Introduction
Applied to homosexuals, queer was initially a term of homophobic abuse, and while it retains that meaning, it is also now used as a neutrally descriptive term. (As an ethnic label, black has made the same semantic journey.) Queer is also provocative: a pejorative and stigmatizing word from the past is reclaimed by that much stigmatized grouping who have renegotiated its meaning. Because of this it has a distinct generational overtone. Younger academics love it; older ones hate it. One now sometimes finds queer used as an umbrella term for a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications, and at other times to describe a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies (Annamarie Jagose 1996, 1). This essay will attempt to define queer theory and consider the claims of queer theorists that it helps us understand the production of knowledge about sexuality. The word queer was adopted because it was inclusive and easy to say. It overcomes the need to keep repeating lists by subsuming a variety of sexual identities under one umbrella word: "When you are trying to describe the community, and you have to list gays, lesbians, bisexuals, drag queens transsexuals, it gets unwieldy.
[...] (1996). Queer theory: An introduction, New York: New York University Press. - Mac An Ghaill, M. (1994) The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling Men and Masculinities. Queer Masculinities Issue, vol n°3. - McLaughlin, J. (2003) Feminist Social and Political Theory, London: Palgrave. - Parker, A. et.al. (eds) (1992) Nationalisms and Sexualities, London: Routledge. - Phelan, S. (1997) Playing With Fire, London: Routledge. - Pringle, R. and Watson, S. (1992) [...]
[...] In their view there needs to be an acknowledgement of difference, in other words of transsexual queer women and men and of lesbians and gays who are denied their own place in society by the heteronormativity which divides society precisely because it attempts to make it a uniform whole (Donald E. Hall 2003, 55-6). Thus the purpose of queer studies is to produce learning opportunities for a richer understanding of human sexuality, and thus to open possibilities that define the world in more complicated ways than the flat renditions narrated by heteronormativity. [...]
[...] 2.) How does queer theory explain the production of knowledge about sexuality? Queer theory explains the production of knowledge about sexuality by different means: by disrupting heteronormativity; by taking up a poststructuralist position; by transgressing the whole social order, and finally by imposing an anarchic model of social life. Disrupting heteronormativity Michael Warner uses the term “heteronormativity” to refer to the complex ways in which “heterosexual culture thinks to itself as the elemental form of human association, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society would not exist” (Michel Warner 1993, 21). [...]
[...] The focus of queer theorists is the tendency to classify every individual by gender and by assumptions about identity derived from gender; and because of this queer is less a term denoting identity than one which implies a critique of identity. Many queer theorists would say that there cannot be a queer identity because identity itself a process rather than an entity, something which is continuously under construction, a site of permanent becoming. Queer discourse now centres on the way that the production of knowledge about sexuality is structured through the use of language. This is new way forward for queer studies, which is still at a relatively early stage of formation and development. Bibliography - Adam, B. [...]
[...] (2000) ‘Queer reading of Europe: gender identity, sexual orientation and the(im)potency of rights politics at the European Court of Justice' Social & Legal Studies9(2):251-72. - Cooper, D. (2004) Challenging Diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - Derbyshire, P. (1994) measure of queer. Queer-theory and homosexual identities in Britain' Critical Quarterly 39-45. - Evans, J. (1995), Feminist Theory Today, London: Sage. - Evans, M. (2003) Gender & Social Theory, Buckingham: Open University Press. - Golombok, S., Tasker, F. and Murray, C. (1997) ‘Children raised in fatherless families from infancy: family relationships and the socio- emotional development of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers' Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 38 pp. [...]
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