Gay and Lesbian Studies
Book Details

Queer Theory

Annamarie Jagose

By challenging seemingly fixed notions like ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’, Queer Theory demonstrates a radical new way of analysing human identity itself.

Opinion

‘It is frequently claimed that queer theory is obscurantist and inaccessible, and that its elite practitioners are too concerned with abstract notions such as subjectivity to be cognisant of politics, history, community.
Annamarie Jagose shatters these claims.’
Jodie Joyce, Australian Women’s Book Review

About this Title

Ten years ago ‘queer’ was a term of abuse; now it is routinely, although controversially, used as self-description. Queer Theory traces the intriguing history of same-sex sex over the last century through the mid-century homophile movements, gay liberation, the women’s movement and lesbian feminism to the new concept of queer.

Annamarie Jagose investigates the arguments of the supporters and opponents of queer theory, finding that its strength lies in its potential to question the very idea of sexual identities. By blending insights from contemporary intellectual theories like post-structuralism and from the work of theorists like Judith Butler, Jagose argues that queer theory’s challenge is to create new ways of thinking about not just heterosexuality and homosexuality but also such seemingly given fixed notions as ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’, even ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Queer Theory demonstrates a radical, exciting new way of analysing human identity itself.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Theorising Same-Sex Desire: What is homosexuality exactly? The environment of homosexuality, Homosexuality and heterosexuality; 3. The Homophile Movement; 4. Gay Liberation; 5. Lesbian Feminism; 6. Limits of Identity; 7. Queer: Homosexual lesbian or gay queer, The post-structuralist context of queer, Performativity and identity, HIV/AIDS discourse, Queer identity; 8. Contestations of Queer; 9. Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index

About the Author

Annamarie Jagose is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of the critical work Lesbian Utopics and the novel In Translation, which won the PEN Award for Best First Fiction in 1994.

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978-0-522-84623-2