, and the opposition between specialists and laypeople, which entails the systematic devaluing of the latter’s experiences and forms of knowledge, and the distrust of their abilities to achieve insight into their own predicament, and to elaborate viable solutions to their own problems.

The forms and devices of normativity and oppression overlap and strengthen one another. This makes any faith in a reductionist epistemology of separate disciplines not only intellectually simplistic but politically futile. Queer theory is not an idle pastime but a basic and effective tool to achieve change: it can accommodate any disciplinary perspective because the world is bigger than any possible description; it can accommodate any methodology because the world is more complex than any possible model. Questioning the disciplinary and methodological categories on which scholarly work is based does not mean to be disciplinarily incompetent or methodologically naïve: it means to have a lucid and sober vision of the limits of any method and of the arbitrariness of all disciplinary boundaries. As well as celebrating the affective roots of queer with an allusion to Maria Bello’s recent book, Whatever aims to emphasize the difference between the lack of methodological and disciplinary awareness of “Anything goes” and the responsible and self-reflective eclecticism of “Whatever works”. Which can, of course, be read both as an act of all-inclusive acceptance and as an affirmation of the strengths of flexibility.

In its refusal to let issues be defined and hemmed in by disciplinary boundaries, and in its aim towards the co-production of a form of situated, embodied, methodologically aware and politically active knowledge where not only “specialists” of different fields but also laypeople are involved, listened to and honoured, transdisciplinarity should be acknowledged and celebrated as a vital and fundamental part of any intellectually and ethically responsible project to engage and disseminate queer theories.

Whatever is peer-reviewed, online, open-access.

Contributions are accepted in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.