School of Letters, Art and Media Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia DOCTORAL QUEER THEORY READING GROUP
The Queer Theory Reading Group at the University of Sydney seeks to promote a supportive and mutual learning environment for doctoral candidates working in the humanities. We engage in weekly scholarly discussions focused on canonical and contemporary works in queer theory. All the readings are pre-­‐assigned, selected by current doctoral candidates to offer both new and established scholars in queer theory a focused point for discussion. While each semester of the reading group features a different theme, the overall endeavour of the group is to interrogate the term ‘queer’. Refusing to reduce or reify the term, we want to explore the ways in which queer has been mobilised, and the ways in which it can be mobilised, to reconsider both contemporary and historical issues relating to, among other things, gender, sex, sexuality, race, identity, subjectivity and politics. 2016 Steering Group
Ben Bolton |[email protected] Matthew Clarke | [email protected] Jaya Keaney | [email protected] Paul Kelaita | [email protected] Mark Peart | [email protected] Annalise Pippard | [email protected] Academic Sponsor
Professor Annamarie Jagose Image: Tangerine (2015) Still Semester 1, 2016 Program
The Way We Argue Now: Queer Theory’s Current Debates
Like all academic domains, queer theory is not without its disagreements. And contrary to the popular image of the bookish academic as a quiet, retiring type, these disagreements, in print and in person, are often deeply felt and fiercely debated. Perhaps all the more so because queer theory is unique in its definitional openness, interdisciplinarity, and political commitments. This semester we take as our focus the internal debates that are currently preoccupying queer theory. At stake in each of these debates is what we believe queer theory can and should do; what it means to want to live and write politically. This is immediately relevant to us, as doctoral candidates, as we figure out our intellectual and political attachments and academic genealogies. Over ten weeks, we look at three key debates: the antisocial thesis, or political optimism versus the death drive; the question of whether or not sexuality remains at the definitional centre of queer theory; and the recent suggestion that we might try to do queer theory without such a totalising claim to antinormativity. For each debate we will read both recent publications and texts from the earlier stages of queer theory’s almost thirty-­‐year history. A striking similarity across all of these debates is the frequent return to the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in particular, Epistemology of the Closet, which is widely considered one of queer theory’s founding texts. We begin our program, then, by reading the introduction to this landmark book, “Axiomatic,” as a way to frame the debates that follow. This ordering may also allow those who are not overly familiar with queer theory ease of entry. For the purposes of interdisciplinary inclusiveness, we have chosen pieces that are apposite to a number of disciplines, avoiding works that require too specialised a knowledge in one particular area. As a doctoral reading group, one of our aims is to think about the ways in which queer theoretical scholarship may pertain to our own areas of research. We encourage discussion that highlights the crossovers between theory work and ours. Keywords: affect, antinormativity, antisocial, animal, attachment, belonging, the closet, death drive, disability, feelings, feminism, futurity, human, identity, identification, intimacy, liberalism, nation, negativity, norms, neoliberalism, optimism, psychoanalysis, politics, queer theory, race, representation, sex, sexuality, subcultures, sociality, subjectivity, sex, trans, utopia. 2 Dates
Session one 9 March 2016 Session six 20 April 2016 Session two 16 March 2016 Session seven 27 April 2016 Session three 23 March 2016 Session eight 4 May 2016 Session four 6 April 2016 Session nine 11 May 2016 Session five 13 April 2016 Session ten 18 May 2016 Time
Wednesday 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Location
Rogers Room N397, John Woolley Building A20 Preparation In order to facilitate rich and open discussion the steering group encourages all participants to bring with them at least one question or difficulty they have with each week’s reading. No question will be considered too banal or too simple; ultimately the purpose of the group is to learn together. Acknowledgement of Country We, the Steering Group, acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet – the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. It is upon their ancestral lands that the University of Sydney is built. As we share our own knowledge, learning, and research practices may we also pay respect to the knowledge embedded and articulated within the Aboriginal Custodianship of Country. 3 INTRODUCTION: Back to the Beginning Session one | 9 March REQUIRED READING ● Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. “Introduction: Axiomatic.” In Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1990. 1–63. OPTIONAL READING ● Judith Butler. “Preface (1999).” In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, [1990] 2006. vii–xxviii ● Karen Tongson. “Queer Fundamentalism.” Social Text 32.4 (2014): 117–123 SECTION ONE: Political Optimism vs the Death Drive
Session two |16 March REQUIRED READING ● Lee Edelman. “No Future.” In No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004. 111–154. OPTIONAL READING ● Robert L. Caserio, Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam, Jose Esteban Munoz and Tim Dean. “The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory.” PMLA 121.3 (2006): 819–828. http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/events/Seminars/Feminist/The%2
0Antisocial%20Thesis%20in%20Queer%20Theory%20(2006).pdf ● Leo Bersani. “Is the Rectum a Grave?” In AIDS: Cultural Analysis / Cultural Activism. Ed. Douglas Crimp. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988. 197–222. Session three | 23 March REQUIRED READING ● Michael D. Snediker. “Queer Optimism.” Postmodern Culture 16.3 (2006). OPTIONAL READING ● Jose Esteban Munoz. “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism.” In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York and London: New York University Press, 2009. 19–32. 4 Session four | 6 April REQUIRED READING ● Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman. “Preface” and “Sex Without Optimism.” In Sex, or the Unbearable. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014. vii–34. OPTIONAL READING ● Jose Esteban Munoz. “ Living the Wrong Life Otherwise” (2013), a short article that connects his work to Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism: http://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/living-­‐the-­‐wrong-­‐life-­‐otherwise/ OPTIONAL VIDEO ● José Muñoz. “Queer Utopianism and Cruel Optimism”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHLxmCe4GpI SECTION TWO: What’s Sex Got To Do With It? Session five | 13 April REQUIRED READING ● Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. “Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes.” South Atlantic Quarterly 106.3 (2007): 625–42. OPTIONAL READING ● Ann Cvetkovich. “Public Feelings.” South Atlantic Quarterly 106.3 (2007): 459–68. ● Robyn Wiegman. “The Times We’re In: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative Turn’. Feminist Theory 15.1 (2014): 4–25. Session six | 20 April REQUIRED READING ● Jasbir Puar. “Intimate Control, Infinite Detention: Rereading the Lawrence Case.” In Terrorist Assemblages. Durham and London: Duke University Press (2007): 114–65. OPTIONAL READING ● David Eng. “Introduction: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy.” In The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy. Durham and London: Duke University Press (2010): 1-­‐22. 5 Session seven | 27 April REQUIRED READING ● Myra Hird. “Animal Trans.” Queering the Non/Human. Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird (eds). Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate. (2008): 227–48. OPTIONAL READING ● Nicole Seymour. “Introduction: Locating Queer Ecologies”. Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy and the Queer Ecological Imagination. Illinois: University of Illinois Press (2013): 1–34. ● Eva Hayward and Mel Y. Chen. “Tranimacies: An Interview with Mel Y. Chen” Transgender Studies Quarterly. 2.2 (2015): 317–23. SECTION THREE: Queer Theory Without Antinormativity?
Session eight | 4 May REQUIRED READING ● Robyn Wiegman and Elizabeth A. Wilson. “Introduction: Antinormativity’s Queer Conventions.” Differences 26.1 (2015): 1–25. OPTIONAL READING ● Janet R. Jakobsen. “Queer Is? Queer Does? Normativity and the Problem of Resistance.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4.4 (1998): 511–536 ● Annamarie Jagose. “The Trouble with Antinormativity.” Differences 26.1 (2015): 26–
47. Session nine | 11 May REQUIRED READING ● Povinelli, Elizabeth A. “Transgender Creeks and the Three Figures of Power in Late Liberalism.” Differences 26.1 (2015): 168–87. OPTIONAL READING ● Erica R. Edwards. “Sex after the Black Normal.” Differences 26.1 (2015): 141–67. ● Lauren Berlant and Earl McCabe. “Depressive Realism: An Interview with Lauren Berlant.” Hypocrite Reader: http://hypocritereader.com/5/depressive-­‐realism. (In particular the short section relating to norms.) 6 Session ten | 18 May REQUIRED READING ● Jack Halberstam. “Straight Eye For the Queer Theorist – A Review of ‘Queer Theory Without Antinormativity’” Bully Bloggers, September 12, 2015. https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/straight-­‐eye-­‐for-­‐the-­‐queer-­‐
theorist-­‐a-­‐review-­‐of-­‐queer-­‐theory-­‐without-­‐antinormativity-­‐by-­‐jack-­‐halberstam/. ● Robyn Wiegman. “Eve’s Triangles, or Queer Studies Beside Itself.” Differences 26. 1 (2015): 48–73. OPTIONAL READING ● Lisa Duggan. “Queer Complacency without Empire.” Bully Bloggers, September 22, 2015. https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/queer-­‐complacency-­‐
without-­‐empire/. OPTIONAL VIDEO ● Siobhan B. Somerville.“Feminism, Queer Theory and the Racial Closet.” The Honoring Eve Symposium: Feminism and Queer Theory. Boston University. Watch from 53 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNLrdvxTWwk&list=PLBV6X10gsVCo4f6UzUp
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