After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory (South Atlantic Quarterly) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822366827 ISBN 13: 9780822366829

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2011

Synopsis

In this special issue of SAQ, a prominent group of contributors consider the vicissitudes of queer theory since its inception in the early 1990s. The issue considers what—if anything—lies at the heart of queer studies other than its interest in sexuality. With essays intended to be more reflective than scholarly, the authors contemplate the future of queer theory by meditating richly on its past. Whether viewing sexuality as the epitome of the social or of the anti-social, the essays form a sustained meditation on sex as a source of delight and trouble, as a subject of serious inquiry, and as a political conundrum.

Contributors explore the interdisciplinarity of the field and its relation to other fields, such as critical race studies, feminism, and lesbian and gay studies. Several essays recall the birth of queer theory in the days of the feminist-sex wars and the first AIDS-related gay male deaths; some contributors evoke the days of the field’s infancy while others are pleased to embrace its maturity. The sheer number and breadth of the topics considered—everything from Hank Williams and the paradoxes of Native American sovereignty to the declension of atoms in the writings of Lucretius, from Henry Darger’s “naive” depiction of girls with male genitals to the experience of being single or of falling asleep—reflect the continuing power of queer theory a generation after its inception.

Contributors
Lauren Berlant
Michael Cobb
Ann Cvetkovich
Lee Edelman
Richard Thompson Ford
Carla Freccero
Elizabeth Freeman
Jonathan Goldberg
Janet Halley
Neville Hoad
Joseph Litvak
Michael Moon
José Esteban Muñoz
Jeff Nunokawa
Andrew Parker
Elizabeth A. Povinelli
Richard Rambuss
Erica Rand
Bethany Schneider
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Kate Thomas

About this title

About the Author:

Janet Halley is the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is the author of Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism and Don’t: A Reader’s Guide to the Military’s Anti-Gay Policy, also published by Duke University Press.

Andrew Parker is Professor of English at Amherst College and the editor of Jacques Rancière’s The Philosopher and His Poor, also published by Duke University Press.

Review:

“At a moment when many had begun to worry that queer theory was becoming little more than a widespread litany of dogmas and slogans, this volume arrives as a wonderful surprise: not only because it reminds us what a contribution the varied intellectual currents grouped together under that rubric have been making—and for nearly twenty years now—to the renewal of our intellectual life; but also, and more importantly, because it shows to what a degree this theoretical effervescence lives on, and how powerfully productive it still is in all its characteristically marvelous variety.”—Didier Eribon, author of Insult and the Making of the Gay Self

“[A] a kaleidoscopic collection that rotates around the personal-is-political-is-personal axis of denormativization. . . . Queer theory, in short, is alive and kicking. Having proliferated, branched out, and, so far, resisted ossification, it provides space for diversity and disagreement. Testifying to this, the contributions to After Sex? make an illuminating and, yes, entertaining read.” (Sylvia Mieszkowski GLQ)

“[T]he value of After Sex? resides in its unwavering commitment to show how the nuances of queer theory aid in making it a powerful form of scholarship and politics. And this motley crew of interdisciplinary scholars reflects the exact kind of bricolage that Cultural Studies argues is productive. More importantly, this book insists that troubling the lenses through which we see the world is imperative if scholars ever want to make sense of a conjuncture that is so complexly intersectional.” (Raechel Tiffe Cultural Studies)

“Together, the essays that make up this collection offer an engaging insight into the origins, development, expansiveness and potential problems of queer theory. After Sex? does not provide a straightforward, conclusive answer to its own ambiguous question, but then it would be somewhat queer – or, rather, unqueer – if it did.” (Forum for Modern Language Studies)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0822366827
• ISBN 13: 9780822366829
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Andrew Parker, Janet Halley