# Queer Theory [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory) ( 1990s–present ) ## Description Queer theory, camp, disidentification, and queer readings of experimental and narrative film, centered on [[José Esteban Muñoz]]'s theory of disidentification — the simultaneous refusal and reworking of dominant, majoritarian scripts of gender, sexuality, and identity from within. ## Key Tags #queer-theory #camp #disidentification ## Essential Works - [[Cruising Utopia]] - José Esteban Muñoz's foundational text on queer utopianism and "then and there" futurity, anchoring this page's disidentification thread - Ahmed, Sara. "Queer Feelings." In *The Cultural Politics of Emotion*. University Press, 2014. - phenomenology of queer orientation and feeling out of line with heteronormative space - Suárez, Juan A. "Ruins, Magical Objects, Litter, Synthetics." In [[Ruins, Magical Objects, Litter, Synthetics]] - material/queer reading of Kenneth Anger, Harry Smith, and Jim Davis's experimental film objects - Horton-Stallings, LaMonda. *Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures*. University of Illinois Press, 2015. ## Details > "Being a relational creature also means that we are very malleable and that we are all hybrid, shape-shifting creatures. We may not all be dressing it up camp style, as the drag queens do on Ru Paul's Drag Race, but we are all inevitably living outside of whatever norms that shaped our genders, sexes, sexuality, values, and goals in life. It is impossible to live up fully, at all times, to any ideal." (Bauman, "What a Drag It Is Being Relational," 2020, p. 286) ### Key Theorists - [[José Esteban Muñoz]] - theorizes disidentification and queer utopian futurity ([[Cruising Utopia]]) - [[Sara Ahmed]] - queer phenomenology — orientation, feeling out of line, and affect - [[Judith Butler]] - kinship, gender performativity, and the limits of heteronormative recognition - [[Jack Halberstam]] - queer failure, low theory, and the politics of anti-normativity - [[Susan Stryker]] - trans studies' overlap with and critique of queer theory - [[Sonny Nordmarken]] - writes on monstrosity and trans/queer embodiment - [[LaMonda Horton Stallings]] - Black queer sexual culture and transaesthetics ### Exemplary Practitioners - [[Anthony McCall]] - queer readings of formal/structural film practice discussed in *Notebooks and Conversations* - [[Kenneth Anger]] - queer occult/underground film central to Suárez's material-queer analysis - [[Harry Smith]] - discussed alongside Anger in queer-materialist readings of experimental film objects ### Related Concepts - [[Affirmative Posthumanism]] - shares questions of embodiment and nonnormative becoming - [[Third Cinema and Socio-political Cinema]] - overlaps in decolonial and racial-justice readings of cinema - [[Phenomenology]] - Ahmed's queer phenomenology extends embodied orientation into questions of sexuality, space, and power ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Associated Movements or Institutions %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography [[Cruising Utopia]] Suárez, Juan A. "Ruins, Magical Objects, Litter, Synthetics." In *Experimental Film and Queer Materiality*. Oxford University Press, 2024. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197566992.003.0002. — material reading of work by Kenneth Anger, Harry Smith, Jim Davis. See [[Ruins, Magical Objects, Litter, Synthetics]]. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography "'Addicted to Dreaming': James Bidgood, the Pink Narcissus Director Who Defined Camp." *The Guardian*, n.d. Ahmed, Sara. "Orientations." *GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies* 12, no. 4 (2006): 543–74. [https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-002](https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-002). Ahmed, Sara. "Queer Feelings." In *The Cultural Politics of Emotion*, NED-New edition, 2. University Press, 2014. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748691142-009](https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748691142-009). Bailey, Marlon M. "Gender/Racial Realness: Theorizing the Gender System in Ballroom Culture." *Feminist Studies* 37, no. 2 (2011): 365–86. [https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2011.0016](https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2011.0016). Bauman, Whitney A. "What a Drag It Is Being Relational: Developing Planetary Identities." *Dialog* 59, no. 4 (2020): 286–92. [https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12619](https://doi.org/10.1111/dial.12619). Berliner, Lauren Samara. *Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment*. Routledge Research in Gender, Sexuality, and Media. Routledge, 2018. Butler, Judith. "Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?" *Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies* 13, no. 1 (2002): 14–44. Ellapen, Jordache A. *Queering the Archive: Brown Bodies in Ecstasy: Visual Assemblages, and the Pleasures of Transgressive Erotics*. n.d. Ellard, Graham, Stephen Johnstone, and Anthony McCall. *Anthony McCall: Notebooks and Conversations*. Lund Humphries, 2015. Gillespie, Margaret. "'The Triumph of the Epicene Style': Nightwood and Camp." *Miranda*, no. 12 (February 2016). [https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.8634](https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.8634). Nordmarken, Sonny. "Becoming Ever More Monstrous." In *Privilege*, 4th ed., by Michael S. Kimmel, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber. Routledge, 2018. [https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429494802-14](https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429494802-14). Pelling, Madeleine. "Recentring Peripheral Queerness and Marginal Art in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)." *Humanities* 10, no. 2 (2021): 73. [https://doi.org/10.3390/h10020073](https://doi.org/10.3390/h10020073). "Nirta, Caterina - Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias." n.d. "Queer Angles | Feministkilljoys." n.d. "Swann, William Dorsey - Biography, Oxford." n.d. Yep, Gust A., Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui, and Ryan M. Lescure. *Transing Sin-Dee Rella: Representations of Trans Women of Color in Sean Baker's [Tangerine]*. n.d.