Sex Positive: Feminism, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Transgression

2000 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Glick
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sex Wars ◽  
Sex Positive

From the feminist ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s to the queer theory and politics of the 1990s, debates about the politics of sexuality have been at the forefront of contemporary theoretical, social, and political demands. This article seeks to intervene in these debates by challenging the terms through which they have been defined. Investigating the importance of ‘sex positivity’ and transgression as conceptual features of feminist and queer discourses, this essay calls for a new focus on the political and material effects of pro-sexuality.

Queer Life? Ecocriticism After the Fire

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Sandilands
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Ecological Thinking ◽  
Lauren Berlant

This article examines the relevance of queer theory and “queer ecological” trajectories to ecocriticism. It analyzes Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s formative thoughts in “Sex in Public” and proposes some “radical aspirations” of queer nature building. It outlines a “queer life” for ecocriticism and provides a reading of Jane Rule’s novel After the Fire, which engages directly with both the ontological and the political dimensions of queer ecological thinking.

Accessing Bodies that Matter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Krasuska ◽  
Ludmiła Janion ◽  
Marta Usiekniewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
The Political ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Gendered Language

Abstract In this self-reflexive paper, co-written by scholars currently collaborating on the Polish translation of Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter, we discuss the political and activist stakes of translating a canonical queer theory text over 25 years after its original publication, in the context of anti-lgbtq+ public discourse in today’s Poland. We argue that the collective character of our translation process turns it into an activist workshop that negotiates social norms and works on the invention and application of their alternatives. This activist practice results in a programmatically accessible translation, written in gender-inclusive and queer-sensitive language that follows the poststructuralist philosophical underpinnings of the 1993 source text and its gendered language. Discussing examples of Butler’s use of grammatical gender and her politicized style in our translation, the article contributes to understanding the queer activist practice of translation and, specifically, underwritten questions of translating queer theory in a contemporary Polish (linguistic) context.

The Queer Multiplicity of Becoming

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Keller
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Model ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the relationship between the Christian, sexual, nationalized, and anthropocentric exceptionalisms. It argues that gender does not get superseded by sex, or feminist by queer, in practice, in theory or in theology. Instead of supersession there appears a multiplicity of becomings, multiplicities of multiples happening in a nonlinear movement whose events of becoming, massively iterative even in their novelties, do not cease to entangle each other. The chapter explains how Christian exceptionalism could sanctify a new model of imperial sovereignty, one that could be retroactively interpreted as the political theology at work in all modern Western powers. It also examines how our entanglement in each other and in the planet is repressed by exceptionalism and how queer theory may collude in the human exceptionalism when it deploys a careless rhetoric of “denaturalization.”

Queer Liberation Theory: A Genealogy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
The Political ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Road Map ◽  
The Relationship

An emerging critical theoretical framework, queer liberation theory attempts to understand the relationship between queerness and capitalism, and more specifically, anti-capitalist movements. It seeks to update and reinvigorate the structural analysis of the earlier gay/queer liberation movement (1960s and 1970s) with the benefit of the insights of queer theory and empirical queer experiences of neoliberal capitalism. Queer liberation theory recognizes and celebrates diverse sexual orientations and gender identities or expression, including essentialist identities such as gay, lesbian, and trans. Within a realist, structural framework, queer liberation theory is interested in how social movements can move beyond identity formation to produce progressive, structural change. To date, three main tenets of the theory have been noted: anti-assimilationism, solidarity across social movements, and the political economy of queerness. The use of the word “queer” signals a progressive, critical, sex-positive, anti-assimilationist, liberationist perspective as opposed to an assimilationist perspective that strives for respectability, acceptance, prestige, and monetary success on capitalism’s terms. The second tenet, solidarity across movements, is an attempt to transcend to the divisiveness of single-issue politics without sacrificing intersectionality. For example, queer liberation theory seeks to recognize, expose, and dismantle social structures that oppress all communities, albeit in different ways. The political economy of queerness refers to a class analysis of structural inequalities. A genealogy of queer liberation theory’s development shows where it reflects, incorporates, or rejects aspects of various theories including a social constructionist perspective, with its debates about essentialism and identities; social movement theory, with its political tensions between recognition and redistribution; queer theory, with its focus on fluidity and ambiguity; materialism, with the strengths and shortcomings of its class analysis; and intersectionality with its focus on a matrix worldview of interlocking systems of oppression; and feminist political economy, with its focus on social reproduction, but adequate recognition of queer sexuality. Indeed, feminist political economy offers something of a pink road map to discover what aspects of the economy will be important for queer liberation theory to explore. Feminist political economy is helpful in the development of queer liberation theory because it has long claimed sexuality and identity as legitimate, as opposed to frivolous, sites of scholarship and political struggle. Feminist political economy, like queer liberation theory, seeks to understand oppression based on sexuality in everyday life. However, the feminist political economy road map takes us only so far, because the focus of the analysis can be seen as gendered, and often cisgendered, lives. Queer liberation theory attempts to draw from these theories to better understand the relationship between queerness and capitalism and provide a basis for political action.

A Backward Glance for a Queer Utopian Future: Genesis, Climate Change, and Hope as a Hermeneutic

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-494
Author(s):  
Brian James Tipton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Rhetorical Discourse ◽  
Queer Ecology ◽  
A Performance

Abstract This article explores the ways in which biblical narratives and queer ecocritical voices can converge to recognize the importance of an intersectional climate change movement: to show that queer ecology matters. Specifically, I argue for an alternative approach to biblical ecocriticism, constructed around a queer(ed) biblical performance. I employ José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualization of a queer utopian futurity, Lee Edelman’s critique of the political and rhetorical discourse centered on reproductive futurity, and Nicole Seymour’s blending of queer theory and ecocriticism in order to analyze conversations held by a cohort of the environmentally engaged nyc queer community. A performance and retelling of the story of Joseph(ine) in Genesis illustrates how queer engagement with biblical narratives offers an alternative to the dominant narrative of the climate change movement: “We must do it for our kids, for our grandkids.”

scholarly journals Practising gender, queering theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 789-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Airport Security ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

AbstractThe development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and failure, particularly the importance on ‘competently’ practising gender in order to established as an intelligible subject. Given the centrality of ‘competency’ in ‘practice turn’ literature, theorising practice from the perspective of ‘gender failures’ sheds light on the embedded exclusions within this literature. To demonstrate the stakes of this critique, I discuss airport security practices, a growing area of interest to IR scholars, in terms of the experiences of trans- and gender non-conforming people. I argue that such practices ultimately complicate success/failure binaries. I conclude by considering the political stakes of practising theory in IR and how competency in theory is similarly marked by the exclusion of feminist/queer work.

scholarly journals In the Margins of One Health: Interspecies Solidarity, Care, and Inequality

2022 ◽  
pp. 52-70
Author(s):  
Laura Murray
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
One Health ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Not Given ◽  
The West ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Political Failure ◽  
Do So

This article is an attempt to frontally pose a question queer theory gravitates around, yet never effectively spells out: what is a togetherness of those who have nothing in common but their desire to undo group ties? First, I consider the take-up of Lacan’s ethical experiment in Seminar VII, the Ethics of Psychoanalysis by queer theorists. I contend that queer theory has not given Lacan’s interpretation of Antigone its full import, which demands its placement in the philosophical tradition of the West brought to its highest fruition in Kant. I further contend, however, that to do so does not quite offer a solution to the queer problem, for, as contemporary debate on the political import of Antigone shows, the purity of her desire does not immediately translate into a sustainable politics. Lacan himself was faced with the problem of translating his ethics into a politics after his "excommunication" from the psychoanalytic establishment, and came to falter before it. Nevertheless, Lacan’s efforts allow us to pose the undoubtedly queer question of how to group together those whose only attribute is to undo group ties. Responding to the unanswerable demands of a theory and a practice that allows us to answer that question, I propose the figure of the smoker’s communism, as elaborated upon by Mladen Dolar, as a preliminary queer suggestion as to how we might go about mitigating the gap between Lacan’s ethical brilliance and his admitted political failure..

Coming to terms: Race, class and intimacy in Australian public culture

Sexualities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1182-1196
Author(s):  
Jessica Kean
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Intersectional Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexual Cultures ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Central Tool

In queer theory ‘heteronormativity’ has become a central tool for understanding the social conditions of our sexual and intimate lives. The term is most often used to shed light on how those lives are patterned in a way that shapes and privileges binary genders and heterosexual identities, lifestyles and practices. Frequently, however, ‘heteronormativity’ is stretched beyond its capacity when called upon to explain other normative patterns of intimacy. Drawing on Cathy Cohen’s (1997) ground breaking essay ‘Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer?’, this article argues that analysing the political landscape of our intimate lives in terms of heteronormativity alone fails to adequately account for the way some familial and sexual cultures are stigmatised along class and race lines. This article gestures towards examples of those whose intimacies are unquestionably marginalised and yet non-queer, or at least not-necessarily-queer, placing Cohen’s ‘welfare queens’ alongside examples from contemporary Australia public culture to argue for the critical efficacy of the concept ‘mononormativity’ for intersectional analysis.

Pornography as Liberation

Pornography ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 197-231
Author(s):  
Mari Mikkola
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Feminist Pornography ◽  
Sex Wars ◽  
Sex Positive

Pornography debates have tended to polarize the feminist movement and led to the “sex wars” of the 1970s and 1980s. The main opposition can be denoted with PorNo (antipornography positions) and PorYes (pro-pornography and “sex positive” outlooks), but is fraught with difficulties. For example, it is unclear what exactly is under dispute: Is the disagreement about how to define the concept of pornography or merely about which materials fall under it? Subsequently, the chapter considers two questions: Is feminist pornography possible? Might pornography be emancipatory? The chapter answers both questions with “yes” and considers what would make pornography feminist and/or liberatory when thinking about racialization, ability, and “fattism” in pornography. It argues that neither an unqualified PorNo nor an unqualified PorYes position is tenable. Furthermore, these positions share many basic commitments; but both sides tend to paint the opposition in an uncharitable light and in a manner that distorts the debate.

scholarly journals Through the Looking Glass: The Queer Narcissism of Selfies

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511769849 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Unconscious ◽  
Looking Glass

A number of scholars have recently argued that the selfie needs to be understood outside of the discourse of narcissism. Rather than leaving this discourse behind, this article focuses on the “hype” of selfies as narcissistic in order to identify and ultimately trouble the political unconscious of this diagnosis, and to ask, what is the problem of narcissism such that it can serve as a means of devaluing, and what kind of politics might we find in the behaviors, proclivities, or attributes identified as narcissistic? The article argues that the problem of narcissism is less an exaggerated focus on the self than it is a failure of responsibility for oneself, and/or an insufficient concern for the well-being of others to whom the narcissist ought to be responsible. Drawing from the antisocial thesis in queer theory, the article argues that this normative investment in responsible subjectivity is motivated, rather ironically, by a desire to annihilate difference. As a “solution” to this desire, the article offers queer theorist Leo Bersani’s notion of “impersonal narcissism,” which it understands in relation to the queerness of the myth from which narcissism takes its name. In short, the article does not aim to evaluate empirically attributions of selfie narcissism—whether to confirm or falsify—but rather to problematize the diagnosis of narcissism as rooted in a normative project that works to produce responsible subjects, and to suggest that this project is compromised by a queer indifference to difference, as critics fear.

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