ABSTRACT
One of queer theory's most influential claims is that sexuality delineates an epistemic rather than a primarily erotic space in western contexts. Queer theory challenges two prevailing assumptions about sexuality in Western contexts: sexuality is a stable, fixed part of innate human nature and sexual identities and acts exist prior to and independent of the need to know and catalogue them as such. Thinking queerly about sexuality denaturalizes sexual identities and acts and the presumed inevitability of connections between them. This chapter discusses the meaning and significance of queer epistemology by focusing on the following themes: sexuality as a problem for truth, queer epistemology and self-knowledge, queer epistemologies and standpoint, and queer and crip epistemologies. It highlights some of the questions and problems a queer epistemology strives to address, as well as some of the forms of epistemic injustice that a queer epistemic framework reveals and attempts to undo.
