COMP 421 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Queer Theory, Genderqueer, Jacques Lacan
27 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Queer Theory 101
● 3 major strains of queer theory: Butler, Foucault, Lacan
● queer theory resists definition
○ to define it would be unqueer
○ position as refusal and rejection and critique of the norm
○ disruptive position
● Sullivan - stems from poststructuralism
○ disrupts notions of truth
● the subject is put into question
Foucault
● theory of repression of sex
○ he rejects this hypothesis - that sexuality is innate and culture exists to repress it
● he thinks that sexuality is produced and generated, multiplied within culture
○ it comes about discursively
● we are being asked to talk more about sex both medically and within the Church setting
○ confessional mode
○ this is being transposed to medicine - psychoanalysis
● discourse about sexuality and perversions
● genealogy of sexuality - how things come into being
● sexuality made to speak - induced to discourse
● act vs identity
○ homosexuality was transformed from an act to an identity
● sex doesn’t has a history, sexuality does
○ there are many sexualities - Foucault is tracing the history of homosexuality
● once you are named you can be marginalized
○ once the law can name a subject it can regulate it
● categories give rights but also creates divisions
● subjects are produced through many different discourses
○ this is often done through a binary system
○ binary is hierarchised
■ queer theory disrupts binary systems
● implantation of perversions into bodies
○ those bodies become the objects of investigation
○ major obsession - child masturbation
● room for counter discourses
○ claim the name homosexual and change the meaning
○ queer operates in this way - reclaiming language
● “queer”
○ imagined as an anti-identity
○ but it also concretizes into a thing
○ has its own style/subculture/media…
○ it is always threatening to become a thing
● nonbinary creates a new binary between the binary and nonbinary
Butler
● questioning truth regimes
● where does our idea of gender come from?
○ the idea of gender emerges through performance
● speech act
○ “I now pronounce you man and wife”, “its a boy/girl”
○ naming is what creates the idea
● masculine/feminine
○ stylized repetition of acts creates the idea of gender
● there is no “one” before the action
● theater
○ we are always already onstage, there are always scripts
○ however - there is room for interpretation
● tension between agency and limits
● it is in acting that one becomes a subject
● drag - contradiction between performed gender and biological sex
○ interior femininity expressed
○ expressive vs performative
○ for performative there is no inside truth
● how a man becomes a man - melancholy of the lost love object, instead incorporates the
man as part of his identity
Lacan
Structure of the Psyche
● imaginary
○ mirror stage - child’s sense of self
○ image of the self
○ that image is not the self, but an image
○ imaginary sense of wholeness
○ explanation for role models
■ idea of working towards the image you think of yourself as
○ all identifications are imaginary
■ *gay
● symbolic
○ signifiers, notions of meanings
○ world we are embedded in
○ associated with language
○ correspondence between signs and referents
● real
○ what is left outside the symbolic
○ something that we can’t quite grasp - uncanny
○ something that escapes/is outside of language
○ when we enter the symbolic order we lose access to the real
○ the real haunts the symbolic order
Document Summary
3 major strains of queer theory: butler, foucault, lacan. Position as refusal and rejection and critique of the norm. He rejects this hypothesis - that sexuality is innate and culture exists to repress it. He thinks that sexuality is produced and generated, multiplied within culture. We are being asked to talk more about sex both medically and within the church setting. This is being transposed to medicine - psychoanalysis. Genealogy of sexuality - how things come into being. Sexuality made to speak - induced to discourse. Homosexuality was transformed from an act to an identity. Sex doesn"t has a history, sexuality does. There are many sexualities - foucault is tracing the history of homosexuality. Once you are named you can be marginalized. Once the law can name a subject it can regulate it. Categories give rights but also creates divisions. Subjects are produced through many different discourses. This is often done through a binary system.
