Queer Frameworks and Queer Tendencies (original) (raw)
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Sociological Research Online, 2000
This article aims to extend the theorization of postmodernity to consider social changes in the realm of sexuality. It offers a discussion of recent developments in queer theory, which, it is argued, can contribute significant new theoretical frameworks for the analysis of sexuality. It then traces some of the shifts in the organization of sexuality in the second half of the twentieth century, the emergence of modern sexual identities, and the changing relationships between `the homosexual' and `the heterosexual', as categories, identities and ways of life. The article then outlines what are conceptualized as the `queer tendencies' of postmodernity, which it is suggested characterize the contemporary re-organization of relations of sexuality. These queer tendencies are: queer auto-critique, the decentring of heterorelations, the emergence of hetero-reflexivity, and the cultural valorizing of the queer.
The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond
Annual Review of Sociology, 2004
I Abstract We identify three trends in the recent sociology of sexuality. First, we examine how queer theory has influenced many sociologists whose empirical work observes sexuality in areas generally thought to be asexual. These sociologists also elaborate queer theory's challenge to sexual dichotomizing and trace the workings of power through sexual categories. Second, we look at how sociologists bring sexuality into conversation with the black feminist notion of "intersectionality" by examining the nature and effects of sexuality among multiple and intersecting systems of identity and oppression. A third trend in the sociology of sexuality has been to explore the relationships between sexuality and political economy in light of recent market transformations. In examining these trends, we observe the influence of globalization studies and the contributions of sociologists to understanding the role of sexuality in global processes. We conclude with the contributions sociologists of sexuality make toward understanding other social processes and with the ongoing need to study sexuality itself. * The authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to this paper.
Queer Theory': Intellectual and Ethical Milieux of 1990s Sexual Dissidence
2018
The main problem addressed by this thesis is the question of how to assess the politics and the cultural effects and implications of 'Queer Theory' during the period of the 1990s. 'Queer' was invoked in numerous institutions, spaces, and cultural practices over this period, and yet queer-identified theorists – and many of their critics – have often assumed that this term refers to a relatively unified object. I ask if it is appropriate to treat these 'queer' occasions in this manner, and whether this 'dispersed' object requires a different approach: one that sets out to describe means and routes by which it became possible and desirable to pose 'queer' problems across so many diverse sites and practices. In addition, if there are discernible patterns to these distributed cultural capacities and inclinations, what political significance do they have? These questions inform my account of the career of 'Queer Theory' during the 1990s. A p...
Queer Studies: Methodological Approaches. Follow-up
Queer Studies: Methodological Approaches. Follow-up, 2009
In December 2008, the Graduate Journal of Social Science published a special issue on Queer Methodologies. During the production of that issue, we received a number of qualified and thought-provoking articles, focusing on the issue of queer methodologies from different angles. Indeed, the number and quality of submitted articles was so significant that we have decided to publish an additional, extracurricular, issue. This follow-up issue is a continuation of ideas we proposed in the first call for papers. It is thou an interesting “supplement” to the previous issue, enriching the already broad scope of interests presented. In this issue, the inquiries of the translation of queer are further problematised. While the December issue focused on the relationship between queer and geo- political contexts and academic cultures, the articles in current issue are focusing on the past, present and future of queer, further questioning the notion of “location’ and trans-historically located practises.
The Chilean Handbook Of Human Rights 2013, 2013
The article addresses from a historical point of view which has been the treatment of queer lives in Europe. Particularly, the paper has for purpose to understand if there was anywhere in Europe where same sex lovers could expect equality and respect, and if yes, why did it not exist everywhere. Then, it seeks to determine if discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity really did exist and what was it. Finally, it addresses what is now happening within Europe to create social, legal and political change in this matter.
Queer Individualization: the transformation of personal life in the early 21st century
Nora: Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 2007
This article explores what happens to understandings of social change in the realm of personal life when an empirical investigation is carried out that begins from rather different ontological and epistemological premises from those that have underpinned recent debates. It draws on UK-based research that was framed by an engagement with sociological theories of individualization, psychoanalytically informed psycho-social studies and queer theory, and that was designed to explore the psychic and affective dimensions, and the unconventional, counterheteronormative practices, of contemporary personal life. The study used the free association narrative interview method to examine the practices and ethics of personal life of people living outside conventional couples. It found considerable levels of psychic conflict and emotional distress, and some mental illness, amongst the people interviewed. Many interviewees told stories of experiencing a fracturing of self as they faced lives in which they felt alone and in which they were expected to be self-responsible. These experiences, it is suggested, can be understood as tied up with losses contingent upon processes of individualization. However, the research also found evidence of a set of interrelated, counter-heteronormative relationship practices that served reparatively to suture the selves undone by these processes of individualization: the prioritizing of friendship, the decentring of sexual/love relationships, and the forming of non-conventional partnerships. The article proposes the notion of queer individualization to capture this set of transformations in the organization and experience of personal life, and suggests the necessity of understanding contemporary personal life as involving both the pain of loss, and new, reparative non-conventional connections.
Between the Global/Glocal and the National: Intersectional Challenges to Queer Studies. V–VII
2011
Queer studies and the discussions within this field are international and the scholars are mobile. Still, it is important to keep in mind that a globalized world characterized by transnational trends is not homogeneous, not even within the so called Western cultural sphere. Local contexts are various and they are significant regarding both the organisation of research activity and the analysis that are made. The local context is particularly important when the interaction between research and society is highlighted. For example, in the customary genesis, the beginnings of queer theory are described as an outcome of an encounter between poststructuralist thinking and a radicalisation of activism that reacted against ever harsher attitudes in society during the AIDS crisis in the United States, a bit more than twenty years ago.
A research programme for queer studies
2018
Starting from a definition of queer as the deontologization of categories and the denaturalization of performances, this paper aims to delineate a research programme for queer studies based on American sociologist’s Harvey Sacks’s work on social categories. This would make it possible both to generalize the application of queer theory to the analysis of the repressive consequences of all forms of categorization, and to elucidate these repressive effects in a huge variety of social contexts and situation, thus considerably broadening the range of convenience of queer theory.
Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality Studies
Sociological Theory, 2007
In this paper, I revisit the relationship of queer theory and sociology in order to address some critical issues around conceiving the subject and the self in sexualities research. I suggest that while sociology and queer theory are not reducible to each other, sociology has its own deconstructionist impulse built into pragmatist and symbolic interactionist analyses of identity and subjectivity that is often overlooked by or reinvented through queer theory. But, conversely, queer theory has a very specific deconstructionist raison d'etre with regard to conceiving the sexual subject that marks its key departure from Foucault and sociology more generally. This deconstructionist mandate, by definition, moves queer theory away from the analysis of self and subject position—including those accruing from race, class and gender—and toward a conception of the self radically disarticulated from the social. This “anti-identitarian” position has been a source of criticism among some sociologists who find in queer theory an indefensible “refusal to name a subject” (Seidman 1993:132). But this criticism, I suggest, stems from a misplaced effort to synthesize queer theory and sociology when, in fact, the two approaches to the subject are founded on incommensurable methodological and epistemological principles. Rather, I argue that the very promise of queer theory rests in a strong deconstructionism that exists in tension with, rather than as an extension of, sociological approaches to the self.