Theoretical Overview: Queer Theory

Abstract

Queer theory critically examines the way power and institution legitimize certain forms of expression of sexuality and gender. From the late 18th century within Western contexts comes the birth of modern sexual categories such as homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality. This chapter of theoretical overview begins with the invention of ‘queer’ or ‘non-normative’ sexuality that originated with sexologists, biologists, and other scientific realms of thought. Disseminated transnationally via colonialism or psychological and cultural exchange to places such as Mainland China, the idea eventually evolved into the medicalization of sexuality outside of just the European context. Conceptually, the works of philosophers such as Foucault frame the 19th-century birth of the queer identity (as opposed to only the practice of sexual acts) as the precursor for queer theory. This chapter notes that after the work of Black women, feminists of color, and the gay rights movement in the West, alongside a shift to postcolonial philosophy, intersectionality became a key point in queer theory and was acknowledged to be essential rather than a hindrance. Queer theory and its intersectional aspects (e.g., race, class, and gender) after the 1990s became a critical term within academia, in which it is often employed to analyze and deconstruct identity and power – including capitalist modernity and queer liberalism. This chapter concludes by thinking about whether queer theory is utilized for its intended intersectional potentiality in different cultures' scopes of sexuality and in contemporary discussions of literature and social justice against a broader neoliberal backdrop.