#queer ethnographies

[queerethnographies]

"...civil rights do not change the social order in dramatic ways: they change only the privileges of the group asserting those rights. Civil rights strategies do not challenge the moral and antisexual underpinnings of homophobia, because homophobia does not originate in our lack of full civil equality. Rather, homophobia arises from the nature and construction of the political, legal, economic, sexual, racial and family systems within which we live."

-Cohen, Cathy J. ""Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens", p. 442-443

[queerethnographies]

"If everyone is queer, then no one is—and while this is exactly the point queer theorists want to make, reducing the term’s pejorative sting by universalizing the meaning of queer also depletes its explanatory power. Used to refer to any departure from the norm, the term queer obscures why Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena,and Sakia Gunn were murdered for being queer, while people who excluded gay groups from city parades applauded New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in drag."

Marcus, Sharon. "Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay."  196-197.

[queerethnographies]

Even more challenging for any history of modern homosexuality is the extent to which sexuality, as Jonathan Goldberg asserts, is experienced as that which is unconscious, unknowable, and cannot be named with any specificity.

Marcus, Sharon. "Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay." Signs 31 (2005): 191-218. 

[queerethnographies]

Using the framework of queer theory in which heteronormativity is identified as a system of regulation and normalization, some queer activists map the power and entitlement of normative heterosexuality onto the bodies of all heterosexuals. Further, these activists naively characterize all those who exist under the category of "queer" as powerless. Thus, in the process of conceptualizing a decentered identity of queerness, meant to embrace all those who stand on the outside of heteronormativity, a monolithic understanding of heterosexuality and queerness has come to dominate the political imagination and actions of many queer activists.

Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” p 448

[queerethnographies]

"Like others before - and no doubt after - me, I am concerned that, treated as a philosophical system rather than an intellectual tool, queer theory serves once again to silence what deconstruction calls the other. You know, most of us."

- Linda Garber, One Step Global, Two Steps Back? Race, Gender and Queer Studies (GLQ, 126-127)

[queerethnographies]

Queer has become a compact alternative to lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender, but it also emphasizes affinity and solidarity over identity.

Sharon Marcus, "Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay," pg. 196

[queerethnographies]

An ethical attachment to others insists that we cannot be the center of the world or act unilaterally on its behalf. It demands a world in which we must sometimes relinquish not only our epistemological but also our political certitude. Suffice it to say that to appreciate "what's queer about queer studies now" is to embrace such a critical perspective and to honor such an ethics of humility.

Eng, David, Halberstam, Jack, and Muñoz, José / "What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?" / 15

[queerethnographies]

"That gay identity, which starts with freedom from the family, has led us so inexorably and vehemently back to the institution of same-sex marriage ironically symptomizes this confusion. It is through marriage that gay people fully become individuals, and this discourse of individualism is precisely the point at which sexual regulation and gay 'liberation' meet."

David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz, What's Queer About Queer Studies Now? (2005)