Queer Theory
Media
Part of Queer Theory
- Title
- Queer Theory
- extracted text
-
Queer Theory
MARTIN F. MANALANSAN
Abstract
Queer theory and ethnography have a productive relationship. Queer theory has
questioned the stability of nonnormative sex and gender based identities particularly
gay and lesbian. Emerging out of late twentieth century debates on the historicity and
contextual nature of sex and gender, queer theory claims that important of power
relationships in shaping normative meanings, practices and institutions around sex
and gender. Ethnographic studies provide culturally particular illustrations of how
nonnormative sex and gender identities are negotiated, evaluated, practiced, and
transformed. Ethnographic studies on queer immigrants, uses of the internet and
new media, queer activism and the role of race in sex and gender identities have
enabled new cutting edge discussions that extend and complicate ideas from queer
theory. More ethnographic research is needed to look into the roles of labor and class
in sex and gender identities, and how new identity categories such as transgender
circulate transnationally and cross-culturally.
INTRODUCTION
Queer theory in the past 20 years has become institutionalized both as a field
of research interest and as set of ideas or theoretical framework in the humanities and social sciences. It provenance can be traced to the influences of feminist theory and women studies, post-structural theory, and gay and lesbian
studies around the late 1980s and early 1990s. Post-structural theory, particularly Michel Foucault, was instrumental in the emergence of queer theory
particularly as it hinged on and was fueled by his pivotal ideas about the
historicity and nonnaturalness of sexuality. In other words, Foucault more
than any scholar promoted the idea that sexuality was a social and cultural
product that was labile and highly susceptible to the shifts in the historical contingencies of meaning. Feminist theory and women’s studies was
particularly buoyed by debates in the 1970s from women of color scholars
and activists who questioned the universality of the category “woman” and
that this monolithic category has given rise to specific privileges, omissions,
and gaps particularly around race, class and sexuality. Queer theory also
benefited from the rise of gay and lesbian studies which studied various
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Euro-American gay and lesbian subcultures and emerged out of the activism
of the homophile movement in America. The field gained ground in the early
seventies and then faced its most formidable challenge in the 1980s—the
AIDS pandemic.
The pandemic was the turning point and animating force that fused several
of the strands of scholarship and activism mentioned above. More than anything, the pandemic brought to bear what essentially was an ironic reality, the
disease which was initially labeled GRID or gay related immune deficiency
became prevalent in particular populations or communities such as immigrants, racialized minorities and non-Western countries where the labels lesbian or gay did not have any popular currency or semantic traction. One
of the foremost lessons of the pandemic was to show the incongruity and
incommensurability of sexual and gender behaviors with existing identity
categories on the basis of sexual orientation.
This historical event, more than any other existing reality in the 1980s, gave
rise to one of the primary stances of queer theory which is anti-normativity.
The discrepancies between behavior and identity plus the dismal negligence
and homophobic disregard for the victims of the pandemic by the US and
British government during the 1980s enabled a radical stance that framed the
social antipathy, stigma and violence against any sexually and gender nonconforming individual or group with the existence of heteronormativity—a
social order of bodies, relations and institutions that had its origins in the
nineteenth century and continues to this day in Euro-American contexts.
Queer theory became a way of repositioning normativity and nonnormativity without having to use sexual orientation or sexual object choice as
the pivot for analyzing behaviors, institutions and practices that do not fall
neatly in the gay/straight divide. Queer theory also constructed normativity as primarily fueled by the necessary, naturalized and hegemonic status
of heterosexuality in the modern West. Therefore normativity is established
by institutions, rituals, and everyday practices that privilege heterosexuality
and the goal of queer theory is to locate the disruptive sites and moments
that destabilize the heteronormative structural functioning of society.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Queer theory and ethnography have had a vexed historical relationship
with each other. Ethnography of nonnormative sexualities and gender has
been part of anthropology and sociology long before the advent of queer
theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kath Weston, in what is considered
the first major critical survey of gay and lesbian research in anthropology,
demonstrated the integral role of ethnography as a crucial medium for
Queer Theory
3
mapping or conducting what she calls an ethnocartography of homosexual/gay/lesbian phenomena. However, ethnographic investigations at that
time were still entrenched in Euro-American categories of gay and lesbian
and were mostly either American or European based. Despite this reality, it
was clear that not all ethnographies of nonnormative gender and sexuality
were clearly or obviously framed within queer theoretical precepts. At the
same time, ethnographies particularly those about the non-West or in the
Global South have enriched queer theory because such studies showcase
the multiple valuations and discrepant positions of the normal that do not
depend on Western historical and cultural contingencies and categories.
Ethnographic accounts from places such as Papua New Guinea demonstrated that same-sex behavior in certain cases were part of the accepted and
mandated ritualized transition from childhood to manhood. In other words,
these ethnographic cases reveal how the normal is not always anchored
to Western concept of sexual orientation and the identity categories that
supposedly emanate from it. In fact, cross-cultural ethnographies have
shown how the “normal” is a moving target—not clearly entrenched in
Western liberal and Judeo-Christian notions of individualism, rationality,
and ethics.
Ethnographic studies of sexual behavior in the Global South have provided
the grist for a more expansive notion of the sexual and the normal in ways
that have not been possible in the mainstream gay and lesbian studies
and in queer theory which were primarily based on analytical readings
of literary, cinematic and performance texts. Ethnographic studies have
demonstrated the importance of colonial and neocolonial subjugations as
fundamental social frameworks in the creation of meanings around sexual
behaviors/practices and identities.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
The important and inter-related current trends in queer theory and ethnography involve those innovative research strands or intellectual trajectories
that involve the following: the study of sexuality and gender within the processes of globalization and transnationalism including that of migration; the
study of social movements and activism; the study of transgender issues; the
study of race as an intersecting force in sexuality and gender; and the study
of affect, emotions, feelings and other bodily practices and experiences in
sexuality and gender.
Ethnographic studies about how various queer ideas, images, and bodies
travel across space and time involving either migration or the use of telecommunication technologies have emerged in response to the intensification of
global flows of cultural ideas, bodies, economic goods, and other phenomena
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
in the twenty-first century. Mary L. Gray documented and analyzed the use
of internet of rural-based American youth as a way to think about how new
media technologies have a created a space for exploration and expression of
alternate sexual and gender identities. At the same time, the internet also provides the medium for the travel and transfer of queer ideas and images and
it serves as a meeting ground for new subcultures of and emotional refuge
for otherwise isolated individuals and groups.
The transnational reception, mediation, dissemination and negotiation of
gender and sexual norms, politics and cultural ideas, practices and institutions are best exemplified by the experiences of queer immigrants. Queer
immigrants are often seen in terms of assimilation and integration with the
mainstream gay and lesbian practices. However, ethnographic studies by
Carlos Decena on Dominican, Suparna Bhaskaran on Indian, Martin Manalansan on Filipino, and Gloria Wekker on Afro-Surinamese queer immigrants illustrate the complicated manner by which such subjects engage with
notions of sexual marginalization with among other things, social primarily race-based ostracism in the host country. Therefore such immigrants find
it difficult if not impossible to integrate into and participate in the mainstream LGBT communities in their land of settlement. Far from being a contest between tradition and modernity, competing sexual ideologies together
with social, political and economic factors germane to immigrants, confound
any simplistic attempts at belonging and identification.
With the rise of identity and rights-based awareness of nonnormative sexualities across the world and the increase of queer-related activisms and social
movements have given rise to a research agenda on how queer people come
together for political and social action. Ethnographies of activisms based on
gender and sexual nonnormative behaviors and identities have shown the
divergent ways in which rights around sexuality and gender are articulated
and what kinds of political ideals are espoused. For example, many international gay and lesbian rights groups based in the Euro-American sites have
promoted the idea of “liberating” the Global South through the direct promotion of Western based gay and lesbian rights discourse. Ethnographic studies
have shown that such redemptive ideals are not only unrealistic, they are,
more importantly, oftentimes inconsistent with the individual and collective
aspirations and experiences of sexual and gender deviant subjects in these
places. At the same time, studies have also revealed how queer activists also
enact and express an ideal of a queer “globality” or an essential notion of
commonality of purpose among various queer activist groups across nations.
One of the ways in which such movements and activist practices are
ethnographically mapped is through a focus on emotions and affect. Emotions and affect are not just states of individual psychologies but are social
formations established through proliferating discourses, ideas and practices.
Queer Theory
5
Part of what has been called the affective turn in the humanities and social
sciences is the attempt to underscore the crucial role of passionate rhetoric
and environments in the creation of political and social movements aimed
at transforming the conditions for queer subjects. Ethnographies such as
Naisargi Dave’s work on Indian lesbian activists reveal the undercurrents of
“passions” and other emotions that motivate, drive and fuel Indian lesbian
subjects who create these affective bonds and conduct ethically inspired
collective action under the sign of “lesbian.” Thus instead of seeing such
practices as necessarily “rational” or activist groups as “systematic” arrangements of people, political goals and instrumental behavior,’ activism’s core
is founded on the coming together and coalescing around the emotional and
affective energies that propel the formation of collective thinking and action.
The other important development in the queer theory is the emergence
of transgender studies. Scholars of transgender or trans studies sometimes
conceive of it as a separate field from queer theory. David Valentine suggests that transgender as a category has emerged as a partial answer to the
problematic relationship between gender and sexuality and demonstrates
the complexities around desire, gender identity, biology, and the social norms
surrounding gender assignations of physical features, embodied behaviors,
and experiences. Ethnographic studies have shown that the dissemination
and everyday understanding of “transgender” is often uneven and is often
engaged in relation to existing categories such as gay, drag, or cross-dressing.
However, community organizing around transgender issues has enabled the
category “transgender” to become a viable social and political identity. Ongoing ethnographic work range from the development of trans identities within
the individual development cycle, to gender re-assignment surgery, to the
various modes and phases of transgender experiences to the political economy of transgender issues.
Ethnographic studies about the role of race in the everyday life and the processes of self-making in various countries. Race is never considered either as
a single factor or a discreet category but rather, as intrinsically enmeshed in
sociocultural processes and is a crucial juncture in the articulation and experience of the gendered and sexual phenomena. American-based studies and
scholars have persuasively argued the relevance and necessary intertwining of race in the expression, understanding, and dissemination of sexual
desire, identity and practices. For example, recent works such as Jason Ritchie
have shown how mainstream post-9/11 discourses have been based on the
intertwining of colonial, homophobic and xenophobic ideas and feelings particularly in the understanding and apprehension of Middle Eastern cultures
as necessarily anti-homosexual and therefore premodern and uncivilized.
Jafari Allen deploys the framework of intersectionality to understand
the predicament of Afro-Cuban queers and their multiply marginalized
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
existence in their country. Intersectionality, coined by critical race studies
scholars, argues that the indices of race, class, gender, and sexuality are
mutually constitutive of individual subjectivity and collective experience.
Queer ethnographic studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this formulation as it locates sexuality and gender within the material and symbolic
struggles of individual subjects and collectivities.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Class and labor are important future research topics that still need to be
engaged with in a consistent and tenacious ways in queer ethnographic
research. Ethnographic studies and queer theory must respond to the global
economic crisis and with precarious shifting of social classes across the
world especially around the decreasing quality of life and modes of life that
teeter on the verge of collapse and oblivion. Future research should not only
look at the economic predicament of queer subjects but more importantly,
how a queer perspective might help illuminate ongoing precarious neoliberal exigencies by examining how the unequal and uneven deployment
of normative concepts, ideals, and expectations promote and reproduce
these perilous conditions. In other words, how does a queer theoretical
frame enable an ethnographically based critical understanding of political,
economic and social sufferings in contemporary times?
The ethnographic function of demonstrating how particular categories
such as transgender and gay are negotiated across national and local spaces
is still very crucial and much needed in future research. What kinds of
ideas and identities travel across space through migration, travel or through
virtual communication? For example, transgender has become a universalizing category that seems to include most every practice and behavior that
are deemed gender nonconforming. Future ethnographic studies on this
matter should include detailed analyses of the viability of this category in
specific contexts and how this category from the West may be used or not
used in place of specific cultural idioms and practices in specific sites and
places. In other words, ethnographic studies around transgender should
look into the limits and possibilities of a global geography of transgender
subjects, ideologies, and institutions within and across various spatial scales
and historical contexts. Going beyond the transgender category, future
ethnographic research should look into the ways in which other new kinds
of gender and sexual categories and ideas expand or contract their semantic
and political landscapes. What kinds of situations and peoples do they
include? What do they leave out?
With the increasing visibility of gay agenda issues such as gay marriage,
scholars are also looking into the repercussions of mainstreaming of, at least
Queer Theory
7
in the previous century, extremely marginalized positions of queers. Ongoing
and future ethnographic research should look into the roles of queers in gentrification, the consequences of the disintegration of so-called gay ghettoes
or gayborhoods and the increasing “normal” face of the queer as actually
re-producing the nuclear family. With the emergence of gay rights in the
American landscape, queer theory and ethnography should look in to the
material and symbolic effects of the calcification of queerness in terms of
rights and the attainment of the markers of the good life primarily around
the reproduction—marriage, child-rearing, and family. What is queer with
what is happening right now—should be the question that will drive and
fuel future research.
The institutionalization of queer theory in the academy has also created
new perspectives and questions particularly about its relevance and continued existence. Some scholars have announced the death of queer theory.
That said, queer theory still provides a vibrant and robust research agenda.
The enduring promise of queer theory is precisely because it is not wedded
to a particular object—even with the case of sexuality. Sexuality is seen in
terms of an intersection of mutually influencing and affecting nodes of subjectivity and sociality. Queer theory is context-bound and not object-based.
As such, queer theory and the notion of queer are amenable to the empirically grounded mission of ethnography. While scholars in the humanistic
disciplines such as literary studies, art history and philosophy have heard
the death knell of queer theory, the resonance of queer theory can and will be
extended and animated by the ethnographic disciplines such as anthropology. Despite their historically strained relationship, queer theory and ethnography have much to offer each other in the terms of future joint intellectual
and political ventures.
FURTHER READING
Allen, J. (2011). Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Bhaskaran, S. (2004). Made in India: Decolonizations, queer sexualities, trans/national
projects. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Boellstorff, T. (2007). Queer studies in the house of anthropology. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 36, 17–35.
Dave, N. (2012). Queer activism in India: A story in the anthropology of Ethics. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Decena, C. U. (2011). Tacit subjects: Belonging and same-sex desire among dominican immigrant men. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Vintage.
Gray, M. L. (2009). Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America.
New York: New York University Press.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Manalansan, M. F., IV, (2003). Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Ritchie, J. (2013). Black skin splits: The birth (and death) of the queer Palestinian.
In J. Haritaworn et al. (Eds.), Queer Necropolitics (pp. 111–128). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Valentine, D. (2007). Imagining transgender: An ethnography of a category. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Wekker, G. (2007). The politics of passions: Women’s sexual culture in the Afro-Surinamese
diaspora. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Weston, K. (1993). Lesbian/gay studies in the house of anthropology. Annual Review
of Anthropology, 22, 339–67.
MARTIN F. MANALANSAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Martin F. Manalansan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian
American Studies and Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is an affiliate faculty in Gender
and Women’s Studies, Global Studies and Criticism and Interpretive Theory.
He is the Social Science Review Editor for GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian
Studies.
He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke
University Press, 2003) which won the Ruth Benedict Prize in 2003. His other
publications include three edited collections: Cultural Compass: Ethnographic
Explorations of Asian America (Temple University Press, 2000), (with Arnaldo
Cruz-Malave) Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism
(New York University Press, 2002) and (with Katharine Donato, Donna
Gabbacia, Jennifer Holdaway and Patricia Pessar, Jennifer Holdaway) a
special issue of the International Migration Review (2006) entitled “Gender
and Migration Revisited.” His essays have appeared in journals such as
Social Text, positions: East Asia cultures critique, and GLQ. His current projects
include neoliberalism, embodied belonging and LGBTQ politics and culture;
Manila’s urban modernity; and the cultural politics of space, food, and
olfaction in Asian American immigrant communities of New York City.
RELATED ESSAYS
History and Epistemology of Anthropology (Anthropology), Arjun
Appadurai
Reconciliation and Peace-Making: Insights from Studies on Nonhuman
Animals (Anthropology), Sonja E. Koski
Aggression and Victimization (Psychology), Sheri Bauman and Aryn Taylor
Mediation in International Conflicts (Political Science), Kyle Beardsley and
Nathan Danneman
Queer Theory
9
Public Opinion and International Conflict (Political Science), Adam J.
Berinsky
Domestic Institutions and International Conflict (Political Science), Giacomo
Chiozza
Interdependence, Development, and Interstate Conflict (Political Science),
Erik Gartzke
Regime Type and Terrorist Attacks (Political Science), Kara Kingma et al.
Why Do States Sign Alliances? (Political Science), Brett Ashley Leeds
Domestic Political Institutions and Alliance Politics (Political Science),
Michaela Mattes
Political Psychology and International Conflict (Political Science), Rose
McDermott
Cultural Conflict (Sociology), Ian Mullins
Intervention and Regime Change (Political Science), John M. Owen IV and
Roger G. Herbert Jr.
War and Social Movements (Political Science), Sidney Tarrow
Bullying, Aggression, and Human Development (Psychology), Samuel E.
Ehrenreich and Marion K. Underwood
Why Do States Pursue Nuclear Weapons (or Not) (Political Science), Wilfred
Wan and Etel Solingen
-
Queer Theory
MARTIN F. MANALANSAN
Abstract
Queer theory and ethnography have a productive relationship. Queer theory has
questioned the stability of nonnormative sex and gender based identities particularly
gay and lesbian. Emerging out of late twentieth century debates on the historicity and
contextual nature of sex and gender, queer theory claims that important of power
relationships in shaping normative meanings, practices and institutions around sex
and gender. Ethnographic studies provide culturally particular illustrations of how
nonnormative sex and gender identities are negotiated, evaluated, practiced, and
transformed. Ethnographic studies on queer immigrants, uses of the internet and
new media, queer activism and the role of race in sex and gender identities have
enabled new cutting edge discussions that extend and complicate ideas from queer
theory. More ethnographic research is needed to look into the roles of labor and class
in sex and gender identities, and how new identity categories such as transgender
circulate transnationally and cross-culturally.
INTRODUCTION
Queer theory in the past 20 years has become institutionalized both as a field
of research interest and as set of ideas or theoretical framework in the humanities and social sciences. It provenance can be traced to the influences of feminist theory and women studies, post-structural theory, and gay and lesbian
studies around the late 1980s and early 1990s. Post-structural theory, particularly Michel Foucault, was instrumental in the emergence of queer theory
particularly as it hinged on and was fueled by his pivotal ideas about the
historicity and nonnaturalness of sexuality. In other words, Foucault more
than any scholar promoted the idea that sexuality was a social and cultural
product that was labile and highly susceptible to the shifts in the historical contingencies of meaning. Feminist theory and women’s studies was
particularly buoyed by debates in the 1970s from women of color scholars
and activists who questioned the universality of the category “woman” and
that this monolithic category has given rise to specific privileges, omissions,
and gaps particularly around race, class and sexuality. Queer theory also
benefited from the rise of gay and lesbian studies which studied various
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Euro-American gay and lesbian subcultures and emerged out of the activism
of the homophile movement in America. The field gained ground in the early
seventies and then faced its most formidable challenge in the 1980s—the
AIDS pandemic.
The pandemic was the turning point and animating force that fused several
of the strands of scholarship and activism mentioned above. More than anything, the pandemic brought to bear what essentially was an ironic reality, the
disease which was initially labeled GRID or gay related immune deficiency
became prevalent in particular populations or communities such as immigrants, racialized minorities and non-Western countries where the labels lesbian or gay did not have any popular currency or semantic traction. One
of the foremost lessons of the pandemic was to show the incongruity and
incommensurability of sexual and gender behaviors with existing identity
categories on the basis of sexual orientation.
This historical event, more than any other existing reality in the 1980s, gave
rise to one of the primary stances of queer theory which is anti-normativity.
The discrepancies between behavior and identity plus the dismal negligence
and homophobic disregard for the victims of the pandemic by the US and
British government during the 1980s enabled a radical stance that framed the
social antipathy, stigma and violence against any sexually and gender nonconforming individual or group with the existence of heteronormativity—a
social order of bodies, relations and institutions that had its origins in the
nineteenth century and continues to this day in Euro-American contexts.
Queer theory became a way of repositioning normativity and nonnormativity without having to use sexual orientation or sexual object choice as
the pivot for analyzing behaviors, institutions and practices that do not fall
neatly in the gay/straight divide. Queer theory also constructed normativity as primarily fueled by the necessary, naturalized and hegemonic status
of heterosexuality in the modern West. Therefore normativity is established
by institutions, rituals, and everyday practices that privilege heterosexuality
and the goal of queer theory is to locate the disruptive sites and moments
that destabilize the heteronormative structural functioning of society.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Queer theory and ethnography have had a vexed historical relationship
with each other. Ethnography of nonnormative sexualities and gender has
been part of anthropology and sociology long before the advent of queer
theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kath Weston, in what is considered
the first major critical survey of gay and lesbian research in anthropology,
demonstrated the integral role of ethnography as a crucial medium for
Queer Theory
3
mapping or conducting what she calls an ethnocartography of homosexual/gay/lesbian phenomena. However, ethnographic investigations at that
time were still entrenched in Euro-American categories of gay and lesbian
and were mostly either American or European based. Despite this reality, it
was clear that not all ethnographies of nonnormative gender and sexuality
were clearly or obviously framed within queer theoretical precepts. At the
same time, ethnographies particularly those about the non-West or in the
Global South have enriched queer theory because such studies showcase
the multiple valuations and discrepant positions of the normal that do not
depend on Western historical and cultural contingencies and categories.
Ethnographic accounts from places such as Papua New Guinea demonstrated that same-sex behavior in certain cases were part of the accepted and
mandated ritualized transition from childhood to manhood. In other words,
these ethnographic cases reveal how the normal is not always anchored
to Western concept of sexual orientation and the identity categories that
supposedly emanate from it. In fact, cross-cultural ethnographies have
shown how the “normal” is a moving target—not clearly entrenched in
Western liberal and Judeo-Christian notions of individualism, rationality,
and ethics.
Ethnographic studies of sexual behavior in the Global South have provided
the grist for a more expansive notion of the sexual and the normal in ways
that have not been possible in the mainstream gay and lesbian studies
and in queer theory which were primarily based on analytical readings
of literary, cinematic and performance texts. Ethnographic studies have
demonstrated the importance of colonial and neocolonial subjugations as
fundamental social frameworks in the creation of meanings around sexual
behaviors/practices and identities.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
The important and inter-related current trends in queer theory and ethnography involve those innovative research strands or intellectual trajectories
that involve the following: the study of sexuality and gender within the processes of globalization and transnationalism including that of migration; the
study of social movements and activism; the study of transgender issues; the
study of race as an intersecting force in sexuality and gender; and the study
of affect, emotions, feelings and other bodily practices and experiences in
sexuality and gender.
Ethnographic studies about how various queer ideas, images, and bodies
travel across space and time involving either migration or the use of telecommunication technologies have emerged in response to the intensification of
global flows of cultural ideas, bodies, economic goods, and other phenomena
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
in the twenty-first century. Mary L. Gray documented and analyzed the use
of internet of rural-based American youth as a way to think about how new
media technologies have a created a space for exploration and expression of
alternate sexual and gender identities. At the same time, the internet also provides the medium for the travel and transfer of queer ideas and images and
it serves as a meeting ground for new subcultures of and emotional refuge
for otherwise isolated individuals and groups.
The transnational reception, mediation, dissemination and negotiation of
gender and sexual norms, politics and cultural ideas, practices and institutions are best exemplified by the experiences of queer immigrants. Queer
immigrants are often seen in terms of assimilation and integration with the
mainstream gay and lesbian practices. However, ethnographic studies by
Carlos Decena on Dominican, Suparna Bhaskaran on Indian, Martin Manalansan on Filipino, and Gloria Wekker on Afro-Surinamese queer immigrants illustrate the complicated manner by which such subjects engage with
notions of sexual marginalization with among other things, social primarily race-based ostracism in the host country. Therefore such immigrants find
it difficult if not impossible to integrate into and participate in the mainstream LGBT communities in their land of settlement. Far from being a contest between tradition and modernity, competing sexual ideologies together
with social, political and economic factors germane to immigrants, confound
any simplistic attempts at belonging and identification.
With the rise of identity and rights-based awareness of nonnormative sexualities across the world and the increase of queer-related activisms and social
movements have given rise to a research agenda on how queer people come
together for political and social action. Ethnographies of activisms based on
gender and sexual nonnormative behaviors and identities have shown the
divergent ways in which rights around sexuality and gender are articulated
and what kinds of political ideals are espoused. For example, many international gay and lesbian rights groups based in the Euro-American sites have
promoted the idea of “liberating” the Global South through the direct promotion of Western based gay and lesbian rights discourse. Ethnographic studies
have shown that such redemptive ideals are not only unrealistic, they are,
more importantly, oftentimes inconsistent with the individual and collective
aspirations and experiences of sexual and gender deviant subjects in these
places. At the same time, studies have also revealed how queer activists also
enact and express an ideal of a queer “globality” or an essential notion of
commonality of purpose among various queer activist groups across nations.
One of the ways in which such movements and activist practices are
ethnographically mapped is through a focus on emotions and affect. Emotions and affect are not just states of individual psychologies but are social
formations established through proliferating discourses, ideas and practices.
Queer Theory
5
Part of what has been called the affective turn in the humanities and social
sciences is the attempt to underscore the crucial role of passionate rhetoric
and environments in the creation of political and social movements aimed
at transforming the conditions for queer subjects. Ethnographies such as
Naisargi Dave’s work on Indian lesbian activists reveal the undercurrents of
“passions” and other emotions that motivate, drive and fuel Indian lesbian
subjects who create these affective bonds and conduct ethically inspired
collective action under the sign of “lesbian.” Thus instead of seeing such
practices as necessarily “rational” or activist groups as “systematic” arrangements of people, political goals and instrumental behavior,’ activism’s core
is founded on the coming together and coalescing around the emotional and
affective energies that propel the formation of collective thinking and action.
The other important development in the queer theory is the emergence
of transgender studies. Scholars of transgender or trans studies sometimes
conceive of it as a separate field from queer theory. David Valentine suggests that transgender as a category has emerged as a partial answer to the
problematic relationship between gender and sexuality and demonstrates
the complexities around desire, gender identity, biology, and the social norms
surrounding gender assignations of physical features, embodied behaviors,
and experiences. Ethnographic studies have shown that the dissemination
and everyday understanding of “transgender” is often uneven and is often
engaged in relation to existing categories such as gay, drag, or cross-dressing.
However, community organizing around transgender issues has enabled the
category “transgender” to become a viable social and political identity. Ongoing ethnographic work range from the development of trans identities within
the individual development cycle, to gender re-assignment surgery, to the
various modes and phases of transgender experiences to the political economy of transgender issues.
Ethnographic studies about the role of race in the everyday life and the processes of self-making in various countries. Race is never considered either as
a single factor or a discreet category but rather, as intrinsically enmeshed in
sociocultural processes and is a crucial juncture in the articulation and experience of the gendered and sexual phenomena. American-based studies and
scholars have persuasively argued the relevance and necessary intertwining of race in the expression, understanding, and dissemination of sexual
desire, identity and practices. For example, recent works such as Jason Ritchie
have shown how mainstream post-9/11 discourses have been based on the
intertwining of colonial, homophobic and xenophobic ideas and feelings particularly in the understanding and apprehension of Middle Eastern cultures
as necessarily anti-homosexual and therefore premodern and uncivilized.
Jafari Allen deploys the framework of intersectionality to understand
the predicament of Afro-Cuban queers and their multiply marginalized
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
existence in their country. Intersectionality, coined by critical race studies
scholars, argues that the indices of race, class, gender, and sexuality are
mutually constitutive of individual subjectivity and collective experience.
Queer ethnographic studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this formulation as it locates sexuality and gender within the material and symbolic
struggles of individual subjects and collectivities.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Class and labor are important future research topics that still need to be
engaged with in a consistent and tenacious ways in queer ethnographic
research. Ethnographic studies and queer theory must respond to the global
economic crisis and with precarious shifting of social classes across the
world especially around the decreasing quality of life and modes of life that
teeter on the verge of collapse and oblivion. Future research should not only
look at the economic predicament of queer subjects but more importantly,
how a queer perspective might help illuminate ongoing precarious neoliberal exigencies by examining how the unequal and uneven deployment
of normative concepts, ideals, and expectations promote and reproduce
these perilous conditions. In other words, how does a queer theoretical
frame enable an ethnographically based critical understanding of political,
economic and social sufferings in contemporary times?
The ethnographic function of demonstrating how particular categories
such as transgender and gay are negotiated across national and local spaces
is still very crucial and much needed in future research. What kinds of
ideas and identities travel across space through migration, travel or through
virtual communication? For example, transgender has become a universalizing category that seems to include most every practice and behavior that
are deemed gender nonconforming. Future ethnographic studies on this
matter should include detailed analyses of the viability of this category in
specific contexts and how this category from the West may be used or not
used in place of specific cultural idioms and practices in specific sites and
places. In other words, ethnographic studies around transgender should
look into the limits and possibilities of a global geography of transgender
subjects, ideologies, and institutions within and across various spatial scales
and historical contexts. Going beyond the transgender category, future
ethnographic research should look into the ways in which other new kinds
of gender and sexual categories and ideas expand or contract their semantic
and political landscapes. What kinds of situations and peoples do they
include? What do they leave out?
With the increasing visibility of gay agenda issues such as gay marriage,
scholars are also looking into the repercussions of mainstreaming of, at least
Queer Theory
7
in the previous century, extremely marginalized positions of queers. Ongoing
and future ethnographic research should look into the roles of queers in gentrification, the consequences of the disintegration of so-called gay ghettoes
or gayborhoods and the increasing “normal” face of the queer as actually
re-producing the nuclear family. With the emergence of gay rights in the
American landscape, queer theory and ethnography should look in to the
material and symbolic effects of the calcification of queerness in terms of
rights and the attainment of the markers of the good life primarily around
the reproduction—marriage, child-rearing, and family. What is queer with
what is happening right now—should be the question that will drive and
fuel future research.
The institutionalization of queer theory in the academy has also created
new perspectives and questions particularly about its relevance and continued existence. Some scholars have announced the death of queer theory.
That said, queer theory still provides a vibrant and robust research agenda.
The enduring promise of queer theory is precisely because it is not wedded
to a particular object—even with the case of sexuality. Sexuality is seen in
terms of an intersection of mutually influencing and affecting nodes of subjectivity and sociality. Queer theory is context-bound and not object-based.
As such, queer theory and the notion of queer are amenable to the empirically grounded mission of ethnography. While scholars in the humanistic
disciplines such as literary studies, art history and philosophy have heard
the death knell of queer theory, the resonance of queer theory can and will be
extended and animated by the ethnographic disciplines such as anthropology. Despite their historically strained relationship, queer theory and ethnography have much to offer each other in the terms of future joint intellectual
and political ventures.
FURTHER READING
Allen, J. (2011). Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-making in Cuba. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Bhaskaran, S. (2004). Made in India: Decolonizations, queer sexualities, trans/national
projects. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Boellstorff, T. (2007). Queer studies in the house of anthropology. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 36, 17–35.
Dave, N. (2012). Queer activism in India: A story in the anthropology of Ethics. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Decena, C. U. (2011). Tacit subjects: Belonging and same-sex desire among dominican immigrant men. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Vintage.
Gray, M. L. (2009). Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America.
New York: New York University Press.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Manalansan, M. F., IV, (2003). Global divas: Filipino gay men in the diaspora. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Ritchie, J. (2013). Black skin splits: The birth (and death) of the queer Palestinian.
In J. Haritaworn et al. (Eds.), Queer Necropolitics (pp. 111–128). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Valentine, D. (2007). Imagining transgender: An ethnography of a category. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Wekker, G. (2007). The politics of passions: Women’s sexual culture in the Afro-Surinamese
diaspora. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Weston, K. (1993). Lesbian/gay studies in the house of anthropology. Annual Review
of Anthropology, 22, 339–67.
MARTIN F. MANALANSAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Martin F. Manalansan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian
American Studies and Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is an affiliate faculty in Gender
and Women’s Studies, Global Studies and Criticism and Interpretive Theory.
He is the Social Science Review Editor for GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian
Studies.
He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke
University Press, 2003) which won the Ruth Benedict Prize in 2003. His other
publications include three edited collections: Cultural Compass: Ethnographic
Explorations of Asian America (Temple University Press, 2000), (with Arnaldo
Cruz-Malave) Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism
(New York University Press, 2002) and (with Katharine Donato, Donna
Gabbacia, Jennifer Holdaway and Patricia Pessar, Jennifer Holdaway) a
special issue of the International Migration Review (2006) entitled “Gender
and Migration Revisited.” His essays have appeared in journals such as
Social Text, positions: East Asia cultures critique, and GLQ. His current projects
include neoliberalism, embodied belonging and LGBTQ politics and culture;
Manila’s urban modernity; and the cultural politics of space, food, and
olfaction in Asian American immigrant communities of New York City.
RELATED ESSAYS
History and Epistemology of Anthropology (Anthropology), Arjun
Appadurai
Reconciliation and Peace-Making: Insights from Studies on Nonhuman
Animals (Anthropology), Sonja E. Koski
Aggression and Victimization (Psychology), Sheri Bauman and Aryn Taylor
Mediation in International Conflicts (Political Science), Kyle Beardsley and
Nathan Danneman
Queer Theory
9
Public Opinion and International Conflict (Political Science), Adam J.
Berinsky
Domestic Institutions and International Conflict (Political Science), Giacomo
Chiozza
Interdependence, Development, and Interstate Conflict (Political Science),
Erik Gartzke
Regime Type and Terrorist Attacks (Political Science), Kara Kingma et al.
Why Do States Sign Alliances? (Political Science), Brett Ashley Leeds
Domestic Political Institutions and Alliance Politics (Political Science),
Michaela Mattes
Political Psychology and International Conflict (Political Science), Rose
McDermott
Cultural Conflict (Sociology), Ian Mullins
Intervention and Regime Change (Political Science), John M. Owen IV and
Roger G. Herbert Jr.
War and Social Movements (Political Science), Sidney Tarrow
Bullying, Aggression, and Human Development (Psychology), Samuel E.
Ehrenreich and Marion K. Underwood
Why Do States Pursue Nuclear Weapons (or Not) (Political Science), Wilfred
Wan and Etel Solingen