English 2610

GLBT and Queer Theory Worksheet

 

  1. What critiques did African-American and lesbian critics make of academic feminism in the 1980s?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What was lesbian feminism, and what was its relationship to “classic feminism”? (141).

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Explain Adrienne Rich’s concept of the lesbian continuum? (141-42).

 

 

 

 

 

  1.  How did the idea of the lesbian continuum de-sexualize lesbianism?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Why does Zimmerman accuse lesbian criticism of being essentialist (see 142)?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What does Barry mean when he says “The key underlying question, for anyone choosing between these two possible alignments [feminist lesbianism and queer theory], is whether it is gender or sexuality which is the more fundamental in personal identity” (143))?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. How is queer theory different from feminist lesbianism

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What binaries does queer theory deconstruct or invert? (143-44).

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Why does Barry say that Judith Butler suggests that “the concept of homosexuality is itself part of homophobic (anti-gay) discourse” (144)?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Explain Butler’s postmodern notion of subjectivity in which “gender identities are ‘a kind of impersonation and approximation...a kind of imitation for which there is no original’” (qtd. in Barry 145).

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What does Barry mean when he says that thinking of gender identity as performance “opens the way to a ‘postmodernist’ notion of identity as a constant switching among a range of different roles and positions drawn from a kind of limitless data bank of potentialities”? (145).

 

 

 

 

 

  1. What contribution do Eve Sedgewick’s ideas about “‘coming out of the closet’” make to the queer theory arguing for the “fluidity of identity”? (145).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Read and explain, in your own words, the paragraph that begins “The consequences...” and ends “by some aspect of their situation” (146).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Eve Sedgewick’s Between Men

1.What is “desire,” and what is its role in literary texts?

 

 

 

 

 

2. What have Lacan and Freud taught us about desire, and how can we use that      knowledge to elaborate upon the workings of a text?

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. What does queer theory have to contribute to our understanding of the workings of          desire in a text?

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. What does Sedgewick’s Between Men contribute to our repertoire of tools for    talking about desire in texts?

 

 

 

 

 

5. What definition of “desire” is Sedgewick using in her essay? Be detailed in your   explication of her definition of desire (see second full paragraph on page 2435).

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. What does Sedgewick mean when she says that the “emerging pattern of male friendship, mentorship, entitlement, rivalry, and hetero- and homosexuality was in an intimate and shifting relation to class; and that no element of that pattern can be understood outside of its relation to women and the gender system as a whole” (2435).

 

 

 

 

 

7. Why does Sedgewick say that “the phrase “homosocial desire” is a kind of oxymoron”? (2435). Be specific and relate your answer to her statement that the term homosocial desire” “is applied to such activities as ‘male bonding,’ which may, as in our society, be characterized by intense homophobia, fear and hatred of homosexuality” (2435).

 

 

 

 

 

8. How is the female homosocial realm different, according to Sedgewick, from the male homosocial realm?

 

 

 

 

 

9. Explain, in your own words, the following assertions: “writing about patriarchal structures suggests that ‘obligatory heterosexuality’ is built into male-dominated kinship systems, or that homophobia is a necessary consequence of such patriarchal institutions as heterosexual marriage. Clearly, however convenient it might be to group together all the bonds that link males to males, and by which males enhance the status of males—usefully symmetrical as it would be, that grouping meets with a prohibitive structural obstacle. From the vantage point of our own society, at any rate, it has apparently been impossible to imagine a form of patriarchy that was not homophobic” (2437).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. What culture, according to Sedgewick, did not have a rupture between homosexual relationships and patriarchal homosocial bonds?

 

 

 

 

 

11. What, according to Sedgewick (by way of Calland), is the nature of bonds between men in a patriarchal culture?  What are the ties that tie men together?

 

 

 

 

 

12. Why should the ties of shared power in a patriarchy prevent men from expressing sexual desire for one another?  What role, according to Sedgewick (by way of Calland), do women play in the negotiation, by men in a patriarchy, of homosocial bonds?

 

 

 

 

 

13. Why /how would homosexual relationships compromise homosocial bonds in cultures in which homosocial bonds are founded upon the domination and/or exchange of women?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. How do class and/or race complicate the structures of European-Anglo male homo-social bonds?

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Explain the rape of Fleur in terms of homosocial theory. Explain Joe’s competition with Slemmons in terms of homosocial theory, and explain Gunn’s misinterpretation, according to Gunn Allen, of the Yellow Woman story in terms of homosocial theory.