Overlapping or intersecting social identities, such as race, class, and gender, that are produced by social structures of inequality. 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. Foucaults work influenced a new wave of historians committed to studying the construction of modern homosexuality. 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/). In the late 1990s, several critics took the opportunity to reflect on the relations between feminism, lesbian studies and queer theory. [11] By demonstrating that heterosexuality, like homosexuality, is a modern invention, Katz seeks to strip the category of its normalizing power. [5] She wanted to break with the past and transform the future by developing new ways of conceptualizing sexual identities in the present of the 1990s. 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. The group was founded by veterans from ACT UP, and the groups activism enacted and enabled queer theory. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity on JSTOR From a historiographical perspective, Sedgwicks piece is seminal and inspiring. This part in itself essentially functions for me as a de facto Queer Manifesto, one with which I frontload my rereading of the entire piece, so that I immediately feel the polemic force of Sedgwicks anti-PC-America argument. "Queer" seems to hinge much more radically andexplicitly on a person's undertaking particular, performative acts ofexperimental self-perception and filiation. A police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969 ignited demonstrations. Queer theory as an academic tool came about in part from gender and sexuality studies that in turn had their origins from lesbians and gay studies and feminist theory. Duke University Press - Reading Sedgwick Summarize the personal, theoretical, and political differences of the homophile, gay liberation, radical feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and queer movements. Free shipping for many products! 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]. In the article, Allen states that one purpose of this post is to create a conversation about the complexities of the contradictions many peoples identities present to preconceived societal ideas. Have you ever felt that your identity challenged accepted social norms? drag queen. 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). Through this blog, I will be exploring issues of sex, gender, and embodiment through the lens of queer theory. [6] Of course, this very critical, very radical relationship to the normative appears in times before the late 1980s and in places other than the United States, but it is then and there that queer activism and queer theory are named and begin to be, however hesitantly, defined. This view sees homosexuals as a specific group of people, a minority, within a largely heterosexual world. What issues and whose interests does the HRC most seem to represent? Other videos by the same essayist are at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvsIonJdJ5E4EXMa65VYpA. Kevin Bacon y Kyra Sedgwick revolucionaron TikTok con un peculiar baile It explains why she is at war against western civilization whichinsists on demonizing her and doing its damnedest to silence her, and why she is maddened by anti-PC movements and the politics of resentment fueled by anti-intellectualism of the right that is directed at academics. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. PDF Queer and Now Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is also the author of the influential Thats Revolting! Charlene Carruthers (figure 1.8) describes the Black queer feminist lens in this video. performativity. What are the key events that Ford identifies as defining the broad outlines of the history of the word. 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. Epistemology of the Closet Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary She tells us what her current life is like as someone fighting cancer and as an academic working in a field that has an overt political goal. The strange case of querying gove's cultural capital legacy 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 . It begins by elaborating on distinctions between gay and lesbian studies and queer studies before identifying important trends in queer theory. Some would argue that lesbian and gay studies took an essentialist view of sexuality that assumed individuals possessed a fixed and innate sexual identity that was both universal and transhistorical.[7]. 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. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - Wikipedia It accepts greater economic inequality and disfavors unionization. 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. Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.4 Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.5. 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. 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]. This living list of queer scholarship includes many important intersectional texts (https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/lgbtq/graduate-student-resources/queer-theory-reading-list). David Halperin traces the origin of the term queer theory to Teresa de Lauretis in 1990 in this 2003 article in the Journal of Homosexuality (volume 45, numbers 24; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8980528_The_Normalization_of_Queer_Theory). His bookDisidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics(1999) uses performance studies to investigate the performance, activism, and survival of queer people of color. John DEmilio, another queer historian, connects the development of modern gay identity to nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization. What is Carruthers referring to when she talks about telling more complete stories? Queer Theory and the Jewish Question, edited by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini. Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick dance it out for the ACLU's Drag Defense Explain the social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality. Summary This chapter offers a Foucauldian genealogy of queer theory, which does not stabilize origins, but rather probes incommensurabilities within the field, centers the element of chance that allowed certain theories to become central, and allows for the formation of new roots to the side of those canonized for "founding" a field. Summary Of Sedgwick's Epistemology Of The Closet | ipl.org In other words, much as Newton observes about drag performances of femininity, anybody can put on a gender expression. And ultimately, it is a way to shout out loud that those things we have always just accepted all the moving parts that come to define family, sexuality, or queer those are things we havent had a full conversation about yet, and part of what we havent acknowledged is the expansiveness of categories, of all the parts that determine sexuality, but also race, also gender, also nationality, also age, and religion and class. 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 view of sexuality that assumes individuals possess a fixed and innate sexual identity that is both universal and transhistorical. Queer Theory followed the emergence and popularity of Gay and Lesbian (now, LGBT or Queer) Studies in the academy. 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. 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. In the mid-1970s, the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault publishedThe History of Sexuality, which describes the origin of modern homosexual identity. [22] This is likely reminiscent of Fausto-Sterlings provocation that there are five discernible sexes. Butler names institutional powers, like psychologists and psychiatrists, and informal practices, like bullying, that try to keep us in our place. 1993. Where identity should be abandoned to maintain the myth of universality. For Foucault, power does not repress a preexisting sexual identity; it provides the conditions needed for sexual identities to multiply. Her many publications include A Dialogue On Love (Beacon, 1999); Fat Art/Thin Art (Duke, 1994); Tendencies (Duke, 1993); and Epistemology of the Closet (California, 1990). She introduces a Black queer feminist lens, which she describes as a lens through which people and groups see to bring their full selves into the process of dismantling all systems of oppression.[40] Whereas libertarian, conservative, and even liberal lesbian and gay groups seek to diminish the importance of sexual (and other) differences, Carruthers suggests that bringing a Black queer feminist lens to political thought and praxis renounces the middle-class notion of the public sphere as a place where identity should be abandoned to maintain the myth of universality. It is a much newer theory, in that it was established in the 1990s, and contests many of the set ideas of the more established fields it comes from by challenging the notion of . Published only a few years after Duggans work on homonormativity and neoliberalism, Jasbir PuarsTerrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times confirms that some queer subjects have been incorporated into U.S. national life as valued citizens. Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, by Riki Wilchins. In fact, Judith Butler, who is often identified as an early and formative player in the creation of queer theory, cites both theorists as influential to her work on performativity. What evidence does each perspective use to support its argument? In a video in the InQueery series by them, Tyler Ford explains the history behind the word queer (https://youtu.be/UpE0u9Dx_24). Drag queens are often associated with gay culture. 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. An institutionalized way of thinking and speaking, which creates a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Websites: Queer Frontiers [At USC] An important "Queer Theory" site. And if you disagree with this idea, explain why you do not see an important difference between the two. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ***Queer Eye For The Straight Guy*** Music From CD at the best online prices at eBay! In her introduction to the special issue, de Lauretis outlines the central features of queer theory, sketching the field in broad strokes that have held up remarkably well.[2]. 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. However, the aspect of this assertion I find truly alarming is the hint Sedgwick provides that this covertly hateful discourse is ingrained within and acting upon the universities of our nation, institutions which are supposed to serve as safe havens for all ideas with academic merit regardless of their political capital. In other words, heterosexuality secured its non-homosexual status precisely by rejecting occasions for desire, relation, or attachment to take hold. Identify key approaches and debates within the field of queer theory. Although this interpretationis certainly supported by the text, I wonder if it really captures the nuance of what Sedgwick is trying to do. Geographer Michael Brown has criticized Sedgwick's 'closet' as a term for spatial metaphor. 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. Your email address will not be published. What was Foucaults personal background, and how do you imagine it might have influenced his academic career? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is Distinguished Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center. PDF Reading Sedgwick Queer theories of gender have influenced scholars across disciplines, radically transforming how we think about gender. So its a lot to take in! 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. Queer theory, which Ms. Sedgwick developed along with Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, is a prism through which scholars examine literary texts. Describe the relationship among LGBTQ+ history, political activism, and LGBTQ+ studies. Your email address will not be published. Additionally, both queer theory and activism introduced ways of thinking and acting through politics that went beyond normalizing demands for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in existing social institutions. 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. Just like his character in "Footloose," Kevin Bacon is taking a stand against a ban through dance. Transgender studies is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge production that, like queer theory, challenges discursive and institutional regimes of normativity. Dont Ask, Dont Tell. However, perhaps her discussion of her struggle with breast cancer and how it affects her gender and sexual identity, a necessary and poignant tale in itself, may have been better developed and resonated in a separate memoir-centered piece in Tendencies. An American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality, and a founder of Transgender Studies.
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