The ' argument from queerness', made famous by J. L. Mackie, remains one of the most influential arguments in metaethics. However, many philosophers focus on just one or two of its strands, while others assume a particular but by no means universal reading of it. This essay attempts to disentangle and evaluate all strands of the argument. Surprisingly, when this is done, not much is left as a distinct argument from queerness. Much of the argument collapses into other (...) types of argument, and what is left, though intuitively appealing, is not viable as philosophical argument. (shrink)

In his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke develops a famous argument that purports to show that there are no facts about what we mean by the expressions of our language: ascriptions of meaning, such as “Jones means addition by ‘+’” or “ Smith means green by ‘green’”, are according to Kripke’s Wittgenstein neither true nor false. Kripke’s Wittgenstein thus argues for a form of non- factualism about ascriptions of meaning: ascriptions of meaning do not purport to (...) state facts.1 Define semantic realism to be the view that ascriptions of meaning are apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity, and are, at least in some instances, true. Semantic realism, thus defined, is a form of cognitivism about semantic judgement, according to which judgements ascribing meaning express beliefs, states apt for assessment in terms of truth and falsity. Kripke’s Wittgenstein thus argues against semantic realism, and in favour of a form of semantic non-cognitivism. However, another form of opposition to semantic realism accepts that semantic judgements express beliefs but asserts that those beliefs are systematically and uniformly false.2 This cognitivist form of opposition to semantic realism is similar to the error-theoretic form of opposition to moral realism mooted by J.L. Mackie in the first chapter of his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In this paper I will investigate whether there is a plausible analogue of Mackie’s “argument from queerness” that can be used to make a case for an error-theory of semantic judgement. In §2 I set out what I take to be Mackie’s argument from queerness against moral realism. In §3 I argue that there is no straightforward and plausible analogue of that argument that would justify an error theory about ascriptions of meaning. In §4 and §5 I defend the argument of §3 against an objection developed in a recent paper by Daniel Whiting. (shrink)

The argument from queerness is one of the most important arguments for moral error theory. Moral error theory holds that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed or, more precisely, that all moral judgements are false. The argument from queerness, in the version I am concerned with, claims that moral discourse is centrally committed to the thesis that moral facts entail categorical reasons, understood as irreducibly normative favouring relations, and that if this thesis were true, moral facts would be queer. (...) In this paper, I argue that axiology does not fall prey to the argument from queerness. Axiology is the part of moral discourse that examines which things are good, which things are bad, and what makes good things good and bad things bad. I argue that axiology survives the argument from queerness for three reasons. First, many axiological judgements are not committed to the thesis in question. Second, some judgements about moral value are committed to the thesis but do not belong to axiology. Third, some axiological judgements are committed to the thesis but can simply be removed from axiological discourse. (shrink)

This paper describes the stakes of ongoing conversations in areas of queer theory and black studies on the epistemological, ethical, and political role of unintelligibility. In line with longstanding philosophical questions about the value of aporia as gap or absence in our understanding, thinkers like Lee Edelman and Frank Wilderson III have articulated how black and queer people have regularly fallen into spaces of unintelligibility as they have run against given formations of the social world. These thinkers have theorized what (...) this unintelligibility – what they will call this queerness or blackness – is other than an impetus for integration. The paper describes the dichotomy between two key positions in this conversation, resistance and refusal, suggesting these positions offer challenges better addressed through a conception of estrangement. (shrink)

In his recent book Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, Jonas Olson attempts to revive the argument from queerness originally made famous by J.L. Mackie. In this paper, we do three things. First, we eliminate four untenable formulations of the argument. Second, we argue that the most plausible formulation is one that depends crucially upon considerations of parsimony. Finally, we evaluate this formulation of the argument. We conclude that it is unproblematic for proponents of moral non-naturalism—the target of the argument (...) from queerness. (shrink)

I met Kyla at a small conference on a rainy weekend in February 2018. I wandered into the workshop shortly after it had started, and the room was filled with Black women designing vision boards. Kyla didn't stop what she was doing as she replied to the question the presenter posed to the room. Her hands continued moving, cutting glossy paper or pasting shiny gems onto her board: “When I tell people that my organization raises money to take girls abroad, (...) so many of them say, ‘Well why wouldn't you raise money for them to buy clothes or eat. They need food and education before they need to travel.’ But I always say, ‘But what about Black joy?’”. (shrink)

This article explores some of the challenges and benefits of doing a dissertation with participants from a population to which I belong and on a topic some consider controversial, that of gay and lesbian educators. I describe the homophobia I experienced and how that homophobia affected my choice of topic, the research process, and my job prospects. Each step of this research journey presented me with a variety of delicate decisions. I discuss my thought processes in resolving these dilemmas and (...) some of the practical solutions I used to address a variety of difficulties. Although written specifically about doing research with gay and lesbian teachers, many of the lessons I learned throughout this process can be applied to a range of research situations. For example, many researchers share cultural backgrounds with their participants. This presents both the opportunity to establish rapport with participants quickly but also the danger of the researcher reading his or her own experiences into the data. I describe some of the ways I addressed this issue as well as others commonly faced by those doing dissertations. I conclude that doing a dissertation on a topic I feel passionately about sustained me throughout the dissertation process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Identifying (with) the Queerness of Melville’s PierreNeill Matheson (bio)James Creech. Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville’s Pierre. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.James Creech’s Closet Writing/Gay Reading is a remarkable book in several ways. First, it offers a significantly new interpretation of Melville’s enigmatic novel Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852), which has increasingly been viewed as marking a crucial turning point in Melville’s career, gaining the status (...) of a major if equivocal work of nineteenth-century American fiction. Creech’s reading of Pierre adds much to previous work on homosexuality in Melville’s writings, making an important contribution to the history of Melville criticism. Supported by a shrewd, detailed analysis of the novel, and some surprising extratextual evidence, he argues compellingly that Pierre is preoccupied with the closeting of gay identity and with the tenuous possibilities for homosexual self-expression in a repressively heterosexual culture. Nevertheless, as its subtitle suggests, Pierre is a work that advertises its own ambiguity with a high degree of ironic self-awareness. Creech’s claims about it, made with a certain bravado, though accompanied by many hesitations and caveats, seem at times to diminish the complexity with which the novel itself explores the problem of identity.In addition to its interest as a reading of Pierre, Closet Writing/Gay Reading also represents a provocative statement within the wider context of critical and theoretical work on homosexuality, staking out a position that resists both the problematizing of identity performed by queer theory and the historicizing aims of much recent gay studies work. Creech elaborates the notion of “identificatory” or “camp reading” with great self-consciousness about its place in the critical landscape, so that it is as much a reaction to various theoretical positions as a stance in its own right. It is the combination of this critical hyperawareness, as if continually looking over one’s shoulder, and a kind of willed innocence with respect to interpretive problems that is most extraordinary, and it is worth exploring further.If one of the book’s aims is to add to a theory of the closet, it is also concerned with describing a poststructuralist theory that is in complicity with the suppression or emptying-out of homosexual meaning. Creech’s argument that deconstruction in particular has been blind to homosexual content contains in its margins a personal narrative of his own emergence from a theory closet. One of the strategies of Creech’s reading is to make his coming-out story converge with the one that he attributes to Pierre: his unambiguous claim for Pierre’s gay identity is simultaneously an avowal of a critical approach no longer in conflict with his own sexual identity. He alludes to his early and lingering attraction to deconstruction, the subsequent discovery that its influence, inhibiting unequivocal identity claims, prevented him from affirming his sexuality, and his tentative, incomplete, but increasingly assured rejection of that influence. Creech [End Page 30] asserts more than once that an analysis of Pierre’s impossible mourning would be valuable, but the story of his own critical history begins to sound like an account of the identifications, losses, and self-reproaches typical of melancholia. In this light Closet Writing/Gay Reading is interesting not because it is itself representative of recent gay criticism, but because it is a highly original, idiosyncratic, and suggestive response to a representative set of critical pressures surrounding the problem of identity.The central methodological claim of Closet Writing/Gay Reading is that identification is the form of reader response necessary to bring closeted homosexual meaning to light. Creech argues that the task of gay literary criticism is to counter the reductiveness of traditional, straight criticism by “putting homosexuality back in its rightful place, reimagining the text from which it has been censored, within which it has only been allowed an encrypted and ciphered status, or out of which it has been abstracted” [29]. Gay literary criticism faces the interpretive problem of recovering homosexual meaning that may have become nearly invisible through the combined effects of the restrictive cultural imperatives under which the author was writing and the reductiveness of later criticism... (shrink)

This essay explores what it means to “queer” ethics. Writing from a perspective that is both personal and philosophical, I argue that we cannot queer ethics simply by expanding the range of topics studied by analytic philosophers to include things like kink, misgendering, and going stealth. Queering projects in analytic ethics require queer sensibility, ways of doing philosophy that deviate from analytic philosophy’s dominant norms. The main contribution of this essay is to articulate this sensibility in methodological terms and highlight (...) its potential to transform analytic ethics. (shrink)

Accidentality describes the condition of not being at home in one’s own sense-making framework. A “sense-making framework” refers to how we psychologically understand our reality, emotions, and beliefs based on the social structures through which we live. So far, no one has applied accidentality to sexuality. I argue queer people also experience accidentality. Most philosophers discussing accidentality argue that accidentality is a sort of epistemic privilege. I argue while accidentality may be an epistemic privilege, it also often stems from epistemic (...) injustice, specifically hermeneutical injustice: injustice caused when people cannot understand their life experiences due to a lack of interpretive resources to understand those experiences. This is because to endure hermeneutical injustice is to endure a position within your social world where you are deprived of the interpretive resources required to understand your experiences, and this can cause the phenomenological experience of accidentality, which is the conscious experiencing of a social world that deprives you of the interpretive resources required to understand your experiences at a pervasive and global scale, a condition of being untethered from one’s available meaning-making structures in their social world. I argue one second-order epistemic harm from this injustice is the specific patterns of psychological reasoning accidentality creates that compounds to foster extreme melancholy. We have empirical evidence supporting this. Lastly, we can help queer people overcome this melancholy through pragmatic solutions to accidentality, such as ensuring the survival and well-being of queer communities which provide an alternative and compatible sense-making framework. We can achieve this by destigmatizing being queer, combating discrimination within queer communities, and ensuring access to mental health services. (shrink)

Introduction : low theory -- Animating revolt and revolting animation -- Dude, where's my phallus? forgetting, losing, looping -- The queer art of failure -- Shadow feminisms : queer negativity and radical passivity -- "The killer in me is the killer in you" : homosexuality and fascism -- Animating failure: ending, fleeing, surviving.

Queer Death Studies (QDS) refers to an emerging transdisciplinary field of research that critically and (self) reflexively investigates and challenges conventional normativities, assumptions, expectations, and regimes of truths that are brought to life and made evident by death, dying, and mourning. Since its establishment as a research field in the 1970s, Death Studies has drawn attention to the questions of death, dying, and mourning as complex and multifaceted phenomena that require inter- or multi-disciplinary approaches and perspectives. Yet, the engagements with (...) death, dying and mourning, constitutive of conventional Death Studies’ investigations, tend to remain insufficient and reductive. They are often governed by the normative notions of: the subject; bonds between humans, as well as between humans and (their) animals; family relations and communities; rituals; and finally, experiences of grief, mourning, and bereavement. Moreover, these engagements are frequently embedded in constraining beliefs in life/death divides, constructed along the lines of conventional religious and/or scientific mind/body dualisms, characteristic of the Western cultural imaginaries. Against this background, QDS offers a site for ‘queering’ traditional ways of approaching death both as a subject of study and philosophical reflection, and as a phenomenon to articulate in artistic work or practices of mourning. Here, the notion of ‘queer’ conveys many meanings. It refers to researching and narrating death, dying, and mourning in the context of queer bonds and communities, where the subjects involved/studied/interviewed and the relations they are involved in are recognised as ‘queer’. Simultaneously, the term ‘queer’ can also function as an adverb and a verb, referring thus to the processes of going beyond and unsettling (subverting, exceeding) binaries and given norms, normativities, and constraining conventions. In other words, ‘queer’ becomes both a process and a methodology that is applicable and exceeds the focus on gender and sexuality as its exclusive concerns. (shrink)

"Annamarie Jagose knows that queer theory did not spring full-blown from the head of any contemporary theorist. It is the outcome of many different influences and sources, including the homophile movement, gay liberation, and lesbian feminism. In pointing to the history of queer theory-a history that all too often is ignored or elided-Jagose performs a valuable service." -Henry Abelove, co-editor of The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader The political and academic appropriation of the term queer over the last several years (...) has marked a shift in the study of sexuality from a focus on supposedly essential categories as gay and lesbian to more fluid or queer notions of sexual identity. Yet queer is a category still in the process of formation. In Queer Theory , Annamarie Jagose provides a clear and concise explanation of queer theory, tracing it as part of an intriguing history of same-sex love over the last century. Blending insights from prominent theorists such as Judith Butler and David Halperin, Jagose argues that queer theory's challenge is to create new ways of thinking, not only about fixed sexual identities such as heterosexual and homosexual, but also about other supposedly essential notions such as sexuality and gender and even man and woman. (shrink)

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. (...) This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world. (shrink)

Is queer social science possible? Early queer theorists disparaged empiricism as a normalizing, modernist discourse. Nonetheless, LGBTQI+ social scientists have applied queer concepts in empirical projects. Rather than seek a queer method, we ask, Is there an empirical perspective that (ontologically) envisions social relations more queerly—attending to discursive and materialist productions of reality? Dorothy Smith’s work foregrounds people’s activities of engaging texts and satisfies Black queer studies’ and new materialisms’ critiques of early queer theory. Underutilized and often misread, especially its (...) ethnomethodological sensibilities and its vision of actors as relational, practical actors, her work shows how my race is not mine, it is ours; your sexual orientation is not yours, it is ours; their gender is not theirs, it is ours. Smith offers an ontology without essence, grand theory, or normativity, facilitating a range of queer, interpretive projects—from the intersectional to the transnational to the embodied. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent feminist critiques of the whiteness of philosophy’s secularism. Building on the distinction in disability studies between accommodation and access, I argue that, in order to effectively address philosophy’s whiteness and heteronormativity, critiques of philosophy’s secularism must be accountable to religion’s historical and contemporary role in perpetuating harm against queer people. While it is absolutely crucial to critique and work to undo the whiteness of mainstream philosophy, it is equally important to do so in a (...) way that does not further marginalize queer people. I build on Gloria Anzaldùa’sdistinction between spirituality and religion, Sara Ahmed’s discussion of willfulness, and the distinction between accommodation and accessin disability studies to suggest a nonadditive concept of pluralism that moves toward the transformation of philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

Spivak refers to “originary queerness” as a concept she cannot yet theorize. If concepts convey and uphold heterogeneous lived experience, then the paradoxical missing-ness of a corresponding “what...

This chapter looks at the ways in which conceptualizations of sex/gender(s) and sexuality/ies in Buddhist traditions are termed and shaped in Classical Buddhist Texts by cultural and political influence. We demonstrate how notions of trans- and queerness found in authoritative early texts only have meaning in the unique social contexts in which they were employed and are created and negotiated through paradigms of power in patriarchal societal contexts. It becomes evident to what extent the lived understanding of the relationship (...) between sex, gender, and sexuality/-ies in Ancient South Asia differs considerably from that of the post-nineteenth-century global modernities, prohibiting any reductionist equation with contemporary trans- and queer subjectivities. We conclude that the established practice of textual redaction and adaptation provides precedents for contemporary Buddhists to embrace in celebration the potential of all, regardless of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The internationally circulating films and installation art of Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul open up new avenues for queerness. Their queerness lies not only in the interspecies, supernatural, and geontological elements of the stories that they tell but hails also from the director’s proficiency in mobilising Buddhist motifs for new imaginings of same-sex desire and opposite-sex alliances. It is notions of karma and rebirth that centrally account for such possibility. Apichatpong’s cinema and art draw on both an ultimate, (...) nibbanic (prescriptive and doctrinal) dimension of Buddhist teaching as well as on more proximate, samsaric (everyday and vernacular) understandings of Theravada Buddhism. Rather than for religious instruction, both dimensions of Buddhist thought are deployed to wholly other ends—namely, to queer notions of personhood and relationality. With its examination of Apichatpong’s work, this article aims to shed light on an alternative queer imaginary that issues from Southeast Asia. It mines Thai-Buddhist imaginaries for alternative perspectives on the relation to the other: Apichatpong Weerasethakul invents cinematic, affective and conceptual languages that exceed the boundaries of the notions of queer personhood and relational form that we have hitherto been able to imagine. (shrink)

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu demonstrates how queer Marxist critics in China use queer theory as a non-liberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation, and in doing so, he revises current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anonymous Versus Open Donation and Queerness as Political:Comments on Groll's Conceiving PeopleAmanda Roth (bio)1. IntroductionIn this commentary on Daniel Groll's 2021 book Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation, I examine a number of the book's major themes, especially around the idea that donor-conceived children have a significant interest in genetic knowledge and therefore, donor-conceiving parents are morally required to use an open (...) donor.1 I point to some concerns about Groll's case for this view and, in doing so, highlight the way in which taking up an LGBTQ+ perspective complicates and undermines the case against anonymous donation. The major theme of my comments is that the open versus anonymous decision is not merely an ethical decision, but a political one.My comments are organized around a few of the book's major themes, so I'll begin with laying out the most relevant themes in some detail. I then take up four points to consider in more depth. In so doing, I'll be drawing on my own scholarly perspective on issues of nontraditional reproduction, which is informed by my own social positionality in relation to family matters; this means that I (not so subtly) bring a queer perspective to the discussion of Groll's book. The through-line of my comments is this: While I agree with and appreciate much of Groll's approach, I want to stress the sense in which gamete donation is not just an ethical issue, but a political one, given its implication in bionormativity (and heteronormativity). I wonder if a deeper acknowledgment of the political nature of the issues might lead to moral conclusions that are different from those that Groll comes to, even assuming similar ethical values as starting points.2. Groll's major claims(1) Claim 1: Disclosure to donor-conceived offspring—in the usual case at least—is morally required given the intimacy argument: [End Page 166]The intimacy argument suggests that keeping "the secret" about donor conception involves intentional deception and undermines the proper intimacy of parent-child relationships (Groll 2021, 36–49).(2) Claim 2: Anonymous donor conception is (generally) morally impermissible because of the significant interest view.Donor-conceiving parents can reasonably foresee that their children will likely develop a significant interest in genetic knowledge. Significant interests "matte[r] quite a lot to the person who has [them]," "tak[e] up a space … in a person's mental economy" and/or "pla[y] a structuring role in a person's life and self-conception" (Groll 2021, 62–3). But not all donor-conceived people take such an interest in genetic information, and this information is not necessary for identity construction or psychological wellbeing (Groll 2021, 58, 61).2 Rather, multiple routes to self-identity exist, the genetic route being one among the options. Moreover, one needn't experience any loss in not taking this route; however, for those who take it up, genetic knowledge is objectively valuable and nonfungible (Groll 2021, 81–9). This is because genetic knowledge is uniquely relevant to the identity-related question "Who am I?" (Groll 2021, 112–3).3Groll argues that donor-conceiving parents should assume that their child will form such an interest because this is empirically a "good bet." Further, significant interests—at least when they are worthwhile (that is, not trivial and not morally objectionable)—are connected to one's wellbeing by the wellbeing principle: In satisfying a non-instrumental significant worthwhile interest, one's life goes better (Groll 2021, 62). It follows, then, that parents ought to choose open donors since (to simplify) parents are obligated to promote their children's wellbeing (ibid).4Counter to what one might expect, Groll does not take his ethical case against anonymous donor conception to justify prohibition of the practice. This is because wronging children in this way is within the realm of (unethical) choices we allow parents to make without societal interference.5 Moreover, to aim regulation at anonymous donor conception could reinforce bionormativity and target already marginalized families for special negative attention (Groll 2021, chapter 8).(3) "Claim" 3: Groll's own personal... (shrink)

In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explores the connection between the binaries of heterosexuality/homosexuality and the utopian/apocalyptic. In doing so, she exposes the commonplace of a “fantasy trajectory toward a life after the homosexual.”1 In this narrative model, once the queer has completed its function of purging the symbolic of its sins, the character is eliminated from the text as part of the emergence of a postnarrative hetero-normative utopia. In a similar vein, Lee Edelman’s “Against Survival: Queerness (...) in a Time That’s Out of Joint,” an essay on the quintessential revenge tragedy, Hamlet, notes that the revenger’s death ensures a return of society’s idealized vision of the future.2... (shrink)

Self-tracking-technologies can serve as a prominent example of how digital technologies put to test established practices, institutions, and structures of medicine and healthcare. While proponents emphasize the potentials, e.g., for individualized healthcare and new research data, opponents stress the risk that these technologies will reinforce gender-related inequalities. -/- While this has been made clear from—often intersectional—feminist perspectives since the introduction of such technologies, we aim to provide a queer-feminist perspective on self-tracking applications in healthcare by analyzing three concrete cases. In (...) this way, we want to show why such a perspective is helpful in assessing self-tracking technologies and how such a perspective might contribute to a queering of healthcare. -/- After a short introduction to self-tracking in healthcare and the corresponding risks of reproducing gender-related inequalities, we introduce queer bioethics as a methodology to examine structural discrimination and marginalization in bioethical research. We apply this framework in the analysis of three exemplary self-tracking applications from the areas of nutrition/fitness, reproductive health, and mental health. In the subsequent discussion of these results against the backdrop of already existing queer-sensitive technologies, we identify an equal access, a subversive design, an inclusive database, and a diversity-sensitive and discriminatory-critical definition of purposes as well as individualized usage possibilities as first possible starting points for a queering of self-tracking applications. Finally, we draw conclusions, how such a critical perspective on self-tracking applications might also contribute to a queering of the healthcare system at a structural level. (shrink)

Thinkers heavily indebted to Foucault—such as Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Jodi Melamed and Jasbir Puar—are at the fore of a contemporary interrogation of queerness and racialized empire. This paper critically surveys this terrain, differentiates several strands of it, and attempts a theoretical reframing such that we may be better equipped to gain new vantage on the central problematic. I argue that the current conviviality of queerness and empire is best understood not only through a univocal ‘homonationist’ lens, but (...) also requires situating in the context of multiple languages of civilizational superiority and liberal tolerance. In particular, it requires the deployment of arguments about the ‘benchmark of civilization,’ in which whole societies are ranked along a unilinear trajectory of development according to standards set by the most powerful among them. One relatively recent addition to the criteria of civilizational adjudication is the capacity of societies to ‘tolerate’ new forms of societal difference. In this case, I argue, the most important of these are the strange pairing of sexual and religious dispositifs. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather (...) than sui generis; (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations. (shrink)

This book aims to productively engage the pioneering work of Queer theorists and point toe way towards a new sociological Queer studies.

The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance: ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! [Here we are, and we're not leaving!]. This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder: ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [... and if they throw us out, we'll come right back!]. It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but genuinely (...) productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence. In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!", the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility. (shrink)

Queering Paradigms IVa: Insurgências queer ao Sul do equador, junto com o volume Queering Paradigms IV: South-North Dialogues on Queer Epistemologies, Embodiments and Activisms (Lewis et al. 2014), divulga de forma multilíngue pesquisas apresentadas no 4° Congresso Internacional Queering Paradigms (QP4), sediado no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Ambos os volumes compartilham o objetivo de analisar o status quo e os desafios para o futuro dos Estudos Queer a partir de uma perspectiva inter/multidisciplinar, concentrando-se sobre as relações entre os eixos Sul-Norte. (...) O presente livro oferece capítulos escritos em português e espanhol, línguas subalternas na academia global, visando a privilegiar vozes e conhecimentos do Sul. Os trabalhos reunidos neste volume insurgem contra a colonização epistemológica dos corpos que habitam o Sul global e apontam para os problemas que surgem quando a(s) Teoria(s) Queer do Norte são aplicadas sem adaptação a outros contextos. Além de violências epistemológicas, a falta de atenção ao que acontece ao sul do equador pode levar a uma paralização do debate queer. O convite que esses capítulos fazem é um desafio a olhar para onde não se costuma olhar e ouvir as vozes que não se costuma ouvir, de forma a devolver ao queer seu potencial de contestação. Queering Paradigms IVa: Insurgências queer ao Sul do equador, junto con el tomo Queering Paradigms IV: South-North Dialogues on Queer Epistemologies, Embodiments and Activisms (Lewis et al. 2014), difunde de forma multilingüe algunas de las investigaciones presentadas en el 4o Congreso Internacional Queering Paradigms (QP4), en Río de Janeiro, Brasil. Ambos tomos comparten el objetivo de analizar el estado actual y los desafíos para el futuro de los Estudios Queer desde una perspectiva inter/multidisciplinaria, concentrándose sobre las relaciones entre el eje Sur-Norte. El presente libro ofrece capítulos escritos en portugués y español, lenguas subalternas en la academia global, con la pretensión de privilegiar voces y conocimientos del Sur. Los trabajos reunidos en este tomo se insurgen contra la colonización epistemológica de los cuerpos que habitan el Sur global y apuntan a los problemas que surgen cuando la(s) Teoría(s) Queer del Norte son aplicadas sin adaptación a otros contextos. Además de las violencias epistemológicas, la falta de atención a lo que acontece al sur del Ecuador puede llevar a una paralización del debate queer. La propuesta de estos capítulos es un desafío a mirar para dónde no se suele mirar y a escuchar las voces que no se suelen escuchar, para devolverle al queer su potencial de contestación. (shrink)

Queer Impact and Practices brings together chapters arising from the third annual Queering Paradigms conference. Queer Theory is still evolving and extending the range of its enquiry. It maps out new territories via radical contestations of the categories of gender and sexuality. This approach de-centers assumptions of heteronormativity, but at the same time critiques a new homonormativity. This book incorporates the work of queer theorists and queer activists who are seeking new boundaries to cross as well as new disciplines and (...) social relations to queer. The sections of this book interrogate the impact of Queer Theory in studies of culture, nationalism, ethnography, linguistics, psychology, intimacy and activism. Chapters address contemporary theorizing about gay citizenship and 'homonationalism' as well as a critique of gay visibility. Other topics include the symbolics of queer subversion and transgression in performers who transgress gender and sexuality codes. Queer activists extend their analysis into the world of punk, Buddhist religious teaching and Native Studies. This book demonstrates that Queer Theory, as well as being a disposition, is now deployed by many researchers as a legitimate framework of analysis that questions many of the categories, constructs and relationships we encounter in twenty-first century society." -- Publisher's information. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between feminist studies of motherhood and queer theory, Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood articulates a provocative philosophy of queer kinship that need not be rooted in lesbian or gay sexual identities. Working from an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates feminist philosophy and queer, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories, Shelley M. Park offers a powerful critique of an ideology she terms monomaternalism. Despite widespread cultural insistence that every child should have one—and only one—“real” mother, many contemporary family constellations do not (...) fit this mandate. Park highlights the negative consequences of this ideology and demonstrates how families created through open adoption, same-sex parenting, divorce, and plural marriage can be sites of resistance. Drawing from personal experiences as both an adoptive and a biological mother and juxtaposing these autobiographical reflections with critical readings of cultural texts representing multi-mother families, Park advocates a new understanding of postmodern families as potentially queer coalitional assemblages held together by a mixture of affection and critical reflection premised on difference. (shrink)

Ideal for courses in philosophy and gender, sexuality, race and disability studies, Queering Philosophy provides a critical introduction to and engagement with current conversations and emerging themes at the nexus of queer theory and philosophy. This accessible and important book advances a queer feminist critique.

The perceptibility and intelligibility of queer students and teachers have been a central theme in queer politics in education. Can queer teachers be ‘out’ to their colleagues and students? Can queer relationships be seen at the school prom? Can queerness be seen and heard? At the same time, perceptibility and intelligibility are by no means uncontested political goals. This paper analyzes different school initiatives by and/or for queer students and asks how political these initiatives are from the perspective of (...) Jacques Rancière's conception of politics. In particular, it employs Rancière's work on the ‘distribution of the sensible’ (partage du sensible) to analyze conditions of visibility and sayability and the political risks and benefits that gaining visibility and sayability carries for queer students and teachers. The paper brings Rancière's distinction between identification and subjectification into conversation with Judith Butler's work on the governing of intelligibility by social norms, and the promise of ‘insurrectionary speech’. Finally, Rancière's work on the role of allies in political interventions that shift the distribution of the sensible provides a fresh reading of Gay‐Straight Alliances in schools and the work of queer allies more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article takes Judith Butler’s epistemological problem of “framing” alongside Dana S. Belu’s notion of “reproductive enframing” to analyze whose bodies lie outside the borders of who is considered the appropriate reproductive citizen. Are all bodies subject to reproductive enframing under a totalizing technological ideology that Martin Heidegger refers to as Gestell? Or, does Belu’s notion of “partial enframing” allow a space to queer, or upset, our current understanding of such ideology? By queering the way that we currently view (...) assisted reproductive technology, can we widen the frame or cross its borders? In this article, I am primarily concerned with the necessity to queer French reproductive policy, though the questions I raise can be extended to any critiques of ART. (shrink)

We appear to attribute value properties to things: “That was an evil thing to do,” someone says - it apparently has the property, the feature, the quality, of being evil; “This is a beautiful painting,” someone else says; and so forth. But how can there be value properties in the world that science depicts: a world of particles, of atoms and the void (or something like that)? “Value properties are queer,” declared J.L. Mackie. Focusing on the arts, two obvious attempts (...) at defence suggest themselves: science is not an adequate guide to the fundamental nature of reality; or it is and we can fit value properties into a scientific worldview. In this paper, I shall pursue a third line of defence, which is only slightly less obvious and far less demanding to pursue in detail: many of us are interested in knowing about reality, such as what is going on in another country, but it is difficult to take in presentations of reality which lack the artist’s touch, so it is rational for us to turn to the arts as sources of knowledge. (Warning: this is way behind McDowell and Cornell Realists, but it is there: in the club!). (shrink)

“Doing Gender,” Candance West and Don Zimmerman’s famous 1987 article, has become a folk concept—a trope or commonsense resource within the sociology of gender. Yet at the same time, most gender scholars overlook its ethnomethodological premise, visible in both poststructuralist misunderstandings of its argument outside the discipline of sociology and what I term a realist misunderstanding of it in the study of structures and identities within the discipline. Reading West and Zimmerman queerly while clarifying ethnomethodology’s ontology, I refocus attention for (...) critical scholarship on ethnomethodology’s analytic sensibilities for research on gender, race, and sexuality, among other embodiments. Specifically, ethnomethodology reframes a vision of actors as relational, practical actors; repositions gender as accountable, jointly produced social relations, not individual identity; and foregrounds resistance in addition to conformity. Hence, my gender (race/class/sexuality) is not mine; it is ours. Ethnomethodology’s ontological shift in temporality to reality-in-production enables interpretive-materialism: a queer, anti-racist, intersectional sociology that is future-facing and in motion. (shrink)

This book investigates the argument from queerness against moral realism, famously put forward by J. L. Mackie in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). The book can be divided into two parts. The first part, roughly comprising chapters 1 and 2, gives a critical overview of Mackie’s metaethics. In chapter 1 it is suggested that the argument from queerness is the only argument that poses a serious threat to moral realism. A partial defense of this idea is offered (...) in chapter 2 via a discussion of Mackie’s argument from relativity, which is concluded to fail for reasons that generalize to other influential arguments against moral realism. Chapter 2 also explores Mackie’s moral semantics at length. The key notion of authoritative prescriptivity is analyzed, and a new interpretation of Mackie’s error theory is defended. In the second part, consisting roughly of chapters 3 and 4, the argument from queerness is taken apart and put back together, resulting in several different versions. Chapter 3 discusses three different supervenience-related arguments, all of which are found to be unpersuasive. Chapter 4 develops two different versions of the core argument from queerness, focusing on authoritative prescriptivity. A total of thirteen objections are discussed and rejected. It is concluded that the two arguments do indeed refute the targeted versions of moral realism. Finally, in chapter 5 the entire discussion is briefly summarized. (shrink)

The timeline of the Anthropocene – a geological epoch that Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer say began in the late 18th century with the invention of the steam engine – seems like a brief and inconsequential blip, against the time scales embodied by the microbial communities. Wolbachia bacteria predate Anthropos by some 150 million years, and will likely outlast us. Wolbachia bacteria are worthy of their own geological epoch because they offer a fresh vantage point on one of the most (...) pressing ethical questions of our time: ‘How should we love in a time of extinction?’ Narratives about the Wolbachiacene have the potential to disrupt the overwhelming stories of tragedy orbiting around Anthropos, with disquieting and generative accounts of interspecies romance. Wolbachia often perform queer tricks inside their invertebrate hosts. In some host species these bacteria induce parthenogenesis – completely eliminating males from the population. Wolbachia can also transform genetic males into reproductively viable females. (shrink)

There is increasing resistance to gendering in contemporary society, seen in gender-neutral childrearing and pronouns, expansion of legal sex categories and intersex rights, and queer and genderqueer movements. This timely book considers the utopian question of whether, and how, gender could be eradicated and how we might understand identity and relationships without it. It considers the implications of arguments from 'new materialism' about the malleability of biological sex, and of queer theory and gender deconstruction, for social change and political practice. (...) The original theoretical and practical argument is for an androgynous, reciprocal ethic or way of being in the world that transcends both sex/gender and some of the debates plaguing gender studies. It takes inspiration from real-world queer and post-gender practices, for example by being written using gender-neutral pronouns, and also considers the reality of implementing such an ethic in a highly gendered world, especially in cross-cultural contexts. (shrink)