Queer Theory
Queer theory is an approach that questions the categories of sexual identity and the assumption that heterosexuality is natural or normative, treating sexuality as historically produced and politically organized.
Definition
A body of critical theory that interrogates fixed categories of sexual and gender identity and the social structures that privilege heterosexuality, drawing on poststructuralist accounts of discourse and power.
Scope
This area covers the emergence of queer theory from gay and lesbian studies, feminist theory, and poststructuralism around 1990. It treats its central moves: the denaturalizing of the homo/heterosexual divide, the analysis of heteronormativity and the closet, the genealogy of sexuality as a modern construct, and internal critiques such as those of homonormativity and queer-of-color critique. It describes these positions rather than advocating them.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Is sexual identity a natural fact or a historically specific construction?
- How does the assumption of heterosexuality as normal organize knowledge and social life?
- Can a politics be built on identity categories that queer theory regards as unstable?
- How do race and class inflect the experience and theorizing of sexuality?
Key theories
- The homo/heterosexual definition
- Sedgwick's argument that the modern hetero/homosexual distinction is a master category structuring Western culture far beyond the people it ostensibly names, and that the 'closet' is a defining feature of modern sexual knowledge.
- Sexuality as discursive production
- Foucault's genealogy in which sexuality is not a natural drive repressed by power but is itself produced by discourses of medicine, law, and confession that brought 'the homosexual' into being as a kind of person in the nineteenth century.
- Trouble in the category
- Butler's claim that gender and the desires aligned with it are effects of repeated performance rather than expressions of an inner essence, which queer theory extended into a critique of stable sexual identities.
History
Queer theory crystallized around 1990, drawing on Foucault's History of Sexuality, feminist theory, and gay and lesbian studies, with Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet and Butler's Gender Trouble as founding texts and the term 'queer theory' popularized by Teresa de Lauretis. It developed amid the AIDS crisis and activist movements, and was subsequently complicated by critiques of its early universalism from queer-of-color and transnational scholars.
Debates
- Identity politics versus anti-identitarianism
- Whether effective sexual politics requires affirming identities such as 'gay' and 'lesbian', or whether queer theory's suspicion of stable categories undermines the basis for collective claims.
Key figures
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- Michel Foucault
- Judith Butler
- Gayle Rubin
- Michael Warner
Related topics
Seminal works
- foucault1976
- sedgwick1990
- butler1990
Frequently asked questions
- What does 'queer' mean in queer theory?
- Beyond a synonym for gay or lesbian, 'queer' names a critical stance that resists fixed categories of sexuality and gender and questions the norms that make heterosexuality appear natural.
- How does queer theory relate to feminism?
- It grew out of feminist theory and shares its critique of naturalized gender, but shifts the focus toward sexuality and the instability of identity categories more broadly.