ABSTRACT
Academic institutions, well, English departments, to be specific, are offering jobs; publishers and journals are soliciting manuscripts. After decades of scrounging for ways to support research and writing, an unprecedented number of lesbian and gay scholars now can hope to combine visibility, intellectual recognition and material support. Lesbian and gay studies, the new kid on the academic block, has a split personality, appearing by day as Queer Theory, sporting a stylish postmodern vocabulary and a huge bibliography, and by night as Queer Nation, shouting confrontational slogans and struggling to create a militant, multicultural politics. The panel seemed to be promoting a queer liberal pluralism, a politics each panelist would individually reject as an uncritical fantasy. Militant, multicultural, queer politics stands in angry opposition to business as usual, talking not about domestic partnership and family diversity, but about Asian fags, Chicana butches, butt-fucking, dental dams, and bashing back.
