C7 - Queer
Homosexual, Lesbian or Gay (72-75)
Post-Structuralist Context (75-83)
Foucault (79-83)
Althusser, Freud, Lacan, Sussure (75-79)
Performativity & Identity (83-93)
Gender & Performance (83-88)
Sex & Identity (89-93)
HIV / AIDS Discourse (93-96)
Queer Identity (96-100)
"Queer exemplifies a more mediated relations to categories of identification" (pg 77)
queer as a part of the discussion of the self but also as a part of a bigger cultural identity "sexuality is not an essentially personal attribute but an available cultural category" (79)
"Not primarily a repressive force...they are produced by the same operations of powers [that claim them] victims." (pg. 80)
Naming of identity reflects social moment
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queer
misrecognition of AIDS as a gay disease
homosexual
gay, lesbian
Atlhusser argued that we do not pre-exist as free subjects, and that we're called forth as subjects by the ideology (pg 78)
Judith Butler - Gender Trouble
"Productive and enabling" (pg. 80)
References to Marx's idea that the self isn't natural, but something that is thrust upon you by outside forces. This throws a wrench in a lot of previous ideas about the self, and how queer can fit into that.
Drag
Foucault argued that sexuality is not an inherent personal attribute but a cultural category shaped by power
Gender is performance
Queer as Neutral
enforcing stereotypes by "breaking" them: "creates a unified picture of a woman" (85)
Sex is as culturally constructed as gender
increased visibility of queer people leads to greater mobilization
Queer as intentionally undefined/vague
Breaking obvious gender stereotypes to dismantle them
"Debates about performativity put a denaturalizing pressure on sex, gender, sexuality, bodies and identities.
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Queer is seen as a rejection of traditional notions of identity politics, such as those found in gay liberation and feminist movements, and instead embraces a more mediated relation to categories of identification. It is influenced by post-structuralist theories of identity as provisional and contingent, and a growing awareness of the limitations of identity categories in terms of political representation. It is also a responses to works of theorists like Foucault
Queer as a tool of self-identification
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Field of sexology
Inherent level of resistance
Shorthand for Lesbian/Gay, LGBTQIA
How society labels sexuality
"There is nothing authentic about gender...no gender identity behind expressions of gender" (84)
re-examination of "queer" as a theoretical concept
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The term queer has a "highly elastic sense of history" (75)
Power reclamation in terms of taking a more nuanced and lively approach to queer movements and theory. Eve Tuck's "desire-based" approach is very resonant with these ideas.
Resisting assumptions of categories as natural
Commonly misread: performance is not "voluntary theatrics"
"queer opts for denaturalization... challenge the familiar distinction between normal and pathological..." (pp. 98)
Literalizing "performance" to mean a set of conscious choices
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Saussure argued that language does not reflect but rather constructs social reality
"By refusing to crystallize in any specific form, queer maintains a relation of resistance to whatever constitutes the normal" (99).
Benkert
Butler avoided naturalising same sex desire and instead "contests the truth" (84) of sex/gender at all
Foucault argues that power is not just repressive, but also productive and enabling.
Growing awareness of the relationship between identity categories and power
Boswell
Thomas
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"The first objection is political. A minority is doubtless entitled to rebaptise itself with a term carrying more favourable connotations so as to validate its own behavior and free itself from scandal. But it is scarcely entitled to expect those who do not belong to that minority to observe this new usage, particularly when the chosen label seems bizarrely inappropriate and appears to involve an implicit slur upon everyone else .. . The second objection to 'gay' is linguistic. For centuries the word has meant (approximately) 'blithe,' 'light-hearted,' or 'exuberantly cheerful.' To endow it with a wholly different meaning is to deprive ourselves of a hitherto indispensable piece of vocabulary and incidentally to make nonsense of much inherited literature." (Thomas)
'Queer' begins to arise partly out of this new awareness
reclamation of "queer"
Set of ritualized practices, not a conscious choice
"feminism works against its explicit aims if it takes 'women' as its grounding category" (83)
more often used in terms of sexuality (not gender)
Our notions of a private, personal, and interior self is something constituted through language (pg 79)
Political/linguistic opposition to terms
"there is a sense to which queer can only be used in the first person" (97)
Identity categories as potentially reinforcing the "heterosexual hegemony" (92-93)
"It is an identity without an essence" (96)
"'There is nothing in particular to which it [queer] necessarily refers,' writes David Halperin (1995:62)... 'It is an identity without an essence.'" (pp.96)
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"Both the lesbian and gay movements were committed funda mentally to the notion of identity politics in assuming identity as the necessary prerequisite for effective political intervention." (77)
Lesbian and Gay Studies in the 90s
"gender performativity is not a matter of
choosing which gender one will be today." (88)
queerness as a political movement
"parody"
"The most public mobilisations of the term 'queer' have doubtless been in the services of AIDS activism, which in turn has been
one of the most visible sites for the restructuring of sexual identities" (96)
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Sex and gender distinction is arbitrary
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the interconnectedness of queerness + AIDS
can queer be a stable identity?
AIDS creates pressures for categorization (identity, power, knowledge)
medicalization
How does digital media contribute to the 'coming out' movement and the formation of identity categories?
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