"What is queer theory and how does it explain the production of knowledge about sexuality?"

Résumé du document

Introduction
Applied to homosexuals, queer was initially a term of homophobic abuse, and while it retains that meaning, it is also now used as a neutrally descriptive term. (As an ethnic label, black has made the same semantic journey.) Queer is also provocative: a pejorative and stigmatizing word from the past is reclaimed by that much stigmatized grouping who have renegotiated its meaning. Because of this it has a distinct generational overtone. Younger academics love it; older ones hate it. One now sometimes finds queer used as an umbrella term for a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications, and at other times to describe a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies (Annamarie Jagose 1996, 1). This essay will attempt to define queer theory and consider the claims of queer theorists that it helps us understand the production of knowledge about sexuality. The word queer was adopted because it was inclusive and easy to say. It overcomes the need to keep repeating lists by subsuming a variety of sexual identities under one umbrella word: "When you are trying to describe the community, and you have to list gays, lesbians, bisexuals, drag queens transsexuals, it gets unwieldy.

Extraits

[...] - Parker, A. et.al. (eds) (1992) Nationalisms and Sexualities, London: Routledge. - Phelan, S. (1997) Playing With Fire, London: Routledge. - Pringle, R. and Watson, S. (1992) ‘‘Women's Interest' and the Post- Structuralist State' in Barrett, M. and Phillips, A. Destabilizing Theory ,Cambridge: Polity. - Richardson, D. et.al (2006) Intersections between Feminist and Queer Theory, London: Palgrave. [...]

[...] - Squires, J. (1993) Principle Positions, London: Lawrence & Wishart. - Tronto, J. (1993) Moral Boundaries, London: Rouledge. - Walby, S. (1992) ‘Post-Post-Modernism? Theorizing Social Complexity' in Barrett, M. and Phillips, A. Destabilizing Theory, Cambridge: Polity. - Wilson, A. (2007) Labour and ‘Lesbian and Gay Friendly' Policy' in Annesley, D. et.al Women and New Labour, Bristol: Policy Press. [...]

[...] ‘Contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, theories and their politics' Journal of the History of Sexuality 8(4):642-74. - Bell, M. (1999) ‘Shifting conceptions of sexual discrimination at the Court of Justice: from Pv. S to Grant v. SWT' European Law Journal 5(1):63-81. - Berger, N. (2004) Tensions in the struggle for sexual minority rights in Europe, Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press. - Berger, N. (2000) ‘Queer reading of Europe: gender identity, sexual orientation and the(im)potency of rights politics at the European Court of Justice' Social & Legal Studies9(2):251-72. [...]

[...] The notion of queer thus insists on the heterogeneity of gendered, sexed and sexual ways of existence. Studying homosexuality as a form of deviance is abandoned; instead the emphasis is on a logic of insiders, outsiders and transgression. At once inspired by and promoting a radical politics of difference, queer theory was critical of the preceding forms of sexual politics (feminist, lesbian and gay). Its own origins were varied: feminist debates over sexuality and difference, the direct action tactics of gay liberation and HIV/AIDS activism, and the political philosophy of French poststructuralist thought (including the ideas of Michel Foucault) which views culture as inseparable from meaning. [...]

[...] 2.) How does queer theory explain the production of knowledge about sexuality? Queer theory explains the production of knowledge about sexuality by different means: by disrupting heteronormativity; by taking up a poststructuralist position; by transgressing the whole social order, and finally by imposing an anarchic model of social life. Disrupting heteronormativity Michael Warner uses the term “heteronormativity” to refer to the complex ways in which “heterosexual culture thinks to itself as the elemental form of human association, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society would not exist” (Michel Warner 1993, 21). [...]