Queering Methods Through Absence: the Asexual-Spectrum and the Politics of Not-Knowing

What does it mean to centre absence, ambiguity, and refusal in research? This blog post explores how queering methods through the lens of the asexual-spectrum and the right to opacity invites us to read absence not as lack, but as an alternative form of presence and resistance.

Feminist and queer scholarship often teaches us to look for silences, gaps, and absences, not necessarily as voids to be filled, but rather as critical sites of meaning. The asexual-spectrum offers a particularly rich terrain for this work. Frequently denied epistemic authority, misrecognised, misread, or overlooked altogether, the asexual-spectrum is usually framed as lacking: lacking desire, intimacy, political urgency, or even subjectivity itself. But what if we stopped treating these perceived absences as deficits? What if, instead, we approached these perceived absences as alternative forms of presence?

In this blog post I explore how queering methods might mean sitting comfortably with perceived absences. Not to explain them away or make them legible, but rather to understand them as meaningful in their own right, and to acknowledge their potential insights regarding the apparent presences with which they are defined against. In doing so, I draw on Édouard Glissant’s concept of the right to opacity, alongside feminist and queer critiques of recognition and legibility.

Absence as Being and a Mode of Refusal

Often, the asexual-spectrum is defined in the negative: no sexual attraction, no normative desire, no need to be “coupled.” And while these framings misrepresent the widespread diversity demonstrated in asexual-spectrum communities, these so-called absences are nevertheless framed as losses, or as gaps to be corrected, by naming, representing, or even diagnosing them. But what if we read them instead as valid modes of being, and furthermore, as refusals?

Refusals of what Judith Butler (1990) might call the “compulsory frames” of intelligibility. Refusals of what Gayle Rubin (2011) termed the “charmed circle” of sexual normativity. Refusals to fit neatly into taxonomies of ‘sexual orientation’ as a legal category demanding desire, coupling, and legibility according to dominant sexual norms. 

In this light, absence is not simply emptiness. Rather, absence marks the limits of normative imagination, offering space for alternate sites of subjectivity and presenting resistance to the normative capture of a criteria of intelligibility that renders so much unintelligible.

Ambiguity as Method

Feminist and queer theorists have long shown us that what doesn’t fit (what is seemingly messy, incomplete, and contradictory) is often where generative insights rest. As such, by exploring a metaphysics of absence, and looking to spaces of perceived absence for subjective meaning, we can think through the possibility that asexual-spectrum experiences are not just outside of dominant sexual norms, but rather outside the very frameworks used to understand normativity itself.

Many folks identifying on the asexual-spectrum describe experiences that defy straightforward classification: little to no sexual attraction, ambivalent romantic attraction, platonic intimacy that may resemble partnership, orientations that shift or resist fixing. And while these may appear as ambiguities, they also represent invitations to rethink how we read and what we assume understanding must look like.

So, what if we let ambiguity stand?

Opacity as an Ethical Position

Glissant’s “right to opacity” offers an incredibly powerful lens here. In contrast to liberal frameworks that tie recognition to visibility and legibility, Glissant invites us to consider the value of being unreadable, of existing without necessarily needing to be explained away.

Applied to the asexual-spectrum, this suggests a political and ethical refusal of being captured by structures that demand transparency to dominant models of intelligibility. Seeking comfort in ambiguity is therefore not about hiding, but rather about preserving the integrity of a plurality of difference. This means rejecting the premise of unintelligibility as a problem to be solved. As Glissant contends: 

“To feel in solidarity with him or to build with him or to like what he does, it is not necessary for me to grasp him. It is not necessary to try to become the other (to become other) nor to "make" him in my image,” (Glissant, Poetics of Relation (1990), 193).

Accordingly, to be opaque is not to be absent. But it is rather a step to refuse translation on someone else’s terms.

Recognition Without Representation

In law, media, and academic scholarship, inclusion is often tied to representation (Guyan, 2022). You must be named to be protected, described to be seen. But this model of recognition can itself be coercive, seemingly insisting on knowability as a fundamental condition of legitimacy.

What if we shifted our focus from representing the asexual-spectrum to relating to it, provisionally, non-coercively, and without assuming access?

Recognition, in this sense, doesn't require visibility in a predetermined way. But instead asks that we attend to presence, even in its quietest, most ambiguous forms.

This means recognising the right not to explain, disclose, or open up to a world that might not have imagined oneself. It means reading silence, hesitation, or refusal as meaningful. And it means troubling tendencies that treat identity as fixed, categorical, and self-evident.

Staying with Uncertainty

Queer methods have taught us to value instability, ambiguity, and disillusion (in the very best sense). A reflection on the asexual-spectrum can extend this tradition, reminding us that not all lives follow the same scripts of desire, legibility, or visibility. In fact, in some respects, those who seem to “lack” might instead be living outside the reach of those scripts altogether.

To stay with these uncertainties, to resist the temptation to name, define, represent, or understand, is to practise a form of epistemic humility. Opening space for new, plural, and unexpected ways of being.

Reading Absence Otherwise

If the asexual-spectrum is constructed as absence, then queering methods asks us to read that absence differently, as a reality to be honoured. Not as a void to be filled, but as a presence that refuses to be captured. Not as lack, but as difference. Not as invisibility, but as opacity.

Embracing absence has implications not just for how we research, but for how we relate. It calls for methods that affirm difference without domination and multiplicity without erasure. And it reminds us that the ethics of not-knowing might be just as important as the politics of knowing.

Author bio

Alex Nevins is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Law. Their research explores the intersection of the asexual-spectrum and law, with a particular focus on critically examining frameworks such as the Equality Act 2010 and exploring pathways for enhanced legal and social inclusion.

In addition to their research, Alex convenes the Criminal Law Discussion Group and teaches on the Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World course at the University of Edinburgh.

References: 

Judith Butler, ‘Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity’, (Routledge, 1990). 

Édouard Glissant, ‘Poetics of Relation’, (The University of Michigan Press, 1990). 

Kevin Guyan, ‘Queer Data Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data For Action’, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022).

Gayle Rubin, ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality’,  in: Gayle Rubin, ‘Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader’, (Duke University Press, 2011).