The Politics of Queer Theory in the (Post)Modern Moment

Abstract

Queer Theory is the most recent subversion of the rational: it rgues that in place of a Marxist theoretics (which alls for social transformation based on a conceptual knowledge of social totality) or a Foucauldian alytics (which calls for an understanding of social ocalities in terms of a chain of discursive formations), one should articulate anerotics--a (post)conceptual, (post)discursive ecognition of sexualities a the sublime (in the Kantian sense) of the social. !n this sense then Queer Theory is the most recent form of radical inquiry in the wake of (post)structuralism. It is infact a new paradigm in literary and cultural studies, a paradigm furthermore which claims that he current models ofunderstanding difference are inadequate b cause they are, in one way or another, analytical/ conceptual. !n other words, on the horizon ofoppositional theories/pedagogies/ practices (organized around the axes of race/class/gender ...), Queer Theory promotes the strongest cancellation f the conceptual available today. By examining its enabling theoretical presuppositions a dassumptions and some of its social and political consequences, thisessay will engage this emerging paradigm in order to test the limits of its radicality.