Overview

This interdisciplinary volume of thirty original essays engages with four key concerns of queer theoretical work - identity, discourse, normativity and relationality. The terms ’queer’ and ’theory’ are put under interrogation by a combination of distinguished and emerging scholars from a wide range of international locations, in an effort to map the relations and disjunctions between them. These contributors are especially attendant to the many theoretical discourses intersecting with queer theory, including feminist theory, LGBT studies, postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis, disability studies, Marxism, poststructuralism, critical race studies and posthumanism, to name a few. This Companion provides an up to the minute snapshot of queer scholarship from the past two decades and identifies many current directions queer theorizing is taking, while also signposting several fruitful avenues for future research. This book is both an invaluable and authoritative resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom.

Full Product Details

9780754671350

Table of Contents

Reviews

'This collection ambitiously convokes established and emerging scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines to critically address, in new and original ways, the field of queer theory. Divided into major categories of queer concern: identity, discourse, normativity, and relationality, the essays chart genealogies, track changes, and pose questions about the travels of this elusive term, the work it does, and the challenges it faces.' Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA 'Far more than a retrospective reference work, this indispensable collection of essays does more than reassess most of the familiar themes in queer theory's development over the past two decades. It takes the field in provocative new directions, suggesting many lines other than race, class, sexuality, and gender along which a critical queerness can perform its perversely enlightening operations.' Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA 'Those invigorated by the multiple facets and faces of queerness will welcome this handy, heady, interdisciplinary tome... Recommended.' Choice 'The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is a solid collection providing an overview of the past, present and future applications of queer theory. The Companion confidently lives up to its name as a research companion offering useful theories and methodologies for the reader to utilise queer theory in their own work... an absolute pleasure to read...' M/C Reviews Culture & Media '... the collection introduces some exciting new ideas in relatively unexplored terrain... the contributors of this volume are cunning linguists who deliver intelligent appreciations and deprecations of the strangeness of language, discourses and social phenomena. In combination, they seem to offer a sharp new 'voice' for the field. Their writing is in general witty, cheeky, at times laugh-out-loud funny, shocking, sexy and always academic enough to challenge general readers... The book is essential reading fo

'This collection ambitiously convokes established and emerging scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines to critically address, in new and original ways, the field of queer theory. Divided into major categories of queer concern: identity, discourse, normativity, and relationality, the essays chart genealogies, track changes, and pose questions about the travels of this elusive term, the work it does, and the challenges it faces.' Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA 'Far more than a retrospective reference work, this indispensable collection of essays does more than reassess most of the familiar themes in queer theory's development over the past two decades. It takes the field in provocative new directions, suggesting many lines other than race, class, sexuality, and gender along which a critical queerness can perform its perversely enlightening operations.' Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA 'Those invigorated by the multiple facets and faces of queerness will welcome this handy, heady, interdisciplinary tome... Recommended.' Choice 'The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is a solid collection providing an overview of the past, present and future applications of queer theory. The Companion confidently lives up to its name as a research companion offering useful theories and methodologies for the reader to utilise queer theory in their own work... an absolute pleasure to read...' M/C Reviews Culture & Media '... the collection introduces some exciting new ideas in relatively unexplored terrain... the contributors of this volume are cunning linguists who deliver intelligent appreciations and deprecations of the strangeness of language, discourses and social phenomena. In combination, they seem to offer a sharp new 'voice' for the field. Their writing is in general witty, cheeky, at times laugh-out-loud funny, shocking, sexy and always academic enough to challenge general readers... The book is essential reading for those looking for information beyond the usual Queer Theory 101 and who have not already exhausted the reading lists for its key contributors. It offers many leads for future theoretical explorations in both official research projects and one's own private personal ponderings. Importantly, it is heavy enough to throw at those still claiming Queer Theory has not progressed since Butler.' Culture, Health & Sexuality 'The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue creates a mosaic of voices from a wide range of disciplines that do not necessarily speak directly to one another, nor are predicated on the same theoretical slopes... Giffney does not simply acknowledge but enthusiastically embraces the contradictions and inaccuracies in the multiple approaches that fall under the rubric of queer theory, celebrating its slipperiness and resistance to definition while noting that it has somehow acquired a past and an institutionalised present... The volume contains fascinating chapters where the authors used queer concepts to interrogate the dominant cultural discourses within fields as diverse as archaeology and psychology... provides a compelling example of how normativity guides such supposedly scientific interpretations... We found some of the intersectionalities particularly inspiring and enlightening, especially Raimondo's 'queer reading of the down low controversy [that] offers important insight into the politics of normalization that can play out even in well-intentioned efforts to acknowledge diversity'... the breadth and range of the chapters collectively provide a bricolage of approaches that have been developed in response to queer studies from the 1990s onwards... One of the principal strengths of the book is the refusal to exclude critical and contradictory voices, which seems to be in line with the anti-essentialist, even messy and unruly nature of queer theory.' Gender and Education 'Ashgate's Research Companions are designed specifically for scholars and graduate students. This one presents a sophisticated and thorough state-of-the-field in which the boundaries and definitions of queer are intensely negotiated... The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is essential for research libraries supporting graduate programs and/or emphasis in gender, queer and women's studies... A provocative snapshot of the current wide-ranging state of queer studies, this necessarily slippery set of essays will whet the interest of any serious established or budding queer theorist.' Feminist Collections 'This is an exciting collection and would be useful as a resource for teaching, as well as for what it offers experienced scholars.' Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory '... the Companion is a brilliantly edited, excitingly diverse collection... thematic anthologies are rarely of such quality, and there is much to learn from paying attention to this Research Companion's structure as well as to its contents.' Julian Carter (California College of the Arts), Committee of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Newsletter

'This collection ambitiously convokes established and emerging scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines to critically address, in new and original ways, the field of queer theory. Divided into major categories of queer concern: identity, discourse, normativity, and relationality, the essays chart genealogies, track changes, and pose questions about the travels of this elusive term, the work it does, and the challenges it faces.' Carla Freccero, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA 'Far more than a retrospective reference work, this indispensable collection of essays does more than reassess most of the familiar themes in queer theory’s development over the past two decades. It takes the field in provocative new directions, suggesting many lines other than race, class, sexuality, and gender along which a critical queerness can perform its perversely enlightening operations.' Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA 'Those invigorated by the multiple facets and faces of queerness will welcome this handy, heady, interdisciplinary tome... Recommended.' Choice 'The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory is a solid collection providing an overview of the past, present and future applications of queer theory. The Companion confidently lives up to its name as a research companion offering useful theories and methodologies for the reader to utilise queer theory in their own work... an absolute pleasure to read...' M/C Reviews Culture & Media '... the collection introduces some exciting new ideas in relatively unexplored terrain... the contributors of this volume are cunning linguists who deliver intelligent appreciations and deprecations of the strangeness of language, discourses and social phenomena. In combination, they seem to offer a sharp new ’voice’ for the field. Their writing is in general witty, cheeky, at times laugh-out-loud funny, shocking, sexy and always academic enough to challenge general readers... The book is essential reading fo

Author Information

Noreen Giffney is the series editor of Queer Interventions at Ashgate Publishing. Her research focuses on queer theory, feminist theory, psychoanalysis, posthumanism and cultural studies. She is undertaking clinical training in psychoanalysis at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Michael O'Rourke is the series editor of Queer Interventions at Ashgate Publishing. His research concentrates on the intersections between queer theory and Continental philosophy, especially Derrida, Delueze and Guattari, Ranciere, Foucault, Irigaray, Caputo and Nancy. Noreen Giffney, Calvin Thomas, Iain Morland, Jonathan Alexander, Karen Yescavage, Linda Garber, Bobby Noble, Annabelle Willox, Patricia MacCormack, Todd R. Ramlow, Meredith Raimondo, Jon Binnie, Garrett P.J. Epp, Jayne Caudwell, Margot Gayle Backus, Song Hwee Lim, Thomas A. Dowson, Leslie J. Moran, Peter Hegarty, Kathryn Conrad, Myra J. Hird, David V. Ruffolo, Sasha Roseneil, Steven F. Kruger, Nikki Sullivan, E. Patrick Johnson, 'Mair Rigby, Dinesh Wadiwel, Tamsin Wilton.

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