What does sex have to do with interpretation? With art? With politics? With thought itself? Sex, the sexual, sexuality pervade political, relational, conceptual, psychical, and everyday life. The field of queer theory is a site of hotly contested concepts and politics. Our course section explores this hotbed of debate: both the (canonical) history of queer theory’s development as well as its current state.
This course begins with a review of queer theory’s foundations, leading to its divergence into what scholars in the field call the “antisocial” and “reparative” positions. Avenues of inquiry include psychoanalysis, discourse analysis, camp, and affect theory. We will use this foundation to explore the latest developments in the paranoid-reparative split unfolding today. Many theorists struggle with defining the term “queer,” let alone decide upon its agenda. The course will continue this difficult work by exploring queer theory through a variety of splits: between identity politics and a desire to undo identity, between the masculine and feminine, between psychoanalytic theory and activism. From these ambivalences about how to position “queer” politics, we will explore how the term is situated in relation to a number of conceptual contexts: namely, the drive, discourse, reading, and commodity culture. Course readings, small seminar discussions, and assignments will train students to articulate and develop difficult and flexible concepts both orally and in writing.
