ABSTRACT
The title of this volume, Smearing the Queer, represents not only a childhood game based on a premise of antigay violence, but a larger ideology that positions gay male sexuality as something to be vio lated in a punitive fashion, instructive in its message communicated and lesson learned. In addition, the smeared queer is situated on a border of sex and disease, embodied by a resistance to taxonomy, and elusive in a fluidity of performances, identities, and representa tions. The persistence of homophobia and heterosexism throughout facets of health science converge at the two primary points of treat ment and research as vehicles for smearing the queer both literally and figuratively. Through an emphasis on the body and its constitu ent parts, health sciences work as a cultural practice to construct queer bodies and the social forces that govern them, while at the same time being confounded by a queer resistance that transgresses scientific claims to order and authority.
