 
words: Queer Theory
This school of literary and
cultural criticism emerged in the U. S. in the mid-1980s and owes its intellectual roots
to feminist theory and to French philosophers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.
Queer theorists analyze texts - which can be anything from Wuthering Heights to
TV sit-coms - with an eye to exposing underlying meanings, distinctions, and relations of
power in the larger culture that produced the texts. The resulting analyses reveal
complicated cultural strategies for the regulation of sexual behavior that often result in
the oppression of sexual dissidents who violate sexual taboos or don't conform to
culturally sanctioned gender roles.
Queer theorists are more
ambitious than their "Gay Lib" forebears. The Gay Liberation Movement of
the 1970s fought to create a place for sexual minorities in Europe and the U. S., but
Queer theorists want more than liberation. Their aim is to destabilize cultural
ideas of normality and sexuality and terms like hetero- and homosexual which have been
used to oppress people who don't conform to the Western ideal of monogamous heterosexual
marriage. Many theorists hope that this strategy will undermine the status quo and
foster the freedom people need to create their own sexualities.
Queer theory is a product of the
university but it is allied with the broader queer movement in gay and lesbian communities. In San Francisco, the gay
pride parade has been renamed the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender parade in deference to
the inclusiveness that queer theory is founded on. The less awkward designation
"queer" is equally inclusive but it has not caught on largely because many older
gays and lesbians are still too stung by its historical use as a term of denigration.
The most vocal opponents of Queer
Theory and Social Constructionism, like Rictor Norton who has written a whole book against it, are
committed to the concept that gays are fundamentally different from straights and
constitute a minority population that exists in all times and places. Early gay
liberation leaders stressed this concept of sexual minorities, but the growing acceptance
of the term queer in lesbian and gay communities probably reflects a generational shift
from aging gay libbers to a younger generation for whom "queer" has lost its
sting.
Further Reading
Foucault, Michel, 1978. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An
Introduction. Robert Hurley, trans. New York: Pantheon.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male
Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Norton, Rictor, 1997. The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer
History and the Search for Cultural Unity. Washington:
Cassel.
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© 1999
Andrew Wikholm
All Rights Reserved
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