Advanced Queer Theory: The Intimacy of Precarity

3 units

This seminar will use precarity to produce a map of some trends in queer theory today in order to outline the stakes of this current intellectual work and ask how we can use this work to rethink sexuality. In outlining the current stakes of precarity, this seminar will focus on two main threads of queer theory--queer of color critique and public feelings because both of these spaces have enabled complex theoretical and political discussions centered around precarity and both also introduce historical framings of queer theory. By orienting their contributions to queer studies around precarity, these scholars are asking both how one lives with this condition and what formations of knowledge have produced these conditions of liminality and vulnerability. Overall, this emphasis on precarity has made certain tensions surrounding the place of difference within queer theory visible and highlighted the role of structures, particularly neoliberalism, which is a particular nexus of collusion between the state and formations of capital, over the individual.