ABSTRACT
Modern scholars and popular purveyors of the term ‘queer’ agree that its use is an alternative reinterpretation of standard categories in active response to the standards and customs of social non-inclusion, marginalization and discrimination. Queer as a concept stems from the gay and lesbian movements for equality that reclaimed ‘queer’ from being a derogatory label, symbolically repositioning the term for positive resistance against normative exclusion. This chapter traces the beginnings of queer theory and its journey through the public into the academic realms. It focuses on the changes that have taken place as queer theory has been integrated into the academic disciplines. The chapter argues that queer theory: (1) reflects, for many theorists, their disappointment with the strategies and outcomes of the resistance movements of the 1960s; (2) evolved from the identity positions in which gay and lesbian studies have been grounded to the postmodern and post-structuralist positions that contend that identity, as an ‘essentialist’ category, constrains rather than enables the analysis of gender and sexuality; and (3) followed the same paths as past social movements into the academy, transforming from a populist alliance with an activist agenda into the more individualized and ego-centred realms of university halls and classrooms.
