queer and now sedgwick summary

This 2005 article in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (volume 31, number 1; https://doi.org/10.1086/432743) covers the history of queer theory and gives an overview of its origins. In Chapter 5, Sedgwick orients the reader toward the other side of the spectrum and focuses her reading of Prousts work on the two queer characters in the novel In Search of Lost Time. Please try again. Additionally, like Carruthers, Chambers-Letson decenters the queer sexual subject and queer theory to explore intersectional possibilities for speculative world making and practical activism. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her Epistemology of the Closet claims that "many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture are structuresindeed, fracturedby a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition" (Sedgwick 2008, 1). Similar to Muoz and Carruthers, he argues that radical transformation is the only way forward for queers of color. In a video in the InQueery series by them, Tyler Ford explains the history behind the word queer (https://youtu.be/UpE0u9Dx_24). 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. Winner of the Gustavus Myers Center / Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Award, this book provides the first scholarly study of trans people. Refers to the performance of femininity or masculinity, and is most frequently used to describe the performance of gender expressions that differ from those associated with the performers natal sex assignment. Epistemology of the Closet - Wikipedia The cultural anthropologist Esther Newton publishedMother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, a groundbreaking ethnography of drag culture in 1972. Fausto-Sterling introduces the terms herms, ferms, and merms to categorize anatomical, hormonal, and chromosomal differences that fall outside a male-female sex dyad. The minoritizing view sees homosexuality as relevant only to homosexuals. The group was founded by veterans from ACT UP, and the groups activism enacted and enabled queer theory. In the third chapter, Sedgwick underscores the way in which homophobic anxieties have come to be embedded at the heart of heterosexual identity during the end of the 1800s and through the work of Wilde and Nietzsche. PDF Institute for Advanced Study What are the similarities and differences between transgender studies and queer studies? Jos Esteban Muozs hope-affirming work claims the future for queers (figure 1.7). Emerging in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1950s, the movement was a concerted effort to demand equal rights for homosexuals. Chapter 1: Thirty Years of Queer Theory - Introduction to LGBTQ+ I am reminded of lesbians in the 1950s and '60s hiding lesbian pulp fiction under their mattresses, skipping over the homophobia to marvel at the idea that women like them existed somewhere out there (Greenwich Village . This does important political and intellectual work in troubling the idea of heterosexuality as normal and natural, a claim that has been used to marginalize homosexuals. Social constructionism also influenced understandings of gender. For Newton, femininity is not the property of women, just as for Halberstam masculinity is not the property of men. The queer feminist science scholar Anne Fausto-Sterlings early 1990s work on intersex categories contends that although social institutions are invested in maintaining a dyadic sex system, this system does not map onto nature (figure 1.4). African Urban Sexualities After Queer Visibilities | SpringerLink (Warmington), Whats Queer About Queer Studies Now? (Warmington), Halley and Parker: After Sex? (LogOut/ Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay, by Sharon Marcus. 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. Chapter 1 - Genealogies of Queer Theory - Cambridge Core Tongson Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries Summary/Susan Petrole, The Combahee River Collective Statement Summary (Powers), TS Redmonds Summary of Audre Lordes Zami, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Susan Petrole), Lorde Summary- Uses of the Erotic (Hummel), Alexander Pedagogies of Crossing (Shoemaker), Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Culture (Warmington), Green, Pink, and Lavender Gaard (Shoemaker), Cape Queer? Urvashi Vaid is a frequently cited attorney and leader of LGBTQ+ social justice movements. 1) What is our reaction to Sedgwicks lists concerning the family and sexual identity (6-7)? Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, by Viviane K. Namaste. Her scholarship appears in the Journal of Homosexuality, the European Journal of American Studies, Fast Capitalism, and other journals and edited collections. To assert that identities are sociocultural constructs assumes that in different times and places different meanings and values dominate and influence identity. David Halperin, a historian of classical Greek culture, provided volumes worth of historical evidence to support Foucaults more theoretical claims. However, according to Puar, This benevolence towards sexual others is contingent upon ever-narrowing parameters of white racial privilege, consumption capabilities, gender and kinship normativity, and bodily integrity.[37] Puar further argues that welcoming some queers into national life requires queerness to be projected onto other bodies. [22] This is likely reminiscent of Fausto-Sterlings provocation that there are five discernible sexes. For Butler, gender is established as consistent and cohesive through its repeated performance. References She suggests that the deviancy and abjection previously associated with gay and lesbian sexualities is redirected to brown Muslim bodies and instrumentalized to justify the war on terror. Munoz: Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Meg-John Barker, an academic and activist, teamed up with the cartoonist Jules Scheele in this nonfiction graphic novel to illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action (London: Icon Books, 2016). Queer Theory Musings: Let's Talk About Sex, Baby! Has someone you know had their gender presentation challenged or censored? Foucault, Halperin, DEmilio, and Katz contribute to a critical understanding of the social construction of homosexuality and heterosexuality. T. de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, in special issue, L. Duggan, Making It Perfectly Queer, in, J. DEmilio, Capitalism and Gay Identity, in, J. Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality,, G. Rubin, The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex, in, A. Fausto-Sterling, The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,, A. Fausto-Sterling, The Five Sexes, Revisited,, S. Stryker, (De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies, in. essentialist. "Universally cited as the text that ignited gay studies," according to Rolling Stone magazine, and as "in many ways the book that turned queer theory from a latent to a manifest discipline," the symposium features a series of short papers engaging with the text, its reception, and its relevance to the evolving field of queer studies. Labeling courses of study under the heading politically correct is an easy way to generate or amplify the distrust, suspicion, or ignorance many American have for these already marginalized viewpoints. What are the differences between essentialist and constructionist theories of identity? Butler names institutional powers, like psychologists and psychiatrists, and informal practices, like bullying, that try to keep us in our place. Also like Rubin, her intellectual investments and theoretical findings were harbingers of things to come. His essay is included in Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, edited by M. Hames-Garca and E. J. Martnez (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 1945, which won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Anthology. Carruthers states that unless we move the margins into the center, none of us will be free. What does she mean by that statement? sexology. The marriage of two people of the same sex or gender in a civil or religious ceremony. drag. The conference proceedings were later collected in a 1991 special issue ofDifferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.2. In the last segment of her argument, Sedgwick meditates on political correctness and the origin of this term. This essay examines the Foucauldian foundations of queer theory in the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Roderick A. Ferguson analyzes how sociologists articulate theories of racial difference by using theories of sexuality. Summarize the personal, theoretical, and political differences of the homophile, gay liberation, radical feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and queer movements. 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. This is the position Sedgwick takes in her book when she claims that sexual definition is central to social organization and identity formation. This view sees homosexuals as a specific group of people, a minority, within a largely heterosexual world. Continuing the analysis of the previous chapter, Victorian and Gothic literature marked another shift in what came to define the heterosexual/homosexual binary. 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. It accepts greater economic inequality and disfavors unionization. Lisa Duggan coined the term homonormativity to describe the activist work of groups like the HRC.[36]. Describe that difference in your own words. Lesbian and gay studies assumed clear subjects of analysislesbians and gayswho were studied as historical, cultural, or literary figures of significance to reclaim a forgotten past and create a sense of collective identity and continuity in the present. Duke University Press - Reading Sedgwick 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). Change). [10] Jonathan Ned Katz, also a historian, focuses a critically queer lens on heterosexuality, arguing that it is also a social construct. A political ideology that espouses economic liberalism, such as trade liberalization and financial deregulation, and small government. Figure 1.1. Foucault Home Page [At CSUN] As the essays in what is now Reading Sedgwick have gone through their final revisions, they honor the occasion of Eve's life and work by moving the . Her work aims to create young leaders in marginalized communities to fight for community interests and liberation. Queer Theory Reading List, from Brown University. John DEmilio, another queer historian, connects the development of modern gay identity to nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization. Malik Gaines expands on Butlers theory of performativity by depicting how artists, musicians, playwrights, and actors perform race, Black political ideas, and resistance politics to disrupt mainstream views of race, gender, and sexuality. Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick dance it out for the ACLU's Drag Defense Bacon expounded on the topic in the caption, urging his fans to support the ACLU's Drag Defense Fund going after anti-drag bills being passed throughout the U.S. "Drag bans are bad karma. Judith Halberstam, Whats That Smell? Queer and Now | Tendencies | Books Gateway | Duke University Press Newton writes, The effect of the drag system is to wrench sex roles loose from that which supposedly determines them, that is, genital sex. Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach by Jennifer Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. The policy required gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons to remain closeted while in the military. She argues that sex exists as a spectrum between female and male with a minimum of five distinct categories. On the contrary, societal binaries are two terms constituted by a relation of asymmetry such that one term presides and subordinates the other. However, as a consequence, new lines and divisions were drawn between heterosexual and homosexual life, and heterosexuality was able to secure its non-homosexual status through measured displays of affection or sentimentality. An American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality, and a founder of Transgender Studies. In the first years of the 2000s, groups like the Human Rights Campaign(HRC), which takes a formal rights approach to securing legal protections for LGBTQ+ persons, experienced many successes. Jos Esteban Muoz. Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick Call U.S. Drag Bans 'Bad Karma - MSN He suggests that creative work can expand imaginative possibilities and prompt new modes of being together in the world. Is it the homo/heterosexual binary that Sedgwick engages in such depth in Axiomatic? 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/). For the final part of her article energetically titled A Crazy Little Thing Called Ressentiment, she argues against how the intellectual right, via the hackneyed populist semiotic of ressentiment (18), have attempted to trash and disavow the powerful energies of queerness (20). Queer Theory critically examines the way power works to institutionalize and legitimate certain forms and expressions of sexuality and gender while stigmatizing others. Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer, by Riki Wilchins. He interprets sexual histories through a queer lens that does not assume that identities and experiences are universal. Do you think challenging homonormativity is important? Summarize the personal, theoretical, and political differences of the homophile, gay liberation, radical feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and queer movements. [28] At this point transgender began to be used broadly to refer to discomfort with role expectations, being queer, occasional or more frequent cross-dressing, permanent cross-dressing and cross-gender living, through to accessing major health interventions such as hormonal therapy and surgical reassignment procedures.[29] Before the 1990s, transgender referred specifically to persons who socially transitioned to a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth without using hormones or surgery to medically transition. While Claggart is tasked with the maintenance of order on the ship, it is these mutinies that add to Billys suspicion regarding Claggarts moral characterBillys first impression of Claggart is that he was impossible to read. Your email address will not be published. Queer Theory and Gender Performativity, by Paul Fry. If thats Sedgwicks underlyinggoal then we see how it evolves and bolsters her teaching, her projects, her understanding of her own health and the survival of others around her. Whereas LGBT Studies seeks to analyze LGBT people as stable Additionally, as of June 26, 2015, same-sex marriageis legal in the United States. Kate Bornstein is a famous author, playwright, performance artist, actress, and gender theorist. Taught by Alexis Lothian, How does your history with the word relate to the broader history described by Ford in the video? 'Queer Theory' Is Entering The Literary Mainstream She asserts the political right of our nation has succeeded in lumping everything from Marxism to Queer Theory under the rubric of politically correct in a coup of cynical slovenliness unmatched since the artistic and academic purges of Germany and Russia in the thirties(18). The text is a progression of the analysis in Sedgwicks previous work on homosocial relationships, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Could not validate captcha. [21] Importantly, for Butler, because gender must be constantly reperformed, it can be intentionally or unintentionally troubled, revealing it as an ongoing project with no origin. Lesbian and gay studies courses began to appear in the 1970s, and programs slowly emerged in the 1980s. 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. The view that identity is a sociocultural construct that influences identity formation. Gender Trouble was critiqued for ignoring the materiality of the body and real sex differences. Halberstam argues that female masculinity actually affords us a glimpse of how masculinity is constructed as masculinity.[24] In other words, women and especially lesbians who are masculine reveal masculinity as a construct, in much the same way that drag queen performances reveal femininity as a construct. Gay people know that sex-typed behavior can be achieved, contrary to what is popularly believed. 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. The film theorist Teresa de Lauretis (figure 1.1) coined the term at a University of California, Santa Cruz, conference about lesbian and gay sexualities in February 1990. 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. What examples of different kinds of behavior help you understand that difference? In her introduction to the text, Sedgwick treats the topic of "homosexual panic" as a way of introducing the main themes of the book. For Foucault, power does not repress a preexisting sexual identity; it provides the conditions needed for sexual identities to multiply. What are the key events that Ford identifies as defining the broad outlines of the history of the word. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Icon Books is licensed under a, Figure 1.7. assimilationist. Judith ButlersGender Trouble, originally published in 1990, introduces the term performativity to suggest that gender identity is not natural and does not emanate from an essential truth that can be located on or in the body (figure 1.5). Many queer theorists and activists are concerned that emphasizing single issues (marriage or the military) and centering LGBTQ+ politics on inclusion into existing institutions diminishes the radical potential of queer thought and action. Detailed in a text by the same name published in 1990, the phrase refers to the ways contemporary Western thought and culture is fundamentally shaped by the category of homo/heterosexuality. 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. 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. Part V: Relationships, Families, and Youth, Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach. InCruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, Muoz explores the critical imagination, which he refers to as transformative thought that can prompt and shape social change. TheAdvocate interviews Kate Bornstein, and she explains the gender revolution (https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2018/11/20/iconic-kate-bornstein-explains-gender-revolution). Sedgwick's optimism was far from nave; the same introduction disclosed her diagnosis of breast cancer, which. The key insight from this chapter is that the way in which Prousts narrator describes Charlus and Albertine as different in every relevant way except one: regardless of the suspicion surrounding Charluss true sex and Albertines sexuality, both figures are cast as inhabiting a feminine position relative to the world of the text as a whole. [26] Transgender studies emerged in activist and academic circles around the same time as queer activism and theory.

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