Queer Theory

Taking back the term queer to invest it with radically new meanings, including multiple uses of the word as a noun and a verb, queer theory has become an important intellectual movement in recent times. Influenced by poststructuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism, queer theory began its development in the U.S. academy, beginning in the humanities in 1990 and in communication in 1995. All of these intellectual traditions that gave rise to queer theory question and challenge, in various ways, traditional notions of certainty, identity, and truth. Used by Gloria Anzaldúa since the 1980s, queer theory, as a provocative phrase and a deliberately disruptive theoretical move, however, is often attributed to Teresa de Lauretis. Although its name might suggest that it is a more formal propositional theory, queer theory is, in reality, a more general approach to theory, research, and cultural politics. It offers a fresh perspective and a set of tools to critically examine, analyze, and understand social relationships, particularly those organized around current constructions of sexuality and desire. In addition, it highlights the centrality of power and power relations in those relationships and the need to examine and understand them in their proper context, historically, geographically, and politically.

Queer theory also offers an approach for engaging in social action, participating in political activism, and contributing to cultural politics. In simpler terms, queer theory is a new lens and unique perspective that can be used to examine and understand social relations and cultural hierarchies. As a new lens, it is constantly shifting and changing; as a unique perspective, it is continuously reevaluating its utility and historical applications to contemporary issues. For example, queer theory calls our attention to how heterosexual marriage, as a social institution and cultural norm in a number of contemporary societies, serves to elevate the social status and provide numerous psychological and material benefits to married individuals while disadvantaging those who are cohabiting and completely erasing those who do not conform to its definition (e.g., same-sex couples). Recognizing that definitions of marriage continue to shift and change in societies around the globe, queer theory continues to point out different dangers of disenfranchising other individuals and groups (e.g., individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, who choose not to get married; individuals who enter other relationship arrangements, such as nonmo-nogamous relationships).

Queer theory is a wide-ranging perspective that touches on just about every aspect of communication and human symbolic activity, ranging from how to think about and analyze words and labels to how to think about social groups to how to think about desire, marriage, and institutions generally. This entry provides an overview of queer theory by exploring its foundational concepts, conceptual terrain, applications in communication, and current issues associated with its development.

Queer theory emerged from gay and lesbian studies in the United States, which sought to accurately [Page 818]represent the lives, experiences, struggles, and contributions of gays, lesbians, and other sexual minorities. Early work in queer theory was influenced largely by the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Its focus is on the deconstruction, or dismantling and challenging, of current sexual systems that affect individuals across the spectrum of sexual expressions and desires, including dominant and marginalized sexu-alities. Queer theory examines the hegemony of heterosexuality—the ways in which heterosexuality provides the norm for current cultural arrangements. John Elia's analysis of relationship construction and Kent Drummond's work on performance of sexual desire exemplify this first-generation research in queer theory. The second-generation work in queer theory, represented by the scholarship of Wenshu Lee, Martin Manalansan, and Jasbir Puar, has broadened its focus to look at discourses of globalization, diaspora, transnationalism, war and terror, and international politics in the post-September 11th world as manifestations of sexual, gender, and racial hierarchies within various cultural contexts. For example, Puar's study of portrayals of Osama bin Laden in U.S. popular culture suggests how war and terror can be viewed from a queer-theory perspective, indicative of the work of this generation. Although their focus is somewhat different, both generations of research in queer theory are guided by a deconstructive impulse—an interest in breaking apart traditional assumptions and perspectives.

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