Queer theory
Encyclopedia
Queer theory is a field of critical theory
that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies
and feminist studies
. Queer theory includes both queer
readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. Heavily influenced by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
, Judith Butler
, and Lauren Berlant
, queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender
is part of the essential
self and upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities
. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behaviour with respect to homosexual behaviour, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative
and deviant categories.
and heterosexism
may be read in almost any document of our culture means that we are only beginning to have an idea of how widespread those institutions and accounts are.
Queer theory's main project is exploring the contesting of the categorisation of gender and sexuality; identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorised and labeled – because identities consist of many varied components and that to categorise by one characteristic is wrong. For example, a woman can be a woman without being labeled a lesbian or feminist, and she may have a different race from the dominant culture. She should, queer theorists argue, be classed as possessing an individual identity and not be labelled by defining terms such as "feminist" or "black". Queer theory said that there is an interval between what a subject “does” (role-taking) and what a subject “is” (the self). So despite its title the theory's goal is to destabilise identity categories, which are designed to identify the “sexed subject” and place individuals within a single restrictive sexual orientation.
theory, and deconstruction
in particular. Starting in the 1970s, a range of authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to bear on issues of sexual identity, and especially on the construction of a normative "straight" ideology
. Queer theorists challenged the validity and consistency of heteronormative discourse, and focused to a large degree on non-heteronormative sexualities and sexual practices.
The term "queer theory" was introduced in 1990, with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
, Judith Butler
, Adrienne Rich
and Diana Fuss (all largely following the work of Michel Foucault
) being among its foundational proponents.
"Queer" as used within queer theory is less an identity than an embodied critique of identity. Major aspects of this critique include discussion of: the role of Performativity
in creating and maintaining identity; the basis of sexuality
and gender, either as natural
, essential
, or socially constructed; the way that these identities change or resist change; and their power relations vis-a-vis heteronormativity
.
is the person credited with coining the phrase "Queer Theory". It was at a working conference on lesbian and gay sexualities that was held at the University of California
, Santa Cruz
in February 1990 that de Lauretis first made mention of the phrase. Barely three years later, she abandoned the phrase on the grounds that it had been taken over by mainstream forces and institutions it was originally coined to resist. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble
, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, and David Halperin
's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality inspired other works.
In the late 1980s, social constructionists conceived of the sexual subject as a culturally dependent, historically specific product.
or essential to the person, as an essentialist
believes, or if sexuality is a social construction and subject to change.
The queer theory has two predominant strains:
It departs from Foucault
and his study Sexuality and the formation of the modern self'
The Essentialist theory was introduced to Queer Criticism as a by-product of feminism when the criticism was known by most as Lesbian/Gay Criticism. The essentialist feminists believed that genders "have an essential nature (e.g. nurturing and caring versus being aggressive and selfish), as opposed to differing by a variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces". Due to this belief in the essential nature of a person, it is also natural to assume that a person's sexual preference would be natural and essential to a person’s personality.
Social Constructionists counter that there is no natural identity, that all meaning is constructed through discourse and there is no subject other than the creation of meaning for social theory. While sociology
and queer theory are not reducible to each other, sociology has its own deconstructionist impulse built into pragmatist and symbolic interactionist analyses of identity and subjectivity. They are constituted in language and interaction; conversely, queer theory has a very specific deconstructionist, which basis is the conception of the self radically disarticulated from the social.
For example, as Foucault explains in The History of Sexuality
, two hundred years ago there was no linguistic category for gay
male. Instead, the term applied to sex between two men was sodomy
. Over time, the concept "homosexual" was created in a test tube through the discourse
s of medicine
and especially psychiatry
. What is conventionally understood to be the same practice was gradually transformed from a sin
ful lifestyle into an issue of sexual orientation
. Foucault argues that prior to this discursive creation there was no such thing as a person who could think of himself as essentially gay.
However, perhaps nowhere is the similarity between recent queer formulations and sociological approaches more striking than in the study of gender. Both argued that gender was not a stable property of the self, it arose through an iterative process of “doing” masculinity and feminity. In fact, long before queer theorists had located gender in performativity and representation, symbolic interactionists had deconstructed gender into moments of attribution and iteration.
It is precisely in the analysis of the performative moment, that interpretivist sociology and queer theory part company. Whereas pragmatism and symbolic interactionism focus on the processes and techniques whereby individuals attempt to “shore up” the gap between doing (I act like a woman) and the identity toward which that doing is directed (I am a woman), queer theory focuses on the performative failure, the inability of the individual to fully realize the concept and lay claim to ontological status.
and other groups which embraced "queer" as an identity label that pointed to a separatist
, non-assimilationist
politics. Queer theory developed out of an examination of perceived limitations in the traditional identity politics
of recognition and self-identity. In particular, queer theorists identified processes of consolidation or stabilization around some other identity labels (e.g. gay and lesbian); and construed queerness so as to resist this. Queer theory attempts to maintain a critique more than define a specific identity.
Acknowledging the inevitable violence of identity politics, and having no stake in its own ideology
, queer is less an identity than a critique of identity. However, it is in no position to imagine itself outside the circuit of problems energized by identity politics. Instead of defending itself against those criticisms that its operations attract, queer allows those criticisms to shape its – for now unimaginable – future directions. "The term," writes Butler
, "will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized." The mobilization of queer foregrounds the conditions of political representation, its intentions and effects, its resistance to and recovery by the existing networks of power.
The studies of Fuss
anticipates queer theory.
Eng, Halberstam and Esteban Munoz offer one of its latest incarnations in the aptly “What is Queer about Queer studies now?”. Using Butler
’s critique of sexual identity categories as a starting point, they work around a “queer epistemology” that explicitly opposes the sexual categories of Lesbian and Gay studies and lesbian and gay identity politics. They insist that the field of normalization is not limited to sexuality; social classifications such as gender, race and nationality constituted by a “governing logic” require an epistemological intervention through queer theory" (Green 2007).
"So, the evolution of the queer begins with the problematization of sexual identity categories in Fuss
(1996) and extends outward to a more general deconstruction of social ontology in contemporary queer theory" (Green 2007).
"Edelman goes from deconstruction of the subject to a deconstructive psychoanalysis of the entire social order; the modern human fear of mortality produces defensive attempts to “suture over the hole in the Symbolic Order”. According to him, constructions of “the homosexual” are pitted against constructions of “The Child” in the modern West, wherein the former symbolizes the inevitability of mortality (do not procreate) and the latter an illusory continuity of the self with the social order (survives mortality through one’s offspring). The constructs are animated by futuristic fantasy designed to evade mortality" (Green 2007).
"Fuss, Eng. et al and Edelman represent distinct moment in the development of queer theory. Whereas Fuss aims to discompose and render inert the reigning classifications of sexual identity, Eng. et al observe the extension of a deconstructive strategy to a wider field of normalization, while Edelman’s work takes not only the specter of “the homosexual”, but the very notion of “society” as a manifestation of psychological distress requiring composition" (Green 2007).
or female
, even on a strictly biological basis. For example, the sex chromosome
s (X and Y) may exist in atypical combinations (as in Klinefelter's syndrome
[XXY]). This complicates the use of genotype
as a means to define exactly two distinct sexes. Intersexed individuals may for many different biological reasons have ambiguous sexual characteristics
.
Scientists who have written on the conceptual significance of intersexual individuals include Anne Fausto-Sterling
, Ruth Hubbard
, Carol Tavris
, and Joan Roughgarden
.
Some key experts in the study of culture, such as Barbara Rogoff
, argue that the traditional distinction between biology and culture as independent entities is overly simplistic, pointing to the ways in which biology and culture interact with one another.
crisis, which promoted a renewal of radical activism, and the growing homophobia
brought about by public responses to AIDS. Queer theory became occupied in part with what effects – put into circulation around the AIDS epidemic – necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing in "queer".
To examine the effects that HIV/AIDS has on queer theory is to look at the ways in which the status of the subject or individual is treated in the biomedical discourses that construct them.
The material effects of AIDS contested many cultural assumptions about identity, justice, desire and knowledge, which some scholars felt challenged the entire system of Western thought, believing it maintained the health and immunity of epistemology: "the psychic presence of AIDS signifies a collapse of identity and difference that refuses to be abjected from the systems of self-knowledge." Thus queer theory and AIDS become interconnected because each is articulated through a postmodernist understanding of the death of the subject and both understand identity as an ambivalent site.
, sexual inversion
, transgender
, bisexuality
, asexuality
, intersexuality are seen by queer theorists as opportunities for more involved investigations into class difference and racial, ethnic and regional particulars.
The key element is that of viewing sexuality as constructed through discourse, with no list or set of constituted preexisting sexuality realities, but rather identities constructed through discursive operations. It is important to consider discourse in its broadest sense as shared meaning making, as Foucault and Queer Theory would take the term to mean. In this way sexual activity, having shared rules and symbols would be as much a discourse as a conversation, and sexual practice itself constructs its reality rather than reflecting a putatively proper, biologically predefined sexuality.
This point of view places these theorists in conflict with some branches of feminism that view prostitution, and pornography, for example, as mechanisms for the oppressions of women. Other branches of feminism tend to vocally disagree with this interpretation and celebrate (some) pornography as a means of adult sexual representation.
.
Queer theory is likened to language because it is never static, but is ever-evolving. Richard Norton suggests that the existence of queer language is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels from an external mainstream culture.
Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured through the use of language. Heteronormativity
was the main focus of discourse, where heterosexuality was viewed as normal and any deviations, such as homosexuality, as abnormal or "queer".
authors such as Samuel R. Delany
and Octavia Butler feature many values and themes from queer theory in their work. Patrick Califia
's published fiction also draws heavily on concepts and ideas from queer theory. Some lesbian feminist novels written in the years immediately following Stonewall, such as Lover
by Bertha Harris
or Les Guérillères
by Monique Wittig
, can be said to anticipate the terms of later queer theory.
In film, the genre christened by B. Ruby Rich
as New Queer Cinema
in 1992 continues, as Queer Cinema, to draw heavily on the prevailing critical climate of queer theory; a good early example of this is the Jean Genet
-inspired movie Poison
by the director Todd Haynes
. In fan fiction
, the genre known as slash fiction
rewrites straight or nonsexual relationships to be gay, bisexual, and queer in a sort of campy
cultural appropriation. Ann Herendeen's
Pride/Prejudice, for example, narrates a steamy affair between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, the mutually devoted heroes of Jane Austen's
much-adapted novel
. And in music, some Queercore
groups and zines could be said to reflect the values of queer theory.
Queer theorists analyze texts and challenge the cultural notions of "straight" ideology; that is, does "straight" imply heterosexuality as normal or is everyone potentially gay? As Ryan states: "It is only the laborious imprinting of heterosexual norms that cuts away those potentials and manufactures heterosexuality as the dominant sexual format." For example, Hollywood pursues the "straight" theme as being the dominant theme to outline what masculine is. This is particularly noticeable in gangster films, action films and westerns, which never have "weak" (read: homosexual) men playing the heroes, with the recent exception of the film Brokeback Mountain
. Queer theory looks at destabilizing and shifting the boundaries of these cultural constructions.
New Media
artists have a long history of queer theory inspired works, including cyberfeminism
works, porn films like I.K.U.
which feature transgender cyborg hunters and "Sharing is Sexy", an "open source porn laboratory", using social software, creative commons licensing and netporn to explore queer sexualities beyond the male/female binary.
being undertaken from the perspective of "Queer theory".
The term is a neologism, originating in the 1990s.
A "pro-feminist gay theology" was proposed by J. M. Clark and G. McNeil in 1992, and a "queer theology" by Robert Goss in Jesus acted up: A gay and lesbian manifesto (1993).
Queer theory's commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay" subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse. Thus, queer theory cannot be a framework for examining selves or subjectivities—including those that accrue by race and class—but rather, must restrict its analytic focus to discourse. Hence, sociology
and queer theory are regarded as methodologically and epistemologically incommensurable
frameworks by critics such as Adam Green. In a introductory section, Michael Warner
(1990s) draws out the possibility of queer theory as a kind of critical intervention in social theory (radical deconstructionism); despite this, he weaves back and forth between the reification and deconstruction of sexual identity. Warner begins the volume by invoking an ethnic identity politics, solidified around a specific social cleavage and a discussion of the importance of deconstructing notions of lesbian and gay identities; but, despite its radical deconstructionist, it does the notion of queer subject or self in largely conventional terms: as lesbian and gay people bound by homophobic institutions and practices.
So, one of the leading volumes of queer theory engages the subject via conventional sociological epistemologies that conceive of subject positions constituted through systems of stratification and organized around shared experience and identity.
In other way, for Barnard
, any consideration of sexuality must include inextricability with racialized subjectivities. Barnard rejects queer theoretical conceptions of sexuality on the grounds that such work fails to account for particularity of racialized sexualities. He reasons that the failure arises because queer theorists are themselves white, and therefore operate from the particularity of a white racial standpoint. Barnard aspires to recuperate an analysis of race in queer theory, proposing that the deconstructionist epistemology of queer theory can be used to decompose a white queerness (first) in order to recover a racialized queerness (second).
Barnard’s attempt to bring social contingency into queer theory violates the core epistemological premise of queer theory; in fact, by proposing that queer theory capture racialized subject positions, Barnard reinstates what it means to be a person of colour. His critique of the white subject position of queer theorists is itself a testimony to the stability of the social order and the power of social categories to mark a particular kind of experience, of subjectivity and, in turn, of queer author. He backs down the road of a decidedly sociological analysis of subject position and the self.
Finally, Jagose
aims toward an analysis of social cleavages, including those accruing by race and ethnicity. Thus, on the one, underscores the strong deconstructionist epistemological premise of the term queer and queer theory more generally. Yet, she goes on to analyses of identities and sexualities “inflected by heterosexuality, race, gender and ethnicity”.
Advocating the incorporation of social contingency in this way, Jagose offers neither the critical edge of queer theory nor the clarity of standpoint theory.
We can divide its criticisms in three main ideas:
Foucault's account of the modern construction of the homosexual, a starting point for much work in Queer Theory, is itself challenged by Rictor Norton
, using the Molly House
as one counter-example of a distinctly homosexual subculture before 1836. He critiques the idea that people distinctly identifying in ways now associated with being gay did not exist before the medical construction of homosexual pathology in his book The Myth of the Modern Homosexual.
Queer theory underestimates the Foucauldian insight that power produces not just constraint, but also, pleasure, according to Barry Adam (2000) and Adam Isaiah Green (2010). Adam suggests that sexual identity categories, such as "gay", can have the effect of expanding the horizon of what is imaginable in a same-sex relationship, including a richer sense of the possibilities of same-sex love and dyadic commitment. And Green argues that queer is itself an identity category that some self-identified "queer theorists" and "queer activists" use to consolidate a subject-position outside of the normalizing regimes of gender and sexuality. These examples call into question the degree to which identity categories need be thought of as negative, in the evaluative sense of that term, as they underscore the self-determining potentials of the care of the self – an idea advanced first by Foucault in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality.
The role of queer theory, and specifically its replacement of historical and sociological scholarship on lesbian and gay people's lives with the theorising of lesbian and gay issues, and the displacement of gay and lesbian studies by gender and queer studies, has been criticised by activist and writer Larry Kramer
.
Outside the US, interest in queer theory has increased during the last decade. This interest has also opened new areas of inquiry within the field, especially in France and Brazil. In France, the Spanish philosopher Beatriz Preciado has created important new queer works like Manifesto Contrasexual (2002), Testo Yonqui (2008) and Pornotopia (2010). In Brazil, queer theory has influenced the education field, thanks to the work of Guacira Lopes Louro and her followers.
At the end of the 2000s, some academics have proposed a post–queer theory to resolve the inadequacies of queer theory, namely to have real-life impact on the queer and broader communities.
, David Ross Fryer
, and Sara Heinamaa, have posited phenomenology as a starting point for doing queer theory. Drawing on phenomenologists including Husserl, Sartre, Beauvoir
, and Lewis Gordon
, the works of these theorists stands as a redirection of queer theory to its radical roots in the real-life experiences of queer persons.
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies
Queer studies
Queer studies is the critical theory based study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities...
and feminist studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
. Queer theory includes both queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself. Heavily influenced by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
, Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, and Lauren Berlant
Lauren Berlant
Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, where she has been teaching since 1984. Berlant received her Ph.D. from Cornell University...
, queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
is part of the essential
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
self and upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities
Sexual identity
Sexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...
. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behaviour with respect to homosexual behaviour, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative
Norm (sociology)
Social norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...
and deviant categories.
Queer theory
Queer theorist Michael Warner attempts to provide a definition of a concept that typically circumvents categorical definitions: "Social reflection carried out in such a manner tends to be creative, fragmentary, and defensive, and leaves us perpetually at a disadvantage. And it is easy to be misled by the utopian claims advanced in support of particular tactics. But the range and seriousness of the problems that are continually raised by queer practice indicate how much work remains to be done. Because the logic of the sexual order is so deeply embedded by now in an indescribably wide range of social institutions, and is embedded in the most standard accounts of the world, queer struggles aim not just at toleration or equal status but at challenging those institutions and accounts. The dawning realisation that themes of homophobiaHomophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
and heterosexism
Heterosexism
Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior...
may be read in almost any document of our culture means that we are only beginning to have an idea of how widespread those institutions and accounts are.
Queer theory's main project is exploring the contesting of the categorisation of gender and sexuality; identities are not fixed – they cannot be categorised and labeled – because identities consist of many varied components and that to categorise by one characteristic is wrong. For example, a woman can be a woman without being labeled a lesbian or feminist, and she may have a different race from the dominant culture. She should, queer theorists argue, be classed as possessing an individual identity and not be labelled by defining terms such as "feminist" or "black". Queer theory said that there is an interval between what a subject “does” (role-taking) and what a subject “is” (the self). So despite its title the theory's goal is to destabilise identity categories, which are designed to identify the “sexed subject” and place individuals within a single restrictive sexual orientation.
Overview
Queer theory is derived largely from post-structuralistPost-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
theory, and deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
in particular. Starting in the 1970s, a range of authors brought deconstructionist critical approaches to bear on issues of sexual identity, and especially on the construction of a normative "straight" ideology
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
. Queer theorists challenged the validity and consistency of heteronormative discourse, and focused to a large degree on non-heteronormative sexualities and sexual practices.
The term "queer theory" was introduced in 1990, with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
, Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
and Diana Fuss (all largely following the work of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
) being among its foundational proponents.
"Queer" as used within queer theory is less an identity than an embodied critique of identity. Major aspects of this critique include discussion of: the role of Performativity
Performativity
Performativity is an interdisciplinary term often used to name the capacity of speech and language in particular, as well as other non-verbal forms of expressive action, to intervene in the course of human events. The term derives from the work in speech act theory originated by the analytic...
in creating and maintaining identity; the basis of sexuality
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
and gender, either as natural
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
, essential
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
, or socially constructed; the way that these identities change or resist change; and their power relations vis-a-vis heteronormativity
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
.
History
Teresa de LauretisTeresa de Lauretis
Teresa de Lauretis is an Italian-born author and Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures from Bocconi University in Milan before coming to the United States...
is the person credited with coining the phrase "Queer Theory". It was at a working conference on lesbian and gay sexualities that was held at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
in February 1990 that de Lauretis first made mention of the phrase. Barely three years later, she abandoned the phrase on the grounds that it had been taken over by mainstream forces and institutions it was originally coined to resist. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble
Gender Trouble
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler is a highly influential book in academic feminism and queer theory. It is also the book credited with creating the seminal notion of gender performativity. It is considered to be one of the canonical texts of queer theory and postmodern/poststructural feminism.-...
, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, and David Halperin
David Halperin
David M. Halperin is an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, critical theory, material culture and visual culture. He is the cofounder of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies....
's One Hundred Years of Homosexuality inspired other works.
In the late 1980s, social constructionists conceived of the sexual subject as a culturally dependent, historically specific product.
Background concepts
Queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality. Due to this association, a debate emerges as to whether sexual orientation is naturalNature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
or essential to the person, as an essentialist
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
believes, or if sexuality is a social construction and subject to change.
The queer theory has two predominant strains:
- Radical deconstructionism: interrogates categories of sexual orientations.
- Radical subversion: disrupts the normalizing tendencies of the sexual order.
It departs from Foucault
Foucault
Foucault can refer to:People:*Jean-Pierre Foucault , French television host*Léon Foucault , French physicist*Michel Foucault , French philosopher and historian...
and his study Sexuality and the formation of the modern self'
The Essentialist theory was introduced to Queer Criticism as a by-product of feminism when the criticism was known by most as Lesbian/Gay Criticism. The essentialist feminists believed that genders "have an essential nature (e.g. nurturing and caring versus being aggressive and selfish), as opposed to differing by a variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces". Due to this belief in the essential nature of a person, it is also natural to assume that a person's sexual preference would be natural and essential to a person’s personality.
Social Constructionists counter that there is no natural identity, that all meaning is constructed through discourse and there is no subject other than the creation of meaning for social theory. While sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and queer theory are not reducible to each other, sociology has its own deconstructionist impulse built into pragmatist and symbolic interactionist analyses of identity and subjectivity. They are constituted in language and interaction; conversely, queer theory has a very specific deconstructionist, which basis is the conception of the self radically disarticulated from the social.
For example, as Foucault explains in The History of Sexuality
The History of Sexuality
The History of Sexuality is a three-volume series of books by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault written between 1976 and 1984...
, two hundred years ago there was no linguistic category for gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
male. Instead, the term applied to sex between two men was sodomy
Sodomy
Sodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
. Over time, the concept "homosexual" was created in a test tube through the discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
s of medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and especially psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
. What is conventionally understood to be the same practice was gradually transformed from a sin
Sin
In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
ful lifestyle into an issue of sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
. Foucault argues that prior to this discursive creation there was no such thing as a person who could think of himself as essentially gay.
However, perhaps nowhere is the similarity between recent queer formulations and sociological approaches more striking than in the study of gender. Both argued that gender was not a stable property of the self, it arose through an iterative process of “doing” masculinity and feminity. In fact, long before queer theorists had located gender in performativity and representation, symbolic interactionists had deconstructed gender into moments of attribution and iteration.
It is precisely in the analysis of the performative moment, that interpretivist sociology and queer theory part company. Whereas pragmatism and symbolic interactionism focus on the processes and techniques whereby individuals attempt to “shore up” the gap between doing (I act like a woman) and the identity toward which that doing is directed (I am a woman), queer theory focuses on the performative failure, the inability of the individual to fully realize the concept and lay claim to ontological status.
Identity politics
Queer theory was originally associated with radical gay politics of ACT UP, OutRage!OutRage!
OutRage! is a British LGBT rights group that was formed to fight for equal rights of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in comparison to heterosexual people. It is a group which has at times been criticised for outing individuals who wanted to keep their homosexuality secret and for being...
and other groups which embraced "queer" as an identity label that pointed to a separatist
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
, non-assimilationist
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
politics. Queer theory developed out of an examination of perceived limitations in the traditional identity politics
Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
of recognition and self-identity. In particular, queer theorists identified processes of consolidation or stabilization around some other identity labels (e.g. gay and lesbian); and construed queerness so as to resist this. Queer theory attempts to maintain a critique more than define a specific identity.
Acknowledging the inevitable violence of identity politics, and having no stake in its own ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
, queer is less an identity than a critique of identity. However, it is in no position to imagine itself outside the circuit of problems energized by identity politics. Instead of defending itself against those criticisms that its operations attract, queer allows those criticisms to shape its – for now unimaginable – future directions. "The term," writes Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, "will be revised, dispelled, rendered obsolete to the extent that it yields to the demands which resist the term precisely because of the exclusions by which it is mobilized." The mobilization of queer foregrounds the conditions of political representation, its intentions and effects, its resistance to and recovery by the existing networks of power.
The studies of Fuss
Fuss
Fuss may refer to:* 4778 Fuss, a main-belt asteroid* Fuss , a surname* Fuss Pot, a fictional character...
anticipates queer theory.
Eng, Halberstam and Esteban Munoz offer one of its latest incarnations in the aptly “What is Queer about Queer studies now?”. Using Butler
Butler
A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...
’s critique of sexual identity categories as a starting point, they work around a “queer epistemology” that explicitly opposes the sexual categories of Lesbian and Gay studies and lesbian and gay identity politics. They insist that the field of normalization is not limited to sexuality; social classifications such as gender, race and nationality constituted by a “governing logic” require an epistemological intervention through queer theory" (Green 2007).
"So, the evolution of the queer begins with the problematization of sexual identity categories in Fuss
Fuss
Fuss may refer to:* 4778 Fuss, a main-belt asteroid* Fuss , a surname* Fuss Pot, a fictional character...
(1996) and extends outward to a more general deconstruction of social ontology in contemporary queer theory" (Green 2007).
"Edelman goes from deconstruction of the subject to a deconstructive psychoanalysis of the entire social order; the modern human fear of mortality produces defensive attempts to “suture over the hole in the Symbolic Order”. According to him, constructions of “the homosexual” are pitted against constructions of “The Child” in the modern West, wherein the former symbolizes the inevitability of mortality (do not procreate) and the latter an illusory continuity of the self with the social order (survives mortality through one’s offspring). The constructs are animated by futuristic fantasy designed to evade mortality" (Green 2007).
"Fuss, Eng. et al and Edelman represent distinct moment in the development of queer theory. Whereas Fuss aims to discompose and render inert the reigning classifications of sexual identity, Eng. et al observe the extension of a deconstructive strategy to a wider field of normalization, while Edelman’s work takes not only the specter of “the homosexual”, but the very notion of “society” as a manifestation of psychological distress requiring composition" (Green 2007).
Role of biology
Queer theorists focus on problems in classifying individuals as either maleMale
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
or female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
, even on a strictly biological basis. For example, the sex chromosome
Chromosome
A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...
s (X and Y) may exist in atypical combinations (as in Klinefelter's syndrome
Klinefelter's syndrome
Klinefelter syndrome, 46/47, XXY, or XXY syndrome is a condition in which human males have an extra X chromosome. While females have an XX chromosomal makeup, and males an XY, affected individuals have at least two X chromosomes and at least one Y chromosome...
[XXY]). This complicates the use of genotype
Genotype
The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...
as a means to define exactly two distinct sexes. Intersexed individuals may for many different biological reasons have ambiguous sexual characteristics
Sexual characteristics
Sexual characteristics may refer to:*Primary sexual characteristics*Secondary sex characteristics...
.
Scientists who have written on the conceptual significance of intersexual individuals include Anne Fausto-Sterling
Anne Fausto-Sterling
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph. D. is Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University. She participates actively in the field of sexology and has written extensively on the fields of biology of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, and gender roles.-Life and career:Fausto-Sterling...
, Ruth Hubbard
Ruth Hubbard
Ruth Hubbard is Professor Emerita of Biology at Harvard University, where she was the first woman to hold a tenured professorship position in biology. -Biography:...
, Carol Tavris
Carol Tavris
Carol Anne Tavris is an American social psychologist and author. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan, and has taught psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the New School for Social Research...
, and Joan Roughgarden
Joan Roughgarden
Joan E. Roughgarden is an American evolutionary biologist.- Biography :...
.
Some key experts in the study of culture, such as Barbara Rogoff
Barbara Rogoff
Barbara Rogoff is an educator whose interests lie in understanding and communicating the different learning thrusts between cultures, especially within her book The Cultural Nature of Human Development...
, argue that the traditional distinction between biology and culture as independent entities is overly simplistic, pointing to the ways in which biology and culture interact with one another.
The HIV/AIDS discourse
Much of queer theory developed out of a response to the AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
crisis, which promoted a renewal of radical activism, and the growing homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
brought about by public responses to AIDS. Queer theory became occupied in part with what effects – put into circulation around the AIDS epidemic – necessitated and nurtured new forms of political organization, education and theorizing in "queer".
To examine the effects that HIV/AIDS has on queer theory is to look at the ways in which the status of the subject or individual is treated in the biomedical discourses that construct them.
- The shift, affected by safer sex education in emphasizing sexual practices over sexual identities
- The persistent misrecognition of HIV/AIDS as a "gay" disease
- Homosexuality as a kind of fatality
- The coalition politics of much HIV/AIDS activism that rethinks identity in terms of affinity rather than essence and therefore includes not only lesbianLesbianLesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
s and gay men but also bisexualsBisexualityBisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
, transsexualsTranssexualismTranssexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...
, sex workersProstitutionProstitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, people with AIDS, health workers, and parents and friends of gays; the pressing recognition that discourse is not a separate or second-order "reality" - The constant emphasis on contestation in resisting dominant depictions of HIVHIVHuman immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
and AIDS and representing them otherwise. The rethinking of traditional understandings of the workings of power in cross-hatched struggles over epidemiology, scientific research, public health and immigration policy
The material effects of AIDS contested many cultural assumptions about identity, justice, desire and knowledge, which some scholars felt challenged the entire system of Western thought, believing it maintained the health and immunity of epistemology: "the psychic presence of AIDS signifies a collapse of identity and difference that refuses to be abjected from the systems of self-knowledge." Thus queer theory and AIDS become interconnected because each is articulated through a postmodernist understanding of the death of the subject and both understand identity as an ambivalent site.
Prostitution, pornography and BDSM
Queer theory, unlike most feminist theory and lesbian and gay studies, includes a wide array of non-normative sexual identities and practices, not all of them non-heterosexual. Sadomasochism, prostitutionProstitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, sexual inversion
Sexual inversion
Sexual inversion may refer to:* Sexual inversion , a term for homosexuality found primarily in older scientific literature* A metamorphic change in the gender of an animal...
, transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
, bisexuality
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
, asexuality
Asexuality
Asexuality , in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction and, in some cases, the lack of interest in sex. Sometimes, it is considered a lack of a sexual orientation...
, intersexuality are seen by queer theorists as opportunities for more involved investigations into class difference and racial, ethnic and regional particulars.
The key element is that of viewing sexuality as constructed through discourse, with no list or set of constituted preexisting sexuality realities, but rather identities constructed through discursive operations. It is important to consider discourse in its broadest sense as shared meaning making, as Foucault and Queer Theory would take the term to mean. In this way sexual activity, having shared rules and symbols would be as much a discourse as a conversation, and sexual practice itself constructs its reality rather than reflecting a putatively proper, biologically predefined sexuality.
This point of view places these theorists in conflict with some branches of feminism that view prostitution, and pornography, for example, as mechanisms for the oppressions of women. Other branches of feminism tend to vocally disagree with this interpretation and celebrate (some) pornography as a means of adult sexual representation.
The role of language
For language use as associated with sexual identity, see Lavender linguisticsLavender linguistics
Lavender linguistics is a term used by linguists, most notably William Leap, to describe the study of language used by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer speakers. It "encompass[es] a wide range of everyday language practices" in LGBTQ communities. The term derives from the longterm...
.
Queer theory is likened to language because it is never static, but is ever-evolving. Richard Norton suggests that the existence of queer language is believed to have evolved from the imposing of structures and labels from an external mainstream culture.
Early discourse of queer theory involved leading theorists: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. This discourse centered on the way that knowledge of sexuality was structured through the use of language. Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
was the main focus of discourse, where heterosexuality was viewed as normal and any deviations, such as homosexuality, as abnormal or "queer".
Media and other creative works
Many queer theorists have produced creative works that reflect theoretical perspectives in a wide variety of media. For example, science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
authors such as Samuel R. Delany
Samuel R. Delany
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...
and Octavia Butler feature many values and themes from queer theory in their work. Patrick Califia
Patrick Califia
Patrick Califia , born 1954 near Corpus Christi, Texas is a writer of nonfiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man.-Biography:...
's published fiction also draws heavily on concepts and ideas from queer theory. Some lesbian feminist novels written in the years immediately following Stonewall, such as Lover
Lover (novel)
Lover is a lesbian feminist novel by Bertha Harris, published in 1976 by Daughters, Inc., a small press dedicated to women's fiction. It is considered Harris's most ambitious work, and has been compared to Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and the stories of Jane Bowles...
by Bertha Harris
Bertha Harris
Bertha Harris was an American lesbian novelist. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, she moved to New York City in the 1960s. She is highly regarded by critics and admirers, but her novels are less familiar to the broader public.-Career and published works:She is best known for her stylistically...
or Les Guérillères
Les Guérillères
Les Guérillères is a 1969 novel by Monique Wittig. It was translated into English in 1971.-Plot introduction:Les Guérillères is about a war of the sexes, where women 'engage in bloody, victorious battles using knives, machine guns and rocket launchers'...
by Monique Wittig
Monique Wittig
Monique Wittig was a French author and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964...
, can be said to anticipate the terms of later queer theory.
In film, the genre christened by B. Ruby Rich
B. Ruby Rich
B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC...
as New Queer Cinema
New Queer Cinema
New Queer Cinema is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s...
in 1992 continues, as Queer Cinema, to draw heavily on the prevailing critical climate of queer theory; a good early example of this is the Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
-inspired movie Poison
Poison (film)
Poison is a 1991 independent film written and directed by Todd Haynes. It is composed of three intercut stories that are partially inspired by the novels of Jean Genet...
by the director Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes is an American independent film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven and I'm Not There.- Style and themes :The writes that "Haynes is...
. In fan fiction
Fan fiction
Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...
, the genre known as slash fiction
Slash fiction
Slash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex...
rewrites straight or nonsexual relationships to be gay, bisexual, and queer in a sort of campy
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
cultural appropriation. Ann Herendeen's
Ann Herendeen
Ann Herendeen is an American author of popular fiction. A native New Yorker and lifelong Brooklyn resident, Herendeen holds a degree in English from Princeton University....
Pride/Prejudice, for example, narrates a steamy affair between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, the mutually devoted heroes of Jane Austen's
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
much-adapted novel
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...
. And in music, some Queercore
Queercore
Queercore is a cultural and social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of punk. It is distinguished by being discontent with society in general and its rejection of the disapproval of the gay, bisexual, and lesbian communities and their "oppressive agenda"...
groups and zines could be said to reflect the values of queer theory.
Queer theorists analyze texts and challenge the cultural notions of "straight" ideology; that is, does "straight" imply heterosexuality as normal or is everyone potentially gay? As Ryan states: "It is only the laborious imprinting of heterosexual norms that cuts away those potentials and manufactures heterosexuality as the dominant sexual format." For example, Hollywood pursues the "straight" theme as being the dominant theme to outline what masculine is. This is particularly noticeable in gangster films, action films and westerns, which never have "weak" (read: homosexual) men playing the heroes, with the recent exception of the film Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain
Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a film adaptation of the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx with the screenplay written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry...
. Queer theory looks at destabilizing and shifting the boundaries of these cultural constructions.
New Media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
artists have a long history of queer theory inspired works, including cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a feminist community, philosophy and set of practices concerned with feminist interactions with and acts in cyberspace. The term was coined in 1991, and feminist individuals, theorists and groups identifying themselves as cyberfeminists were most active in the 1990s...
works, porn films like I.K.U.
I.K.U.
I.K.U. is a 2001 independent film directed by Taiwanese-American experimental filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang. It was marketed as "a Japanese Sci-Fi Porn Feature". The film was partially inspired by Blade Runner . I.K.U.s premise involves a futuristic corporation sending shapeshifting cyborgs out into New...
which feature transgender cyborg hunters and "Sharing is Sexy", an "open source porn laboratory", using social software, creative commons licensing and netporn to explore queer sexualities beyond the male/female binary.
Queer theology
Queer Theology is a term for the field of theologyTheology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
being undertaken from the perspective of "Queer theory".
The term is a neologism, originating in the 1990s.
A "pro-feminist gay theology" was proposed by J. M. Clark and G. McNeil in 1992, and a "queer theology" by Robert Goss in Jesus acted up: A gay and lesbian manifesto (1993).
Criticism
Typically, critics of queer theory are concerned that the approach obscures or glosses altogether the material conditions that underpin discourse. Tim Edwards argues that queer theory extrapolates too broadly from textual analysis in undertaking an examination of the social. Adam Green argues that queer theory ignores the social and institutional conditions within which lesbians and gays live. For example, queer theory dismantles social contingency in some cases (homosexual subject positions) while recuperating social contingency in others (racialized subject positions). So not all queer theoretical work is as faithful to its deconstructionist.Queer theory's commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay" subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse. Thus, queer theory cannot be a framework for examining selves or subjectivities—including those that accrue by race and class—but rather, must restrict its analytic focus to discourse. Hence, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and queer theory are regarded as methodologically and epistemologically incommensurable
Commensurability (philosophy of science)
Commensurability is a concept in the philosophy of science. Scientific theories are described as commensurable if one can compare them to determine which is more accurate; if theories are incommensurable, there is no way in which one can compare them to each other in order to determine which is...
frameworks by critics such as Adam Green. In a introductory section, Michael Warner
Michael Warner
Michael Warner is a literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Art Forum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice...
(1990s) draws out the possibility of queer theory as a kind of critical intervention in social theory (radical deconstructionism); despite this, he weaves back and forth between the reification and deconstruction of sexual identity. Warner begins the volume by invoking an ethnic identity politics, solidified around a specific social cleavage and a discussion of the importance of deconstructing notions of lesbian and gay identities; but, despite its radical deconstructionist, it does the notion of queer subject or self in largely conventional terms: as lesbian and gay people bound by homophobic institutions and practices.
So, one of the leading volumes of queer theory engages the subject via conventional sociological epistemologies that conceive of subject positions constituted through systems of stratification and organized around shared experience and identity.
In other way, for Barnard
Barnard
- People :Some of the Barnard family are believed to have been Huguenots who fled from the Atlantic coast region of France to England, Ireland, Holland and the New World circa 1685 or earlier than that date. See,...
, any consideration of sexuality must include inextricability with racialized subjectivities. Barnard rejects queer theoretical conceptions of sexuality on the grounds that such work fails to account for particularity of racialized sexualities. He reasons that the failure arises because queer theorists are themselves white, and therefore operate from the particularity of a white racial standpoint. Barnard aspires to recuperate an analysis of race in queer theory, proposing that the deconstructionist epistemology of queer theory can be used to decompose a white queerness (first) in order to recover a racialized queerness (second).
Barnard’s attempt to bring social contingency into queer theory violates the core epistemological premise of queer theory; in fact, by proposing that queer theory capture racialized subject positions, Barnard reinstates what it means to be a person of colour. His critique of the white subject position of queer theorists is itself a testimony to the stability of the social order and the power of social categories to mark a particular kind of experience, of subjectivity and, in turn, of queer author. He backs down the road of a decidedly sociological analysis of subject position and the self.
Finally, Jagose
Annamarie Jagose
Annamarie Jagose is a queer writer of academic and fictional works. She gained her PhD in 1992, and worked in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne before returning to New Zealand in 2003, where she is currently Professor in the Department of Film,...
aims toward an analysis of social cleavages, including those accruing by race and ethnicity. Thus, on the one, underscores the strong deconstructionist epistemological premise of the term queer and queer theory more generally. Yet, she goes on to analyses of identities and sexualities “inflected by heterosexuality, race, gender and ethnicity”.
Advocating the incorporation of social contingency in this way, Jagose offers neither the critical edge of queer theory nor the clarity of standpoint theory.
We can divide its criticisms in three main ideas:
- It has a failing itineration, the “subjectless critique” of queer studies.
- The unsustainable analysis of this failing self.
- The methodological implication that scholars of sexuality end up reiterating and consolidating social categories
Foucault's account of the modern construction of the homosexual, a starting point for much work in Queer Theory, is itself challenged by Rictor Norton
Rictor Norton
Dr. Rictor Norton is an American scholar of literary and cultural history, particularly gay history. He is based in London, England.- Biography :...
, using the Molly House
Molly house
A Molly house is an archaic 18th century English term for a tavern or private room where homosexual and cross-dressing men could meet each other and possible sexual partners. Molly houses were one precursor to some types of gay bars....
as one counter-example of a distinctly homosexual subculture before 1836. He critiques the idea that people distinctly identifying in ways now associated with being gay did not exist before the medical construction of homosexual pathology in his book The Myth of the Modern Homosexual.
Queer theory underestimates the Foucauldian insight that power produces not just constraint, but also, pleasure, according to Barry Adam (2000) and Adam Isaiah Green (2010). Adam suggests that sexual identity categories, such as "gay", can have the effect of expanding the horizon of what is imaginable in a same-sex relationship, including a richer sense of the possibilities of same-sex love and dyadic commitment. And Green argues that queer is itself an identity category that some self-identified "queer theorists" and "queer activists" use to consolidate a subject-position outside of the normalizing regimes of gender and sexuality. These examples call into question the degree to which identity categories need be thought of as negative, in the evaluative sense of that term, as they underscore the self-determining potentials of the care of the self – an idea advanced first by Foucault in Volumes II and III of The History of Sexuality.
The role of queer theory, and specifically its replacement of historical and sociological scholarship on lesbian and gay people's lives with the theorising of lesbian and gay issues, and the displacement of gay and lesbian studies by gender and queer studies, has been criticised by activist and writer Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer
Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning...
.
Outside the US, interest in queer theory has increased during the last decade. This interest has also opened new areas of inquiry within the field, especially in France and Brazil. In France, the Spanish philosopher Beatriz Preciado has created important new queer works like Manifesto Contrasexual (2002), Testo Yonqui (2008) and Pornotopia (2010). In Brazil, queer theory has influenced the education field, thanks to the work of Guacira Lopes Louro and her followers.
Post–queer theory
The problems of capturing identity and a subject in queer theory have not gone unnoticed. Fifteen years into the development, there is now a significant literature that demonstrates epistemological, methodological and political shortcomings attendant to its deconstructionist project.At the end of the 2000s, some academics have proposed a post–queer theory to resolve the inadequacies of queer theory, namely to have real-life impact on the queer and broader communities.
Future directions: phenomenology and queer theory
In response to the criticisms that queer theory has failed to address the real-life experiences of queer persons, several theorists have argued for a return to experience-based theorizing, though not of the kind seen in 1970s second-wave feminist theory. In order to avoid the trappings of a naive reading of experience and the inadequacies of identity politics, theorists, including Sara AhmedSara Ahmed
Sara Ahmed is an Australian and British academic working at the intersection of feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonialism. She was born in Salford, England to a Pakistani father and English mother, and emigrated to Adelaide, Australia with her family in 1973...
, David Ross Fryer
David Ross Fryer
David Ross Fryer is an ethicist working in phenomenology, queer theory, Africana thought, existentialism , secular Jewish thought, and psychoanalytic theory. He completed a B.A. in Intellectual History at The University of Pennsylvania, doctoral research in Philosophy at The University of...
, and Sara Heinamaa, have posited phenomenology as a starting point for doing queer theory. Drawing on phenomenologists including Husserl, Sartre, Beauvoir
Beauvoir
Beauvoir can refer to any of the following:Buildings*Beauvoir , post-American Civil War home of Confederate States of America President Jefferson DavisPeople*Jean Beauvoir, American musician....
, and Lewis Gordon
Lewis Gordon
Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, philosophy of human and life sciences, phenomenology, philosophy of existence, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics,...
, the works of these theorists stands as a redirection of queer theory to its radical roots in the real-life experiences of queer persons.
See also
- EssentialismEssentialismIn philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
- Gender roleGender roleGender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
- Performative intervalPerformative intervalThe performative interval refers to a unit of analysis in the interaction order defined by the disjunct between practice and the self or between what an actor "does" and what an actor "is"....
- PerformativityPerformativityPerformativity is an interdisciplinary term often used to name the capacity of speech and language in particular, as well as other non-verbal forms of expressive action, to intervene in the course of human events. The term derives from the work in speech act theory originated by the analytic...
- Post-feminism
- Postmodern feminismPostmodern feminismPostmodern feminism is an approach to feminist theory that incorporates postmodern and post-structuralist theory.-Origins and theory:The largest departure from other branches of feminism is the argument that sex is itself constructed through language, a view most notably propounded in Judith...
- Social constructionismSocial constructionismSocial constructionism and social constructivism are sociological theories of knowledge that consider how social phenomena or objects of consciousness develop in social contexts. A social construction is a concept or practice that is the construct of a particular group...
- Third-wave feminismThird-wave feminismThird-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
Theorists
- Sara AhmedSara AhmedSara Ahmed is an Australian and British academic working at the intersection of feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonialism. She was born in Salford, England to a Pakistani father and English mother, and emigrated to Adelaide, Australia with her family in 1973...
- Gloria E. AnzaldúaGloria E. AnzaldúaGloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was considered a leading scholar of Chicano cultural theory and Queer theory. She loosely based her most well-known book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza on her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border and incorporated her lifelong feelings of social and...
- Lauren BerlantLauren BerlantLauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, where she has been teaching since 1984. Berlant received her Ph.D. from Cornell University...
- Leo BersaniLeo BersaniLeo Bersani is an American literary theorist and Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California, Berkeley. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992.-Bibliography:...
- Judith ButlerJudith ButlerJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
- Aaron BetskyAaron BetskyAaron Betsky is an architect, critic, curator, educator, lecturer, and writer on architecture and design, who since August 2006 has been the director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. From 2001 to 2006 Betsky served as director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands....
- Tim DeanTim DeanTim Dean is a British philosopher and writer, notable in the field of contemporary queer theory. He is the author of Gary Snyder and the American Unconscious , Beyond Sexuality , and Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking , all published by the University of Chicago Press,...
- Jennifer Doyle
- Lee EdelmanLee EdelmanLee Edelman is a professor and chair of the English Department at Tufts University. Lee Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work...
- Diana Fuss
- David Ross FryerDavid Ross FryerDavid Ross Fryer is an ethicist working in phenomenology, queer theory, Africana thought, existentialism , secular Jewish thought, and psychoanalytic theory. He completed a B.A. in Intellectual History at The University of Pennsylvania, doctoral research in Philosophy at The University of...
- Jane GallopJane GallopJane Anne Gallop is an American professor who since 1992 has served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990.- Education :Gallp earned a B.A...
- Elizabeth GroszElizabeth GroszElizabeth A. Grosz is an Australian feminist academic living and working in the USA. She is known for philosophical interpretations of the work of French philosophers Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, as well as her readings of the works of French feminists, Luce...
- Annamarie JagoseAnnamarie JagoseAnnamarie Jagose is a queer writer of academic and fictional works. She gained her PhD in 1992, and worked in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne before returning to New Zealand in 2003, where she is currently Professor in the Department of Film,...
- Laura KipnisLaura KipnisLaura Kipnis is a professor of media studies at Northwestern University. She is also a cultural and media critic who focuses especially on gender issues, sexual politics, popular culture, and pornography...
- Wayne KoestenbaumWayne KoestenbaumWayne Koestenbaum is an American poet and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University...
- Kevin KopelsonKevin KopelsonKevin Kopelson, born in 1960, is an American literary critic. He received a B.A. from Yale University, a J.D. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Brown University...
- Elisabeth Ladenson
- D.A. Miller
- Richard MiskolciRichard MiskolciRichard Miskolci is a Brazilian sociologist whose work articulates Social Science's tradition with Subaltern Knowledges . He is a Professor at the Department and the Graduate Program in Sociology at UFSCar , Brazil...
- José Esteban MuñozJosé Esteban MuñozJosé Esteban Muñoz is an American academic in the fields of Performance Studies, visual culture, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical theory. His book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics examines queer and racial minority issues from a performance studies...
- Geeta Patel
- Elspeth ProbynElspeth ProbynElspeth Probyn is the Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She received her Doctorate in Communications from Concordia University, 1989. She lectures and publishes in fields including cultural studies, media studies and sociology, with a particular focus on food,...
- Alan SinfieldAlan SinfieldAlan Sinfield is an English theorist in the fields of Shakespeare and sexuality, modern theatre, gender studies, queer theory , post 1945 politics and cultural theory. Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain first published in 1989, is a revolutionary socialist interpretation of the...
- William B. Turner
- Kath Weston
- Riki WilchinsRiki WilchinsRiki Wilchins is an activist whose work has focused on the impact of gender norms. While she started out as a transgender leader -- founding the first national transgender advocacy group -- her analysis and work broadened over time to include discrimination and violence regardless of individuals'...
Further reading
- Adam, B. 2000. "Love and Sex in Constructing Identity Among Men Who Have Sex With Men." International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 5(4):325–29.
- Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology, 2006
- Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble, 1990.
- Edelman, Lee. No Future, 2004
- Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, volume I: La Volonté de savoir, 1976.
- Fryer, David. Thinking Queerly, 2010.
- Grosz, Elizabeth. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, 1995.
- Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place, 2005
- Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory, 1996.
- Miskolci, Richard. "Queer Theory and Sociology: the challenging analysis of normalization", 2009.
- Preciado, Beatriz. "Manifesto Contra-sexual", 2002.
- Probyn, Elspeth. Outside Belongings, 1996.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men, 1985.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet, 1990.
- Turner, William B. A Genealogy of Queer Theory, 2000.
- Wilchins, Riki. Gender Theory, Queer Theory, 2004.
- Rayter, Scott. He Who Laughs Last: Comic Representations of AIDS, 2003.