On the contrary, societal binaries are two terms constituted by a relation of asymmetry such that one term presides and subordinates the other. She notes that although it became standard to refer to lesbiansandgays in the 1980s, the and obscured differences instead of revealing them. 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. Sedgwick argues that by the twentieth century, in Western culture, every person was assigned a sexual identity. Allen Synthesis Three: Where and What is Home? 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. Full video transcript available in the appendix. The majority of entries will be based on literature and works of literary criticism I am currently reading for ENG 480: History of Western Literary Criticism, an English class I am taking at Michigan State University this fall. 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. The reception of Ancient Greek art during the Romantic period, says Sedgwick, was significant insofar as it served as the occasion for a general societal acceptance of unphobic enjoyment of the male figure. Drag queens are often associated with gay culture. Want to create or adapt books like this? Following the Stonewall rebellion, lesbian and gay liberation groups started to fight for equal rights, and some scholars started to study the history and culture of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. It is the name that can be given to a historical construct.[8] By rejecting the idea that something called sexuality exists in all of us, waiting to be liberated, Foucaults work challenged not only how sexuality was understood in popular and scholarly discourses but also how power was understood. However, queer activism and scholarship reject mainstream liberal ideals of privacy, the goal of formal equality under the law, and the desirability of assimilation into existing social institutions. The view that identity is a sociocultural construct that influences identity formation. [30] Feinbergs 1993 publication,Stone Butch Blues, is a fictionalized personal account of negotiating New York City as a butch lesbian in the 1970s. Product Information. Work like this and work published by other trans scholars demonstrates the importance of thinking gender and sexuality queerly. The conference proceedings were later collected in a 1991 special issue ofDifferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 1) What is our reaction to Sedgwicks lists concerning the family and sexual identity (6-7)? A Black queer feminist activist and organizer. The influential transgender activist Riki Wilchins wrote this classic work to make queer theory and gender theory accessible to a nonacademic audience. Their scholarship gestures toward what a queerly transformed world might look like. The editors are scholars and authors of Jewish studies, queer theory, and religious studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). Queer theorists take a very different approach to understanding identity, which can be understood as constructionist. An institutionalized way of thinking and speaking, which creates a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.4 Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.5. [26] Transgender studies emerged in activist and academic circles around the same time as queer activism and theory. In this sweeping history of sexuality, Foucault creates an influential theory of sexual-identity formation. 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. Describe the relationship among LGBTQ+ history, political activism, and LGBTQ+ studies. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Foreword), Nancy K. Miller (Editor), Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Editor) 4.09. 2006). Drag queens are often associated with gay culture. Free shipping for many products! Change). In After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life, Joshua Chambers-Letson explores the affect music and art can have on audiences in an attempt to theorize the conditions necessary to envision collective change. In other words, heterosexuality secured its non-homosexual status precisely by rejecting occasions for desire, relation, or attachment to take hold. For instance, the cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubins essay The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex sought to identify the origin of womens oppression across cultures. Such a story is relevant for Sedgwicks investigations precisely because the stereotype of opacity and secrecy in homosexual identity and desire is heighted by Claggarts status as a policeman and by the background events of recent mutinies on other ships. For Newton, femininity is not the property of women, just as for Halberstam masculinity is not the property of men. Foucault Home Page [At CSUN] https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/app/uploads/sites/262/2022/03/Judith-Butler_-Your-Behavior-Creates-Your-Gender-Big-Think.mp4, https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2018/11/20/iconic-kate-bornstein-explains-gender-revolution, https://afropunk.com/2013/03/growing-up-queer-a-brief-lesson-on-hetero-and-homonormativity/, https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/app/uploads/sites/262/2022/03/Charlene-Carruthers-on-Black-Liberation-for-all-Black-People360p.mp4, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvsIonJdJ5E4EXMa65VYpA, https://www.youtube.com/user/MyGenderation/videos, https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/lgbtq/graduate-student-resources/queer-theory-reading-list, http://newsocialist.org/old_mag/magazine/39/article04.html, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8980528_The_Normalization_of_Queer_Theory, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Rubin uses the phrase sex-gender system to describe the process by which social relations produce women as oppressed beings. Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. 1993. Yes, Dr. Lothian, thats how Im defining the term as I come to understand it! They build on what has come before, reflect on it, challenge it, seek to bend or break it, and only eventually, and only sometimes, become an identifiable entity with a name given to them. Explain the social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Though I am not nave enough to have come into this class with no understanding of the political roots of Queer Theory, when working through dense and highly theoretical language it is remarkably easy to forget these issues affect all peoples daily lives, and impact many individuals in dramatic and heartbreaking ways. Both activism and theory are historically and geographically contingent, tethered to time, space, and the material body in its specificity. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images. This view sees homosexuals as a specific group of people, a minority, within a largely heterosexual world. We cannot be and will not be denied that. The marriage of two people of the same sex or gender in a civil or religious ceremony. Office: Leonard 209B. It is also a very autobiographical and personal essay. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is Distinguished Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center. Upon completion of this chapter, students will be able to do the following: It is a challenge to create an origin story about a field of study, in this instance queer theory, because ideas are not birthed in a moment, a day, or even a year. [11] By demonstrating that heterosexuality, like homosexuality, is a modern invention, Katz seeks to strip the category of its normalizing power. "Queer and Now." [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). Urvashi Vaid is a frequently cited attorney and leader of LGBTQ+ social justice movements. 576 ratings35 reviews. The desire for radical social change that is central to the queer theoretical project is discussed further in the next section. I will begin my summary with the editors' conclusion, where they offer Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as a final example of . Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.[38] For Muoz, conditions of everyday life are simply not viable for queer people of color, which prompts many to imagine a transformed world. Through this blog, I will be exploring issues of sex, gender, and embodiment through the lens of queer theory. Was there any way for the person to resist that challenge? Sedgwick argues that it is a crisis "indicatively male, dating . Rodrguez deconstructs the archetype of the gesturing emotional Latina femme to discuss how gestures and types of bodies inform sexual pleasures and practices, as well as racialized sexual and gender identities (New York: New York University Press, 2014). ACT UP New York (website), accessed March 8, 2021. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Foucaults work influenced a new wave of historians committed to studying the construction of modern homosexuality. He suggests that creative work can expand imaginative possibilities and prompt new modes of being together in the world. 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. Additionally, as of June 26, 2015, same-sex marriageis legal in the United States. How would you respond to that challenge today? Roderick A. Ferguson analyzes how sociologists articulate theories of racial difference by using theories of sexuality. Job discrimination, housing discrimination, street harassment, and access to identification documents are central to the politics of queers of color as well as women and lower-income members of the LGBTQ+ community. Kirk Synthesis 3: The Power of Queer Imaginings, Synthesis 2 Queer Identities, Temporalities, and Geographies, Synthesis #1: Queer Hearts Resurrected: The Socially Corrupted Undead Bodies of In the Flesh, Synthesis #2: Reflections on The Polymath or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, Synthesis #3: Suppressing and Igniting Lesbian Desire in But Im a Cheerleader, Synthesis One: Shifting Paradigms in Foucaults History of Sexuality Volumes One and Two, Synthesis Three: Queer Imaginings in Melvilles Moby Dick, Synthesis Two: Queer Studies in a Transnational Context, Re-centering Race in My Beautiful Launderette, Synthesis 3: Meditation: Prodesse quam conspici, The Booty Dont Lie: Radical Coalitions between Queer Women of Color and the Straight Women Who Love Them, Cinema Diaspora: Discussant Mira Nair with Gayatri Gopinath Chairing. It explains the problematic and complicated histories of library classification of queer texts and includes an excellent bibliography of queer theorists. Icon Books is licensed under a. homophile movement. She was one of the first people to publicly identify as transgender, then later as nonbinary and gender nonconforming. Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay, by Sharon Marcus. Academics and activists use the term to discuss attempts by LGBTQ+ persons to assimilate into institutions like marriage and the military that reproduce hierarchy and are associated with oppression. The book includes essays written by Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. This chapter explores the development of queer theory from the 1990s to the present. In other words, what becomes tied to heteronormativity is not femininity but masculinity, and homophobic dynamics are doubled by patriarchal relations of power. Queer Theory followed the emergence and popularity of Gay and Lesbian (now, LGBT or Queer) Studies in the academy. It is a starting point for first-year undergraduates (New York: Riverdale Avenue Books, 2014). A Case Study of Provincetown (Warmington), T S Redmonds Summary of Mel Y. Chens Toxic Animacies, Allen Synthesis One: Performance and Identity. Alongside this phenomenon, Sedgwick also provides the methodology that informs her study: deconstruction. For example, she says, You cannot talk about racial justice without talking about economic justice. Describe and define more fully Carrutherss intersectional analysis, and be sure to cite specific statements she makes in the video as evidence. Drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of Michel Foucault, Sedgwick uncovered purportedly hidden homoerotic subplots in writers like Charles Dickens, Henry James and Marcel Proust. Do you see progress or instead a lack of spontaneity and imagination in the way the West has treated people with mental health issues, criminals, and homosexuals? And oh yea, by the way, its all pretty queer. In exploring the definition of the designation queer and the various interpretations of political concerns of this classification, she gives readers a glimpse into the lives of those who struggle daily with the issues we have spoken about in class. Websites: Queer Frontiers [At USC] An important "Queer Theory" site. Jos Esteban Muozs hope-affirming work claims the future for queers (figure 1.7). This anthology of essays explores the concept and act of passing, critiquing the visible and invisible systems of power involved in this performance (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press. 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. Gender is definitionally built into homosexuality, but sexuality represents beyond gender and reproduction. Halberstam convincingly claims, Masculinity must not and cannot and should not reduce down to the male body and its effects.[25] Like many queer theorists engaging gender, Halberstam deemphasizes genitals, refocusing on gender expressions. When Sedgwick arrived at Cornell in 1967, she had yet to make her mark on the literary world. Eve Sedgwicks Queer and Now, a synthesis of excerpts from several other pieces,was first published in 1993 and reprinted in the 2013 Queer Studies Reader. Lisa Duggan coined the term homonormativity to describe the activist work of groups like the HRC.[36]. In an article for Afropunk, Growing Up Queer: A Brief Lesson on Hetero- and Homonormativity, Justin Allen talks about the social consequences of heteronormativity (https://afropunk.com/2013/03/growing-up-queer-a-brief-lesson-on-hetero-and-homonormativity/). The U.S. militarys policy on gays, bisexuals, and lesbians serving in the military, introduced in 1994 by Bill Clintons administration. On Writing Since Queer Theory, the reader is confronted, not only with a summary of their project, but also with a rather profound elucidation of the competing, disparate voices that claim to speak for and about the movement. 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 This idea, along with Muozs intersectionaltheorization of oppression and social transformation, resonates with many other queer theorists.[39]. The largest U.S.-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group. The 1970s and 1980s saw a rapid increase in lesbian and gay activism and scholarship. The universalizing view, in contrast, sees sexuality and sexual definition as important to everyone. Visit the website of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC; https://www.hrc.org/), and explore. This article outlines why there exist important opportunities to think through what research on African urban sexualitiesand specifically non-heteronormative sexualitiesmay mean moving forward. Wildes characters and the homosocial bonds that undergird much of Nietzsches writing both serve as testaments to the fact that the Romantic ideal of heterosexual masculinity allowed for a greater degree of traditionally feminine/homosexual behavior (sentimentality) while reestablishing the boundary between heterosexual and homosexual by virtue of the heterosexuals distance from desire itself within their public and private lives. A strategy or one who enacts such strategy to gain access to, or assimilate into, existing social structures, like monogamous marriage or serving in the U.S. military. The text is a progression of the analysis in Sedgwick's previous work on homosocial relationships, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.
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