It then attaches sexual backwardness and violent homophobia to Islamic nations. "Universally cited as the text that ignited gay studies," according to Rolling Stone magazine, and as "in many ways the book that turned queer theory from a latent to a manifest discipline," the symposium features a series of short papers engaging with the text, its reception, and its relevance to the evolving field of queer studies. Work like this and work published by other trans scholars demonstrates the importance of thinking gender and sexuality queerly. The Danger and Necessity of Paranoid Reading This essay examines the Foucauldian foundations of queer theory in the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. (Warmington), Whats Queer About Queer Studies Now? (Warmington), Halley and Parker: After Sex? Winner of the Gustavus Myers Center / Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Award, this book provides the first scholarly study of trans people. He identifies major contributors to a canon of works that built up the theory. In other words, what becomes tied to heteronormativity is not femininity but masculinity, and homophobic dynamics are doubled by patriarchal relations of power. Instead, queer theory and activism demand publicness, reject civility, and challenge the legitimacy, naturalness, and intrinsic value of institutionswhether marriage or the militarythat regulate gender and sexuality. The groups motto was, and remains, Silence = Death.[1] An offshoot of ACT UP, Queer Nation, was founded in 1990 to fight the escalating violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. She was one of the first people to publicly identify as transgender, then later as nonbinary and gender nonconforming. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete or damaged if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition, coining the terms "antihomophobic" and "homosocial." Show more Ratings Friends & Following The view of sexuality that assumes individuals possess a fixed and innate sexual identity that is both universal and transhistorical. However, naming the homosexual had unforeseen consequences. Describe that difference in your own words. Charlene Carruthers (figure 1.8) describes the Black queer feminist lens in this video. This goal is worth quoting: I think many adults (and I am among them) are trying, in our work, to keep faith with vividly remembered promises made to ourselves in childhood: promises to make invisible possibilities and desires visible; to make the tacit things explicit; to smuggle queer representation in where it must be smuggled and, with the relative freedom of adulthood, to challenge queer-eradicating impulses frontally where they are to be so challenged (5). People hate politics. By David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam and Jose Esteban Munoz, WHATS QUEER ABOUT QUEER STUDIES NOW? For Butler, gender is established as consistent and cohesive through its repeated performance. Chapter-by-chapter summaries and multiple sections of expert analysis, The ultimate resource for assignments, engaging lessons, and lively book discussions. Identify key approaches and debates within the field of queer theory. Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible, by Malik Gaines. So its a lot to take in! The group was founded by veterans from ACT UP, and the groups activism enacted and enabled queer theory. According to Nguyen, this reinvention of the term bottom has the potential to interrupt, disrupt, and transform sexual, gender, and racial norms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). Sedgwick's "Queer and Now": Queer Theory at its Most Tangible In "Queer and Now" Sedgwick manages to accomplish something none of the philosophers we have studied thus far have rigorously attempted. La pareja, que recientemente cumpli ms de tres dcadas juntos, se film mientras llevaba a cabo una coreografa al ritmo de "Karma", la cancin de Taylor Swift que integra su ltimo lbum de estudio, Midnights, y que se rumorea que ser el prximo single de difusin del disco de la artista. This 2005 article in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (volume 31, number 1; https://doi.org/10.1086/432743) covers the history of queer theory and gives an overview of its origins. Additionally, like Carruthers, Chambers-Letson decenters the queer sexual subject and queer theory to explore intersectional possibilities for speculative world making and practical activism. Review of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (1990) [At Gay Book Reviews] One of the most influential books on queer theory. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is Distinguished Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center. The story of queer theorys emergence is entwined with queer activism. Queer and Then? - The Chronicle of Higher Education Describe the relationship among LGBTQ+ history, political activism, and LGBTQ+ studies. Butler states that there is a difference between saying that gender is performed as opposed to saying gender is performative. Her updated version of the classic My Gender Workbook (1997) is an accessible, humorous, and interactive introduction to contemporary gender theory, as well as the intersection of gender, sexuality, and power (New York: Routledge, 2013). Importantly, Chambers-Letson does not see art and performance as able to fulfill the promise of revolutionary transformative change; instead, it is a site where possible worlds are imagined, but they must still be materially enacted.[44]. Sedgwicks deconstructivist approach shows us that any social binary that defines subjects in society (especially the binary of heterosexual/homosexual) is not a relation of symmetry between two terms. Sedgwick argues that this reparative reading has been a strategy of queer and other marginalized groups for millennia. [30] Feinbergs 1993 publication,Stone Butch Blues, is a fictionalized personal account of negotiating New York City as a butch lesbian in the 1970s. What is Carruthers referring to when she talks about telling more complete stories? Please check your email address / username and password and try again. PDF WGSS 392Q Introduction to Queer Theory - UMass Sedgwick opens this chapter by recounting the legal case of an eighth grade science teacher named Acanfora who was removed from his teaching position once the school board found out that he had been part of a pro-homosexual student group during his college years. Robert McRuer is one of the founders of queer disability studies and a major contributor to the fields of transnational queer theory and disability theory. Butler names institutional powers, like psychologists and psychiatrists, and informal practices, like bullying, that try to keep us in our place. The play of her mind as it goes from Henry James to John Waters and Divine, from AIDS to Jane Austen and women's anal eroticism, is dazzling. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler showed me the transformative Chapter 6: Prejudice and Discrimination against LGBTQ+ People, Sean G. Massey; Sarah R. Young; and Ann Merriwether, Thomas Lawrence Long; Christine Rodriguez; Marianne Snyder; and Ryan J. Watson, Chapter 8: LGBTQ+ Relationships and Families, Jennifer Miller; Maddison Lauren Simmons; Robert Bittner; Mycroft M. Roske; Cathy Corder; and Olivia Wood, Chapter 12: A Practical Guide for LGBTQ+ Studies, Appendix A: Judith Butler Video Transcription, Appendix B: Lukas Avendao: Reflections from muxeidad, Appendix C: In Han Dynasty China, Bisexuality Was the Norm, Appendix D: What is a Fa'afafine Video Transcription, Appendix E: Queer Archaeology: Some Basics Video Transcription, Appendix G: Watch A Couple In Their 80s Get Married In Dallas County's First Same-Sex Ceremony Video Transcription, Appendix H: Care to the Trans- and Gender Non-Conforming Identified Patient Video Transcription. According to Rubin, One begins to have a sense of a systematic social apparatus which takes up females as raw material and fashions domesticated women as products.[14] Rubin writes, As a preliminary definition, a sex-gender system is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.[15]. intersex. Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.3. Other videos by the same essayist are at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvsIonJdJ5E4EXMa65VYpA. The "Mystic River" star posted a video on Sunday to TikTok in which he and his wife, actor Kyra Sedgwick, dance to Taylor Swift's "Karma" wearing matching T-shirts. His essay is included in Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by M. Hames-Garca and E. J. Martnez (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1945, which won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Anthology. Rodrguez is also author of Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (New York: New York University Press, 2003). Their scholarship gestures toward what a queerly transformed world might look like. Office: Leonard 209B. Want to create or adapt books like this? Like Rubin, Newton was writing before the 1990 birth of queer theory. Sedgwick's "Queer and Now": Queer Theory at its Most Tangible Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete or damaged if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition, coining the terms "antihomophobic" and "homosocial.". For Butler, there is no natural and essential gender or sexuality that queers deviate from. T. de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, in special issue, L. Duggan, Making It Perfectly Queer, in, J. DEmilio, Capitalism and Gay Identity, in, J. Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality,, G. Rubin, The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex, in, A. Fausto-Sterling, The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,, A. Fausto-Sterling, The Five Sexes, Revisited,, S. Stryker, (De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies, in. Right now, drag performers and the LGBTQIA+ community need our help," the posts' captions read along with a link to purchase the t-shirt the couple wears in the clip through Bacon's 501(c)3 . Sexual Futures, Queer Futures, and Other Latina Longings, by Juana Maria Rodrguez. sex-gender system. Queer theorists take a very different approach to understanding identity, which can be understood as constructionist. [11] By demonstrating that heterosexuality, like homosexuality, is a modern invention, Katz seeks to strip the category of its normalizing power. Foucault Home Page [At CSUN] While Claggart is tasked with the maintenance of order on the ship, it is these mutinies that add to Billys suspicion regarding Claggarts moral characterBillys first impression of Claggart is that he was impossible to read. Additionally, when she proceeds to list the elements that supposedly compose ones sexual identity circa 1991 (7), she deftly points out that this groupings attempts at unifying the differences inherent in different peoples sexual identities into a seamless and univocal whole (8) is an impossible task, but hope exists in the fact that the idea of queer opens up a world of endless possibilities and contradictions for defining and understanding ones self. Most often someone who identifies as a man who behaves in an exaggerated performance of femininity. In other words, a binary sex-gender system that assumes a correlation between sex and gender is an effect of power, not nature. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, by Viviane K. Namaste. An institutionalized way of thinking and speaking, which creates a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. A pioneer in queer theory and literary studies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together for the first time in Touching Feeling her most powerful explorations of . For Foucault, power does not repress a preexisting sexual identity; it provides the conditions needed for sexual identities to multiply. (LogOut/ Over the course of her long career, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick became one of the most important voices in queer theory, and her calls for reparative criticism and reading practices grounded in affect and performance have transformed understandings of affect, intimacy, politics, and identity. For queers invested in transformative justice-oriented politics, the assimilationiststrategies employed by liberal LGBTQ+ organizations typified by the HRC stand in the way of meaningful social change. 12 Queer Patience: Sedgwick's Identity Narratives KARIN SELLBERG 189 13 Weaver's Handshake: The Aesthetics of Chronic Objects (Sedgwick, Emerson, James) MICHAEL D. SNEDIKER 203 . Marriage Isn't Enough To Define Queer Lives Yet It Is An Essential For Sedgwick, the connection of Melvilles story to homosexual life is that it is constitutive of heteronormative masculinity and heteronormative male-male relations. What connections between the two do you find? John DEmilio, another queer historian, connects the development of modern gay identity to nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization. A police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969 ignited demonstrations. Nguyen challenges the concept of bottom as passive and shameful, transforming it into a sexual position, a social alliance, a romantic bond, and an art form. [21] Importantly, for Butler, because gender must be constantly reperformed, it can be intentionally or unintentionally troubled, revealing it as an ongoing project with no origin. By evoking the images of the countless teenagers who commit suicide each year due to the manner in which society condemns their identity, the individuals for whom Christmas -a holiday itself constituted in the image of the family- is a time of exclusion from a grand sense of unity rather than a source of joy, and the people who struggle to hold onto life in the face of physically devastating illnesses while simultaneously having death wished upon them from members of society who regard them as filth, Sedgwick ensures her readers never lose sight of the tangible stakes of her argument (6) As the introduction comes to a close, her meditation on the anti-intellectualism of our age made me realize just how much her ideas affect my own life in ways I never had realized. What do we mean when we talk about intersectional analyses, and how have they contributed to queer theory? Kevin Bacon y Kyra Sedgwick realizaron un baile en TikTok que fue furor . Gender always reveals the preference to heterosexual because the social institution makes gendershow more content The policy required gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons to remain closeted while in the military. The recent inclusion of cultural capital into the English Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (2019) caused a ripple of discontent within some educational circles, with some suggesting it is indi. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique, by Roderick A. Ferguson. "Queer and Now." Overlapping or intersecting social identities, such as race, class, and gender, that are produced by social structures of inequality. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. From a historiographical perspective, Sedgwicks piece is seminal and inspiring. And if youre afraid that going PC is going to bring some kind of doctrine to you or warp what you believe in, youre already stuck in a position of not realizing how queeryou and everything else has always-alreadybeen. Queer critics of the HRC maintain that the organization has a limited vision of human rights, is procapitalist, and supports bills that fail to include transgender personsfor example, the proposed 2007 Employment Non-discrimination Act. Who are some important queer of color theorists we should know about? A hypothesis worth makingexplicit: that there are important senses in which "queer" can signify onlywhen attached to the first person. In her introduction to the text, Sedgwick treats the topic of "homosexual panic" as a way of introducing the main themes of the book. Queer theories of gender have influenced scholars across disciplines, radically transforming how we think about gender. Refers to the performance of femininity or masculinity, and is most frequently used to describe the performance of gender expressions that differ from those associated with the performers natal sex assignment. queer and now sedgwick summary Overlapping or intersecting social identities, such as race, class, and gender, that are produced by social structures of inequality. Another example is Kate Bornstein, whose 1995 publication,Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, humorously and accessibly describes her experiences with gender and sexuality. [9] Halperin argues that using modern identity frameworks to understand culturally and historically specific expressions of desire is poor scholarship. However, whereas queer theory is sometimes guilty of the privileging of homosexual ways of differing from heterosexual norms, transgender studies challenges naturalized links between the material body, psychic structures, and gendered social roles. 1993. [12] For Sedgwick, the history of homosexuality is not a minority historyit is the history of modern Western culture. Queer: A Graphic History, by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele. InFemale Masculinity, Jack Halberstam continues the work of disentangling gender from genitals through a series of interpretive readings of literary, filmic, and historical representations (figure 1.6). Dont Ask, Dont Tell. Susan Strykerprovides an even more specific periodization, finding that the term transgender emerged in the 1980s but didnt take on its current meaning until 1992 when Leslie Feinberg publishedTransgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come. Her books include The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Childrens Picture Books (2022) and The Dialectic of Digital Culture (2019), which she coedited with David Arditi. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Deaths of the Author: Reading and Writing in Time by Gallop, Jane at the best online prices at eBay! A phrase coined by Gayle Rubin to describe the social apparatus that oppresses women. Through this blog, I will be exploring issues of sex, gender, and embodiment through the lens of queer theory. At the end of the 14 . An American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality, and a founder of Transgender Studies. Which perspective views identity as fixed, or innate, and which perspective argues that identity is produced through social processes? For instance, a primary benefit of marriage is access to health insurance, but one partner must have health insurance for marriage to help a couple in this way. The anthropologist David Valentine attributes the terms early emergence to activist communities in the United States and the United Kingdom, noting that it was seen as a way of organizing a politics of gender variance that differentiated it from homosexuality.[27]. Because queer theory focuses on the interruption, disruption, and decentering of whiteness and on patriarchy, heteronormativity, homonormativity, and cisnormativity, this is a must read (New York: New York University Press, 2017). This can be seen in the early homophile movement, which refers to late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century homosexual rights activism that emerged in tandem and entwined with sexology and anti-sodomy laws. discourses. She is an independent scholar and high school teacher. Many express criticism that groups like the HRC have become representative voices of the LGBTQ+ community and are failing to represent its most vulnerable members. Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, by Riki Wilchins. Carruthers states that unless we move the margins into the center, none of us will be free. What does she mean by that statement? Duke University Press - Tendencies Gay people know that sex-typed behavior can be achieved, contrary to what is popularly believed. "Queer and Now", Tendencies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. For Foucault, Sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or as an obscure domain which knowledge tries gradually to uncover. The struggle for queer liberation, not limited to marriage equality, is a fight that the majority population would not fight for us and with us. The Normalization of Queer Theory, by David Halperin. In her introduction to the text, Sedgwick treats the topic of homosexual panic as a way of introducing the main themes of the book. [13] It is a constructivist account of gender identity that connects the binary construction of gender (man or woman) to heterosexual kinship and by extension to womens oppression within heterosexual patriarchal cultures (figure 1.3). Summarize the personal, theoretical, and political differences of the homophile, gay liberation, radical feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and queer movements. Its a pretty amazing mission statement one that accounts for the individuality and personal history of active resistance and struggle, one that is less invested in sayingwe need to do this because X, but more like we owe it to ourselves to give ourselves and others the choices we always knew where there but seemed out of reach somewhow, we need to make our stories and selves known and heard, we need to refuse being repressed and silenced, we need to do what we can to assert ourselves and fight those powers that would have us destroyed or erased. Contemporary Philosophy, Critical Theory and Postmodern Thought Resources. The conference proceedings were later collected in a 1991 special issue ofDifferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Sex in Public - JSTOR Home In it, Namaste argues that trans people are erased rather than produced in a wide variety of institutional and cultural settings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Office hours by appointment. By looking back at the text Queer Visibilities that largely focused on articulating some of the relationships between the urban and sexuality over a decade ago in Cape Town, this article suggests . A gender and queer theorist and author, perhaps best known for work on tomboys and female masculinity. Tan Hoang Nguyen reassesses male effeminacy and how it is racialized in cinema, art, and pornography. Internet History Sourcebooks Project The text is a progression of the analysis in Sedgwick's previous work on homosocial relationships, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. This book is the first compilation of essays to address the intersection of queer theory with Jewish identity, homophobia, and anti-Semitism and the invention of the homosexual and the modern Jew. The word politics and its many variations have come to signify dishonesty and ruthless self-interest within our culture, immediately evoking a sense of distrust in many Americans. The text is a progression of the analysis in Sedgwicks previous work on homosocial relationships, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Ferguson demonstrates that predominantly white sociologists have used works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and other African American writers to construct theories about Black sexualities and therefore Black people (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). Full video transcript available in the appendix. In exchange, it prohibited the discrimination of closeted service persons. Who are some of the key thinkers and activists who have contributed to these movements? What are the differences between essentialist and constructionist theories of identity? In the last segment of her argument, Sedgwick meditates on political correctness and the origin of this term. The book bridges the gap between theory and practice by analyzing homoerotic relationships in literary and philosophical history, thereby calling social and political attention to a systemically marginalized group. Gay and lesbian activism has a complex history in the United States and even more so globally. How does your history with the word relate to the broader history described by Ford in the video? Susan Stryker. Abstract Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's concept, the epistemology of the closet, is a foundational contribution to the field of queer theory. This idea, along with Muozs intersectionaltheorization of oppression and social transformation, resonates with many other queer theorists.[39]. The ironic gay spectator: The impacts of centring western subjects in Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.2. Between Men | Columbia University Press Queer Theory and Gender Performativity, by Paul Fry. When she presents her listing of what constitutes a family (6), she makes the argument that the bonds of blood, law, of habitation, of privacy, of companionship and succor should be disengaged from their lockstep of their uninanity on the system called the family, an idea that logically would benefit anyone regardless of sexual preference.