ABSTRACT

Queer is a complex term having multiple origins and meanings; in the context of feminism it most commonly refers to the deconstruction by literary critics, artists and, increasingly, social scientists, working in a postmodern or post-structuralist framework, of oppressive binarisms, especially those related to gender, sexuality and the sex-gender system. Historically, it also reflects a strategic decision by some gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender activists to appropriate and redeploy a derogatory epithet in service of an anti-heterosexist political agenda and to reflect, celebrate and reproduce in language lived experiences of gender, sexuality and other axes of power and difference which are seen, from a queer perspective, to be much more diverse, fluid, fragmented and unstable than binary labels allow. Queer theory still tends very much to employ deconstructivist methods of analysis and to be informed by postmodern and/or post-structuralist modes of thought.