queer theory
queer theoryAn approach to social theory that suggests that established theory has been dominated by both deep assumptions of heterosexuality and the male/female gender binary divide and proceeds to challenge such assumptions. It emerged around the mid to late 1980s in North America, both as a response to a hetero-normative sociology and as a humanities/multi-cultural based response to a more limited ‘lesbian and gay studies’. Studying homosexuality as a form of deviance is abandoned; instead the interest lies in a logic of insiders/outsiders and transgression. Both the heterosexual/homosexual binary and the sex/gender split are challenged.
With Foucault as an influence, the roots of queer theory are usually seen to lie in the work of Eve Kasofsky Sedgwick who, in The Epistemology of the Closet (1990) argued that ‘many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in 20th century Western culture as a whole are structured—indeed...
[The entire page is 781 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
