Thinking “queerly”

Thinking “queerly”

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Thinking “queerly”

Read more  There are now biopsychosocial approaches that refuse to separate the biological, psychological and social worlds to study sex and gender in humans.

The Berlinale has awarded several "queer" films, including the documentary by Paul. B. Preciado, under the presidency of the jury of Kristen Stewart, known for defending the LGBTQ + cause. To (re)update on queer theory, the graphic "manual" by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele (La Découverte, 2023) is a good tool, concise and fun. In a few pages, it allows you to get to know a number of proto-queer, queer, and post-queer theorists, and to recall the obvious fact that non-binary has structured societies since the dawn of time. The contemporary American anthropologist Gilbert Herdt has worked on the hijra identities (India), tom/dee and kathoey (Thailand), bissu, calabai, and calalai (Indonesia), to name just the main ones.
What is meant by queer? A theory that challenges the binarism of gender and sexuality, that works on the societal effects (political, ethical, economic, etc.) of heteronormativity, on the links between nature and nurture, on how to escape the division between normal sexuality and abnormal sexuality, which is linked to work on intersectionality… Of course Judith Butler, who nevertheless never claimed to be “queer”, but before her precursors like Kinsey, a great defender of sexual diversity, Sandra Bem, who worked on androgyny, Gagnon and Simon, who debiologized sexuality, Adrienne Rich, Monique Wittig, who deconstructed the constraint to heterosexuality, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who demarginalized the intersection of race and sex, or Gayle Rubin, who denounced the anti-sex ideologies that oppress us… Then Teresa de Lauretis, in 1990, expressly named queer theory at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, only to refuse to call it a “theory” a few years later.
Gauntlett, Warner, McIntosh, Sedgwick, Fuss, Hegarty, etc. have continued the deconstruction of sexual categories and other "straight" privileges. There are now biopsychosocial approaches that refuse to separate the biological, psychological and social worlds to study sex and gender in humans, or in animals. Queer is becoming globalized, with the emergence of "queer diasporas", in other words queer spaces among ethnic groups that have dispersed beyond their countries of origin.
Radical “queer” thinking can work in a completely different way, as Lisa Duggan invites us to do, quoting Barthes: “We must deliberately pretend to remain within this normative consciousness and (…) dilapidate it, collapse it, collapse it on the spot, as we would do with a lump of sugar by soaking it in water.” To your teaspoons.  

There are now biopsychosocial approaches that refuse to separate the biological, psychological and social worlds to study sex and gender in humans.

The Berlinale has awarded several "queer" films, including the documentary by Paul. B. Preciado, under the presidency of the jury of Kristen Stewart, known for defending the LGBTQ + cause. To (re)update on queer theory, the graphic "manual" by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele (La Découverte, 2023) is a good tool, concise and fun. In a few pages, it allows you to get to know a number of proto-queer, queer, and post-queer theorists, and to recall the obvious fact that non-binary has structured societies since the dawn of time. The contemporary American anthropologist Gilbert Herdt has worked on the hijra identities (India), tom/dee and kathoey (Thailand), bissu, calabai, and calalai (Indonesia), to name just the main ones.

What is meant by queer? A theory that challenges the binarism of gender and sexuality, that works on the societal effects (political, ethical, economic, etc.) of heteronormativity, on the links between nature and nurture, on how to escape the division between normal sexuality and abnormal sexuality, which is linked to work on intersectionality… Of course Judith Butler, who nevertheless never claimed to be “queer”, but before her precursors like Kinsey, a great defender of sexual diversity, Sandra Bem, who worked on androgyny, Gagnon and Simon, who debiologized sexuality, Adrienne Rich, Monique Wittig, who deconstructed the constraint to heterosexuality, Kimberlé Crenshaw, who demarginalized the intersection of race and sex, or Gayle Rubin, who denounced the anti-sex ideologies that oppress us… Then Teresa de Lauretis, in 1990, expressly named queer theory at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, only to refuse to call it a “theory” a few years later.

Gauntlett, Warner, McIntosh, Sedgwick, Fuss, Hegarty, etc. have continued the deconstruction of sexual categories and other "straight" privileges. There are now biopsychosocial approaches that refuse to separate the biological, psychological and social worlds to study sex and gender in humans, or in animals. Queer is becoming globalized, with the emergence of "queer diasporas", in other words queer spaces among ethnic groups that have dispersed beyond their countries of origin.

Radical “queer” thinking can work in a completely different way, as Lisa Duggan invites us to do, quoting Barthes: “We must deliberately pretend to remain within this normative consciousness and (…) dilapidate it, collapse it, collapse it on the spot, as we would do with a lump of sugar by soaking it in water.” To your teaspoons. 

 

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