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Queer-Theory-An-Intro C7 - Queer - Coggle Diagram
C7 - Queer
Homosexual, Lesbian or Gay (72-75)
Naming of identity reflects social moment
queer
homosexual
gay, lesbian
Field of sexology
Benkert
Boswell
Thomas
"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)
medicalization
The term queer has a "highly elastic sense of history" (75)
How society labels sexuality
Political/linguistic opposition to terms
Post-Structuralist Context (75-83)
Foucault (79-83)
"Not primarily a repressive force...they are produced by the same operations of powers [that claim them] victims." (pg. 80)
"Productive and enabling" (pg. 80)
Foucault argued that sexuality is not an inherent personal attribute but a cultural category shaped by power
Foucault argues that power is not just repressive, but also productive and enabling.
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
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.
Althusser, Freud, Lacan, Sussure (75-79)
"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)
"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)
Atlhusser argued that we do not pre-exist as free subjects, and that we're called forth as subjects by the ideology (pg 78)
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.
Saussure argued that language does not reflect but rather constructs social reality
Our notions of a private, personal, and interior self is something constituted through language (pg 79)
Performativity & Identity (83-93)
Gender & Performance (83-88)
Judith Butler - Gender Trouble
Drag
enforcing stereotypes by "breaking" them: "creates a unified picture of a woman" (85)
Breaking obvious gender stereotypes to dismantle them
"parody"
Gender is performance
Set of ritualized practices, not a conscious choice
"There is nothing authentic about gender...no gender identity behind expressions of gender" (84)
Commonly misread: performance is not "voluntary theatrics"
Literalizing "performance" to mean a set of conscious choices
"gender performativity is not a matter of
choosing which gender one will be today." (88)
Butler avoided naturalising same sex desire and instead "contests the truth" (84) of sex/gender at all
"feminism works against its explicit aims if it takes 'women' as its grounding category" (83)
Sex & Identity (89-93)
Sex is as culturally constructed as gender
Sex and gender distinction is arbitrary
"Debates about performativity put a
denaturalizing
pressure on sex, gender, sexuality, bodies and identities.
Lesbian and Gay Studies in the 90s
Resisting assumptions of categories as natural
Growing awareness of the relationship between identity categories and power
Identity categories as potentially reinforcing the "heterosexual hegemony" (92-93)
'Queer' begins to arise partly out of this new awareness
How does digital media contribute to the 'coming out' movement and the formation of identity categories?
HIV / AIDS Discourse (93-96)
misrecognition of AIDS as a gay disease
Queer as Neutral
increased visibility of queer people leads to greater mobilization
re-examination of "queer" as a theoretical concept
reclamation of "queer"
queerness as a political movement
"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)
the interconnectedness of queerness + AIDS
can queer be a stable identity?
AIDS creates pressures for categorization (identity, power, knowledge)
Queer Identity (96-100)
Queer as intentionally undefined/vague
"queer opts for denaturalization... challenge the familiar distinction between normal and pathological..." (pp. 98)
"'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)
Queer as a tool of self-identification
more often used in terms of sexuality (not gender)
"there is a sense to which queer can only be used in the first person" (97)
"It is an identity without an essence" (96)
Inherent level of resistance
"By refusing to crystallize in any specific form, queer maintains a relation of resistance to whatever constitutes the normal" (99).
Shorthand for Lesbian/Gay, LGBTQIA
C7 - Queer